gaucho777 

I’m visiting family in SoCal for a couple days. I went out for a short morning ride up the Rock Store climb on Mullholland Drive near Agoura, CA. I swung by Malibu Lake on the way.



Malibu Lake in the background.


“The Old Place” seemed a good place for a photo spot.


Some herons below if you look closely.


Rock overhang on the Rock Store climb.

Oldairhead 

My 1963 Girardengo "gravel bike" at the Buxton Trestle on the Banks-Vernonia Trail in Oregon.

rccardr 

A real sweaty ride yesterday:
IMG_5858 by Doc Mertes, on Flickr

Dylansbob 

Just a short cruise to pick up dinner and try out the Sand Canyons.


Suntour rd upgrade

thinktubes 

Did 58 up north after work. Temps in the early 90s.

It was clear when I left, but my wife warned me that a system was supposed to come through around 6pm. She was right on the money. My luck ran out up in Lake Forest. The storm eventually moved out over the lake and I was able to make it home.



Here’s what it looked like from shore



Roads alternated between when and dry for the last 25 miles. Need to clean the bike again - Grrrrr

AJI125 

Quick 31.5 / 2,300' up Deer Creek Canyon this morning on the LeMond, was tired so spun the 30-30 quite a bit near the upper part. Blessed as usual to have such rides right out my front door with only about a mile on busy roads with wide bike lanes. Didn't leave quite as early as hoped but early enough. Been doing a lot of running so not too many rides much over an hour lately. Little traffic, nice and cool fresh morning air. No bike pics as I didn't dismount (guess I need to get good at the on-bike picture taking!). Descent was fast and fun as usual, but after Pogacar's slide yesterday I kept far away from the sandy shoulder!

Dealing with a drought here, hence the yellowing foliage in the exposed areas, depends on where you are but we've got watering restrictions (reservoirs for our county/water supply are only 37% full, yikes).


MUP entering Chatfield State Park

MUP in Chatfield State Park

Chatfield road

Balloon time


Cropped my shadow out of this - I liked the dead tree and rock combo

Shadow and sun

Almost to the top!

Spaghetti Legs 

I can’t see it in the pic, but if that’s Lake Forest (and I’m pretty sure it is) I think The Lantern is along that sidewalk. Good place to weather a storm as long as you don’t have to ride very far after it’s gone, ha ha

Spaghetti Legs 

Short ride before the heat sets in. One of my in town gravel segments has now been paved, so I took the skinny tire Masi up the steep climb to Ragged Mountain reservoir. After cooling off and enjoying the view on the well placed shady bench, I mounted up to ride back down the hill. As I was doing this a couple of mountain bikers passed by and for the record, they did not wave or say hi.

thinktubes 

Central Street in Evanston actually, although I waited out the storm at the train station in Lake Forest.

Seems like every town on the north shore got their lanterns from the same place. My wife found one in the alley and we use it as lamp.

zookster 

9 mile urban exploring ride last night on the Thursday Night Trample with Redemptive Cycles in Birmingham, AL after a large summer thunderstorm passed through the area.

SurferRosa

Seward Park
.

botty kayer

We've had sweltering temperatures here in the UK this week, with England, Scotland and Wales all recording record highs, London got to just over 40 centigrade earlier in the week, which made cycling unbearable. It wasn't just the cycling, in a city with little or no air conditioning, us Brits who are famously not used to hot weather were wilting.

We're used to seeing pictures on the news in recent years of the fires in the USA and across Europe, but we've even had them here this week. On Monday and Tuesday this week the London Fire Brigade had their busiest few days since World War 2 with many fires in parks and grassland and the East London village of Wennington had a whole street burn down in what looked like scenes from a disaster movie.

Thankfully today is 25c so much more conducive to cycling, so I headed out on my 25c clad bike. I crossed the Thames over Blackfriars Bridge, the new skyscraper in the background on the south side of the bridge is luxury apartments, well out of the range of us normal people, the cheapest apartment costing over 1 million pounds, and the most expensive costing well over 20 million.

I cycled around East London looking for new street art works for a while, the only new one I saw there was this. It may be much cooler today but its still most definitely sunglasses weather.

I then cycled on to nearby Islington and found some left over artworks from last weekends Whitecross Street party.

