Mane

Aamun myrskyinen tuuli pelotti minut kävelylle. 20m/s puuskissa pyöräily on toisinaan hauskaa, mutta aina hieman vaarallista. Toki puistossa kävellessäkin voi saada oksasta päähänsä, mutta todennäköisesti tuuli ei puhalla kumoon. Tuuli oli puhaltanut Suomenlahden veden Strömsinlahden rannoille. Harvoin näkee merta sisämaassa. Tulevaisuudessa moinen näky varmaankin on yleisempi, koska merien pinta nousee ilmaston lämmitessä. Saari. Hirmuisen jahkailun ja ahdistuksen jälkeen uskalsin ulos uudestaan illalla. Oli pimeää, mutta selkeää. Tuuli tyyntynyt, ei satanut. Lämmintä jääkaapin verran 4C. Mainio ilma pyöräillä. Pyöräilin Nördenskiöldin kadulle Yliopiston apteekkiin ostamaan heijastinteippiä. On näet aika teipata kypärästä etummaiset ilma-aukon umpeen, jottei kylmä viima pakota päätä. Korvat suojaan minkkikorvaläpin. Pipoa en tarvitse ennen kuin lämpötila putoaa alle -5C. Muita pyöräilijöitä näin alle viisi. Heistä kahdella ei ollut heijastimia eikä valoja. Outoa sakkia. R...

The rules tell us that ( #47 ) Catalonian craft IPA in B12, Girona Cycling and beer are so intertwined we may never understand the full relationship. Beer is a recovery drink, an elixir for post-ride trash talking and a just plain excellent thing to pour down the neck. We train to drink so don’t fool around.  The rules assume that one first rides the bikes, then drinks a few pints, and then does not ride anymore. Usually this is the best way to do it. Sometimes it is not. For example, when one is on a long bicycle tour and rides from morning to evening, it is very nice to have a beer with lunch or during a late afternoon break. Nothing tastes better than a cool pint of quality beer after 5 hours of riding. The problem is alcohol (which of course is the reason to drink beer in the first place). Alcohol tends to increase reaction times, to make balancing harder and to increase risks in general. So, it is not wise to drink a lot while there still is still some riding left....

It is winter in Finland. We do not have snow yet, but it is not exactly warm. It is rather dark in the morning. Commuting by bicycle is a good way to cheer up (and wake up!) in the morning. Today, we arranged a group bicycle commuting event called 'Cycling commuting bus of Roihuvuori'. The idea is to ride from our suburb to the city centre together. Clubhouse Not many people turned up. Only I and Jani made it. We met at the Roihuvuori club house, had a cup of coffee, and headed towards the centre. It was 3C, calm. Nice. After Jani got of the bus by the university, I continued along by the sea to my office in Ruoholahti. The sun rose. Sun rising over Suomenlinna fortres The route. 15.3 km in 45 minutes. Nice commute to the office

There are many hotels in Girona. Booking.com seems to find more than 40 hotels, pensions and other accommodation alternatives. When I was planning my cycling vacation in Girona, I decided not to spend much on hotels. So, I chose cheap ones. I stayed in two hotels, both of which I can recommend. First, I stayed 13 days in Pensio Viladomat . It was the cheapest one I found, only 23 euros per day. It turned out to be good enough. Viladomat Pros: Close to the Bike Shop, less than 100 steps.  A shop downstairs Good showers Close to B12 and other nice bars and restaurants Clean Rooms have balconies for drying laundry Fast WiFi My room in Viladomat Cons Cheap rooms are in the 4th floor. Very steep stairs, high floors Noisy (construction going on nearby, happy people in bars) No breakfast, no fridge, no laundry service Plain, not romantic at all Then, I stayed 2 days in Pensio Bellmirall. It was not expensive either, only 40 euros per day including break...

Anna R and her friend had decided to ride up to Castell Sant Miquel. They kindly allowed me to join them. I was very eager to join, because I had rented a mountain bike and wanted to use it. I also did not want to go up the mountain blindly without any proper maps. I did that on Wed and ended up pushing my bike up a hiking path. Not fun. The brave group Today's ride was fun. We started late, only well after (Finnish) lunch time  (which gave me time to visit the Girona Cathedral in the morning, a very impressive building). I was surprised to find that there is a not-so-steep path up. For once, I was the fastest (happens very seldom in Girona). But that was not the point, the point was to enjoy the ride, the forest, warm weather (27C, sunny), and company of others. We did enjoy and made out way up without any real difficulties. at 339 m Telegraph tower Views east The others decided to return to Girona, which was kind of OK, because I was embarrassingly slow r...

