Sunrise over the Mountains

After her breakfast (150cc of tasty formula) and after she had burped, I decided to take my daughter outside for a little stroll. I was very glad I did, as I got to see the sun coming up over the mountains in the distance:

I just wish I had a better camera (this was taken with the 1.3 megapixel camera on my cell phone), that it was clearer (it was a little hazy in the distance), and that I had another hand to keep the phone steady (one arm was needed to hold on to my daughter). Nevertheless, the pictures turned out okay considering, it was a beautiful sight. This is one of the reasons I enjoy living here.

I don’t have access to the EXIF info for these pictures, so I can’t tell you the difference in time between the first picture and the last picture but it’s probably only a minute or two (two at the max). I think it’s interesting that you can stand there and look at the sun in the sky and it doesn’t seem to move at all, but when it’s rising up over the mountains, you can almost see it move. Notice that the sun is higher in the last picture than it is in the first. As I said, there was only about one minute or so between the two pictures.

My Giant Rincon

I used to always refer to this as my mountain bike. My wife -- who doesn’t really understand the difference between road and mountain bikes -- calls it “Little Yellow”. (My road bike is called “Little White”.) Well, I am going to have to stop calling it that and either call it what my wife calls it or refer to it by it’s brand and/or model.

Why? Well, partly because even though it is a mountain bike (a Giant Rincon), it has never been used as such. I have never gone on single-track or anywhere else off road. (I don’t think a section of road back in the boondocks that was under construction and not paved at the time counts as off road.) This bike has only ever been used on the road.

Some background information then. This was my first “real” bike, but back then I didn’t know what a real bike was. I got a mountain bike because bikes based on mountain bikes (but of low quality) were what I -- not knowing any better -- had always ridden. Once I learned more about bicycles and cycling and then got myself an actual road bike (at the time a Specialized Tarmac E5, later my current bike, a GT R Ultra), I rode this one less and less. It came to the point where I hardly rode it at all.

I knew I should be riding it and I tried to ride it. Quite often before rides I would decide that I was going to ride my mountain bike but when I got down to the garage and looked at my two bikes, I pulled out my road bike. It was hard to ride the Rincon because it was just too darn uncomfortable. I could do a seventy or eighty kilometre ride on the GT and not want to go home just quite yet. After thirty or forty on the mountain bike, however, and I just wanted to get home and finish.

I then discovered that my discomfort was coming from two places: my butt and my upper body. To rectify the first problem I changed saddles, going to a leather one. (I now have leather saddles on both bikes -- I put one on my road bike first. I don’t think I will ever go back to using a more modern-style -- that is, not leather -- saddle again.) The second problem was harder to diagnose and I had always assumed it was just the bike itself or just the style of the bike, in the sense that I had been riding a road bike for so long that I was just used to the positioning and geometry of a road bike.

If that was the case, what could I do about it? I then realized that my arms didn’t like the position they were in while riding. The decision was then made to switch from a flat handlebar to drop handlebars. And now the process (here, here, and here) has been completed. And looking at these pictures you will hopefully understand why I might have to stop calling this bike my mountain bike. It doesn’t much look like one anymore, does it?

Now, you may think I’m crazy, but to me it just makes sense. It’s always used on the road, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t it have drop handlebars? I was initially worried that putting drop bars on it would make it look funny, but, at least to me, it doesn’t look strange at all. I like the bar tape too. Yes, I could have picked a different colour, but I liked the apple green. I thought it would look very special on the bike. There was a silver that just about matched the silver detailing on the frame, but I thought the contrast of the green would look good. And, I think I was right. But, once again, you might think I’m crazy. (By the way, when the time comes to change the bar tape on my road bike, I’m thinking of going with purple.) (Update: As you can see from the picture above, this is no longer the case. I have since switched to Brooks leather bar tape in raspberry colour.)

I took it for its first ride last night and other than having to adjust the tilt on the saddle, it felt and rode very good. Before I didn’t really want to ride this bike at all, but now I find myself wanting to ride it. Right now I’m itching to ride it up to Alishan to try it out whereas before that was a ride I would only dream of doing on a road bike.

Being Different

I’ve always felt that I was a little different from most people. By themselves those differences didn’t make me that unique, but when added together I do think they make me quite special. For example, I’m left handed, most people are right handed. I was goalie in hockey, most people choose not to play that position. I played soccer, most people in my home town played softball. I refereed minor hockey, most people choose not to subject themselves to such ridicule. I use a Mac (and Linux on my laptop), most people -- still -- use Windows. I left my home country to live and work, most people I know don’t move too far from their home town. And here’s the kicker: Most road cyclists use drop handlebars. In that, I am the same; there is no difference there. But some cyclists decide they don’t like or want drop handlebars for some reason and put flat bars on their road bikes. Me, I go the other way. I am attempting to put drop handlebars on my mountain bike. Let’s hope it works out. Stay tuned.

Stuck in My Head

Why, every time I hear the Counting Crows song “Mr. Jones”, does it get stuck in my head for days and days? I only have to hear that song once and I keep singing it to myself for at least a week after I have heard it.