And the art is keeping up with the times, here a little robin bird with a discarded positive Covid 19 test kit.

And I found the biggest pin and thread work by Perspicere I've come across so far, amazing work again.

I cycled through the West End to Hyde Park. London is lucky to have quite a lot of parks, they are little oases of green amid the brick, concrete and glass. Well they are normally, but not at the moment. Hyde Park in mid July should not look like this.

,I can't even remember the last time it rained here in London. There has been some showers elsewhere in the UK bringing much needed rain, but there's none forecast here in the capital for the next 2 weeks at least. If the Brits are longing for rain then you know the climate has gone completely out of whack!

Also in Hyde Park is this summers Serpentine Gallery installation, Black Chapel by Chicago based artist Theaster Gates.

More info here: https://www.theguardian.com/artandde...-bit-too-slick
I head out of the north side of Hyde Park towards Paddington station, and in the nearby Norfolk Gardens there was half a dozen small brick models (not branded Lego so clearly there are other brands available) for one of Paddington stations most famous visitors, displaced from deepest Peru by an earthquake and then taking up residence in London, I am of course talking of Paddington Bear.

And I was impressed with this brick orange tree, Paddington is course obsessed with orange Marmalade.

I then cycle down to the Thames again, heading through Battersea on the way home, stopping for a pic at the sky pool, note the outside swimming pool above between the two buildings. The building in the background is the new American embassy. Sadly the sky pool is not open to the public, its private club thing apparently, but if I could have chosen to be anywhere in London when it was 40c earlier in the week, it would probably have been in there.

jamesdak 

I'm doing an "EL OS" weekend. Yesterday was the Paletti and today was the Duell Vienna. Last night I finally sorted out the poorly setup handlebars and levers on the Duell and gave it a fresh bar wrap.

Only stopped once to grab a couple of pictures and as luck would have it, the sun went behind a cloud just as I did,


One of the short side roads I'll run down to help the miles stack up.

This thing was flying today under me.

The Conti GP 5000 tires are so much smaller than my old Conti GP 4000s II's. I miss those!

Tomorrow the plan is the custom Wayne Evans.

majmt 

I know that area well, my family leased the land highlighted in blue below in the late 60s and 70s to run horses. We lived in town but my girlfriend and I would ride our 10-speeds out there to check on the horses then see how far we could ride our bikes up Deer Creek Canyon to Tiny Town (don’t know if that’s still there) or go the other way to Conifer. The ranch used to be called Green Acres (owners name was Green). It was wide open and quiet pasture land with a couple of nice small dammed reservoirs - great place to star gaze, and listen to coyotes on summer evenings. The Denver Botanic Gardens had land bordering it on one side. I think the owners family sold it off to developers in the 80s.




After seeing your post, I dug through some old faded photos of the pasture and couple of our horses before the houses.



You can see Chatfield Reservoir in the back ground.


Looking south near the smaller dam.



There were lots of rattlesnakes in the west end toward the hog backs. One of our horses was struck by lightening out here.

AJI125 

Very cool! We live in Highlands Ranch which would’ve been all ranching land back then too, now 100,000 people. Tiny Town is still up there, my wife took our kids a few weeks back. That’s a hard ride up to Conifer on a 10 speed! But sure is fun coming back down.

majmt 

We did make it up the highgrade to Conifer a few times but mostly just went up part way. I remember buying a Shimano Crane long cage derailleur and an “alpine” freewheel for my Azuki 10-speed just to make that climb.

As Broadway ran south from downtown Denver past Littleton, it was relatively undeveloped out to County Line Road (unpaved) and there was a large gate with stone pillars (always open) to the Highland Ranch at the end of Broadway. I got to go out there a few times with my dad. When the Phipps family owned it, the local rodeo association organized a 3-day horseback trail ride through the ranch for kids. Just show up with your horse, gear, and friends - similar to a supported group bike tour. I got to do that ride a few times. It was a beautiful prairie landscape of rolling hills and wooded areas. I’m glad I got to experience it then.