I bought my first mountain bike in March 1990. It was a nice Bottechia. It got stolen in two weeks. I bought another one. It was also a nice one, a bit more hybrid type of bike. I rode it all the way from Gdansk to Istanbul with Kössi. We survived and the bike did well. It then took it to Berlin for a traffic politics conference and it got stolen. Brave man ride, not run So, I bought yet another mountain bike. Now it was already spring 1991. I rode the bike for a while, but mountain (off-road) cycling never felt like my cup of tea, so I sold it. And bought a road bike. I have not been riding a proper mountain bike in about 21 years. It was maybe time to try riding one. I rented a Cannondale mountain bike with front suspension and decided to ride it up to Castell De Sant Miquel, which is the nearest 300+ meter hill here in Girona. It had been told that it takes some 40 minutes to climb up to the castell. So, I took a look at the map and decided that the shortest route must ...

Another club ( bike shop ) ride, another time getting dropped. But this time I knew what I was up to: riding with people much fitter, thinner and thus faster than me. So I did not care that much. I knew they would be waiting for me at the cafeteria in Canet d'Adri. And that coffee would be good! Since I knew the ride would be hard for me and that it takes me a long time to warm up (been riding too much on my own, lacking pace, I have kind of "diesel engine"), I took my rental mountain bike for a 30-minute ride around Girona before 9.30. Then I got my rental Cannondale Super 6 at the shop, chatter a while with other riders, and off we went. I got a good start. No problems. Getting ready. Today's club ride group consisted of some local fast riders, a few very fit members of a Dutch triathlon team, a Brazilian man who rode RAAM this year, me, Anna, Jolien (fast local amateurs), and some even more random tourists than me. The fast ones dropped me. The slower ...

Some mountaineers say that "the mountain being there" is a good enough reason to climb it. Same applies to cyclists. Wherever there is a mountain with a road up to the top (or a high pass), cyclists just have to ride all the way up and down . Near Girona, one of the toughest climbs is the climb to Rocacorba. I had read about it (e.g. here ), many local people had already told me about it, some even had boasted having climbed it. I had to try climbing Rocacorba myself. It had become a matter of honour. So, I set out in the morning. The weather was nice, quite cool at 9 am, but getting rather warm when I got closer to the mountain. The guidebook has the following information. It seems that the road to the bottom of Rocacorba would be rather flat, or at most very modest uphill. It is not. Rather, there are rolling hills (bigger than anything close to Helsinki!), which made me wonder what I was really doing. My legs felt tired, I was not feeling fresh at all. ...

Riding a bicycle is the most efficient method of locomotion. By bicycle, one gets the furthest with a given amount of food (energy). This is true even though human is a very inefficient heat machine. Only about 25% of the energy ends up in useful movement, the rest becomes heat. To get rid of the extra heat derived from food while cycling, the cyclist will usually sweat. Only in very rare circumstances, such as riding slowly in cold weather, other forms of heat transfer (convention, radiation, etc) are sufficient. So, the cyclist sweats. The hotter it is and the faster the cyclist rides, the more he or she sweats. The cyclist is made of 60 to 70% of water, which makes sweating easy. There is plenty of water. Unfortunately, the human machine is rather delicate. Losing only 2-4 % of body weight as sweat both decreases efficiency and can lead to health problems, and if not replaced, may lead to heat exhaustion, and finally death. To maintain efficiency and to stay alive, the cyclist...

The special spirit of Girona made my day. I had planned for a quiet day-off from cycling. Maybe walking a bit, reading on shale gas and hydraulic fracturing, visiting the cathedral, being alone. But no, it was not to be. Luckily. First, in the early morning, when I was having my morning coffer, the Girona 10 km run passed my table. Some of the people from the club ride were running, Anna even calling "Hi Matti" while passing my table. Suddenly, I did not feel that lonely anymore. It is always nice to know someone in the city one is touristing in. I did visit the cathedral, though they did not let me in. I did some reading in part. The book "cold, hungry and dark" is very interesting, but so far from Girona. Here it is not cold or dark. Nor hungry. The spirit of Girona embodied Second,  I got invited to lunch with Anna and others. The lunch would be El Jardins De Merce, which turned out to be a lovely garden restaurant, a place of the kind ex-patriates ten...

One should not believe everything one reads. The guidebook for Greenways claims that  Ruta Garrilet from Girona to Olot is of minimal difficulty. The bike path follows (mostly) an old narrow-gauge railway track. Since trains cannot ascend steep hills, the path should be easy. So, I rented an hybrid bicycle from Cycle Centre Girona and set out for Olot from Girona. It was a bit late, almost noon, but the distance is only about 60 kilometers each way. For a fit cyclist like me, cycling 120 km (and having a late lunch halfway through) would be easy, and I would easily be back before dark. The route is well marked. There are funny green and blue paintings on the road, sign post every now and then, sign at most turns, etc. Even a bit absent minded cyclist should find his way without problems. I did not, I lost the path and ended up cycling along a high way for 5 km or so. Not fun with a hybrid bicycle, since it was constant uphill. There was some dif...