Lake Champlain Bike trail

We flew to Burlington, Vermont for the weekend and I took my Brompton in my new case to see how it went. I'm pleased to say the case worked out really well.

Evo bike pod from Polaris Bikewear

It holds a vanilla Brompton with no fuss, but I had to loosen my Brooks Saddle and slide it forward and also loosen and turn my Ergon GP4 bar grips. I also had to remove my QR SPD pedals. I did all this with the Brompton tool set. Once that was done the bike fitted like a dream. I added two sets of cycling clothes into the gaps. The case, clothes, and bike were about 45lbs (I have a rack and dynamo hub) and has a total linear dimension of 62" so it is not oversize or overweight.

There's a great bike trail through Burlington called the Lake Champlain trail which is paved most of the way except for the northernmost six miles which is lovely gravel on a breakwater that extends into Lake Champlain. 

I recommend starting from the Amtrak station in Burlington and heading North. The out and back trip is about 20 miles with 400 feet of climbing - none of it steep. The trail surface is suitable for road tires and there's about half a mile of quiet residential roads - the rest is bike trail. The gravel section is smooth and has no wash boarding.

You can also go south from Amtrak which is also very nice but only about ten miles out and back and with some steeper climbs. If you do both you will get a moderately strenuous 30 mile ride.

At the Amtrak parking lot there is a Creemee stand right on the bike trail that is worth a visit. It turns out a Creeemee is just a soft-serve ice-cream. I got a large maple and raspberry. Who knew that was a thing?

This is a creemee

For me, the highlight of the ride was the gravel causeway. It's like you're floating over the water. At the north end there is a bike ferry run by Local Motion over to some more causeway and then onto South Hero Island but it doesn't run at night so I turned around. If the ferry had been running, I could have made the trip into a loop.

Lake Champlain trail

The second time I rode this trail it rained - hard! I was trying to find a way to dry my gloves. I used the old "roll them up in a towel and squeeze" trick which helped a lot. But then I decided to put a frying pan and lid on low heat and dry the gloves on that. It worked!.

It's probably not a good idea to leave the room while you're doing this

I finally made a YouTube video of the trip.

Cross Training

You know how everyone says "You should cross train, it strengthens you". Bullshit. I hiked halfway up San Gorgonio and back and I've been crippled for two days since.

My daughter, her husband, and two friends planned on hiking San Gorgonio last Sunday. She's pregnant so she decided to only hike up halfway - I agreed to hike with her so she wouldn't be out there on her own. The two friends cancelled at the last minute so her husband, Edgar, summitted alone.

We started at Vivian Creek near Forest Falls which got nailed by some recent monsoon rains. There were massive mudslides and we could see where 'dozers had pushed the mud and rocks to the side of the road. It was quite traumatic to imagine what they had been through recently.

The first mile after crossing the dry creek bed is very steep and rocky but after that the trail got very pleasant. I can only imagine how that creek looked a week ago.

We got half way up and Amber wanted to keep going but I was feeling a little stumbly so we turned around and waved goodbye to Edgar. I'm glad we turned around when we did because I was tripping on rocks which is always a sign of fatigue. There were a lot of other hikers on the trail - I would guess 20-30 so we weren't worried about Edgar being injured and alone. Some of them asked if we had been to the top already. I said it was very cold up there which was probably true, but implied we'd summitted 😁.

On the way down, we saw a small herd of deer that were unafraid of us. I expect they're used to hikers.

It's now been two days since the hike and I'm still so sore that I can hardly walk. I have to get up and walk around every hour or so or my legs really lock up. Cross-training my arse!

Back to the Beach

Our latest heatwave is over which means it's possible to ride along the beach in the evening without suffering from heat stroke. I've been missing my quesadilla at the Bolsa Chica Café so I drove down to Anaheim after work on Friday and rode the Brompton. I decided to take some photographs to post on Cyclechat.com to try to make the Brits jealous. Then I looked at their photos and I'm the one that got jealous. 

Here are my pictures, take from Bolsa Chica beach.

Here are some of their photographs, taken from various places in the UK last week.

I love it when everyone is a winner!

GoPro 9 at Big Bear Lake in the dark

You know that wonderful feeling when you discover a new bike path? I came close to that last night. Tropical Storm Kay has broken our ten day heatwave. Yes, this is the first day this September that hasn't been well over 100F at work. It was "only" 85F with 100% humidity and light rain.

I headed over to Big Bear Lake which is at 7,000' and tolerably cool once the sun has set. I have a new GoPro Hero 9 and I wanted to see how it performs in low light. But more about that later.

I started at the Cougar Crest trail head because there's a parking lot without gates so the forest service can't lock me in. I followed the pedal path to the end of the recent extension in Big Bear city, then kept on riding and stumbled upon a signed scenic bike route. It's on super quiet roads and rolls past million dollar "log cabins".

Nice bike route

The temperature dropped to the high 50s but my super reflective jack was still a little too warm which surprised me. I had a about 30 minutes of very light rain, more like mist really, and 20 mph winds when I came out from behind the trees. It was a seriously wonderful ride.

I took the opportunity to test the GoPro Hero 9 in low light situations and it didn't perform as well as I had hoped. I've Googled the problem and I think I can improve it with some different settings. Let's hope so because I plan on using it to create a video of the PCH Randos Winter Solstice 200k in late December. The entire ride takes place in the dark.

Here's two videos I shot. They were both recorded in Max Lens Mode (whatever that is). The first is shortly after sunset and is a lot darker than it appeared to my eyes at the time.

Here's a video shot under almost complete darkness. The camera picked up more than the rear screen showed, but much less than I could see with my eyes.

I'm going to try reducing the fps and some other tweaks and try again later.