Thanks for stirring those memories.

jamesdak 

Well, today didn't go as planned. The idea was to take out the Evans with a real camera and just shoot along the whole Liberty side of the valley as I cruised all the roads. A flat about 1/3 of the way into the ride changed my plans. I don't like being miles out with only one innertube left and a couple of CO2 cartridges. So I cut the ride short. Also had to deal with some boxer/pitbull looking dog around the same time. Then on top of that there was much needed rain showers south of me and messing with the sunlight.


This is about a mile from the house.

The smallest ski resort in the valley

The divide

Turning around at a dead in.

Probably mentioned this before. The road on the mountain is where they shot the "goign to the train station" scenes in season one of Yellowstone.

Love the wooden barns.

I don't think I've ever shot this house before despite pedaling by it many times.

The barn was repainted red a year or so ago

I flatted right up the road, didn't feel like I hit anything and I found nothing in the tire. Normally a goathead stays in.

I'd love to be younger and with a horse to just disappear up into the hills like I used to do as a teenager.

jamesdak 

A couple more. Some local artist go around putting work on the various old barns and such. This appears to be a tribute to the fact this part of the valley has earned a "dark skies" designation.

Spaghetti Legs 

Ran for the hills today to beat the heat. Much cooler up on Skyline Drive but still had some humidity. Despite cramming fuel, liquids and salt tablets the whole ride still got a touch of leg cramping at the end. The legs today were such that I thought for sure a brake had to be rubbing. I didn’t check here but noticed not long after that not only was the brake not rubbing, I never reset the release last time I took the wheel off. You can kind of tell on the right hand lever in the pic.



Temp low 80’s here at 3000 feet, and by this point midday, probably pushing low 90’s down there in the valley. 96 on my drive back home. Sugar Hollow Reservoir - nice hiking trail starts there with a couple of swimming holes just down the mountain from me.

zookster 

Yesterday I went on Le Tour De Ham's Saturday Stroll Field Trip. We rode a section of the Chief Ladiga Trail from Piedmont, AL to the AL/GA state line, where it joins with the Silver Comet Trail, a 28.8 mile out-n-back ride.

At the state line junction of the Chief Ladiga Trail and the Silver Comet Trail

Georgia side

Alabama side






The trail crosses several small bridges that formerly were railroad trestles


A very scenic ride


The Eubanks Welcome Center in Piedmont, AL offers water, restrooms and has a bike repair station.


When we got back to the Welcome Center this beautiful 1954 Hudson Jet Liner was in the parking lot.

zookster 

Rode my 1980 Raleigh Record Ace 10 speed 13.9 miles this morning with Le Tour De Ham's "Views and Brews" ride. We visited several murals in downtown Birmingham then rode out to historic Rickwood Field in the West End area of Birmingham. After the ride a few went to nearby Back Forty Brewery for, well, a brew!















Rickwood Field, America's oldest baseball field. Opened August 18, 1910 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickwood_Field

leicadokyu

beautiful place zookster!

majmt 

This morning, I noticed that my De Rosa had gathered a layer of dust. Took it out to the end of our road before heading to work this morning. Somehow, this bike always seems to deliver more performance than I put into it.

non-fixie 

Mrs non-fixie and I were both working from home today, and we decided to go for a ride after work. We did 20k. Her objective was to fine-tune her Zieleman for Eroica Germania, mine was to confirm that replacing the new Tektro brakes by vintage MAFAC items on my Koga-Miyata was indeed an improvement,

Intermediate temperatures, combined with a stiff breeze made for an interesting ride.

Having learnt from previous experiences, we headed out into a headwind:



Besides the brakes I had also replaced the modern Claris levers with vintage-y Chorus levers. As nice as those Claris levers are, their big throw tends to interfere with the front bag. Not so with Chorus:



One sight I tend to stop for on this route is this collection of garden art. A horse, a pig and a goat made from wood (I think) look better every year:





Easy cruise on the home stretch with a fierce tailwind. 30 kph without any effort to speak of. This is what an e-bike must feel like.

northbend 

Northbend’s tips for surviving a PNW heat wave
1: Ride up to the pass and drink a big mug of cold beer. (Buy an extra in a can for the ride home)
Tips for riding in the heat by Matthew Pendergast, on Flickr

2: Dip in a mountain lake on the way home while you finish off that beverage you packed from the brewery up on the pass….
Tips for riding in the heat by Matthew Pendergast, on Flickr