Back cycling..on the Fatty.

Although my flu has cleared, I'm still feeling exhausted and to add to my woe's, I've pulled a lumber muscle in my back. I was walking like a very grumpy and very decrepit John Wayne for the most of the last week.
The weather was also trying it's best to discourage me with winds gusting to 45mph but I had to get out for a cycle. I built the On-One Fatty for days like this.

I find a lot of solace from life's little tribulations in a long day on the Long Haul Trucker, but when the weather is inclement, it's great to grab the simplicity of the Fatty and go for a blast through the woods. A well lubed and tightly adjusted 1x9 gearing makes for simple cycling.

I just look far enough forward and, as long as I'm pedaling, the Fatty floats over everything. So off into John Muir Country Park with brown bracken against the grey sky and  pine trees providing a welcome belt of green and some much needed shelter from the biting wind.

 

Fly ran alongside and whenever I stopped to take a photo, she took the opportunity to find a fetch-able stick.

And as much as I enjoy fleeing through the woods, bouncing over lumps and roots and floating across ground that would capsize anything other than a fat bike; It's just as important to stop for a few minutes and soak up the peace of the ebbing tide in the estuary.

A couple of hours of play and I returned to the car with a tired dog and a mucky bike.

Plant sprayer to get rid of the worst of the grit and slime, then a quick spray with cheap silicone furniture polish to displace the water and the Fatty is clean enough to load up and head home.

I stopped at the sailing club to put another coat of paint on the Heron's rudder and grab a beer with Stuart. I also had to take a picture of the barometer,...If you sail, you will know that a reading like this thankfully only comes along very rarely.
...the glass is falling, batten the hatches.

On One Fatty Beach Ride

The weather over the last couple of weeks has been very windy. An extraordinarily low pressure system rolled off the Atlantic on Christmas eve and it seems that the winds have been gusting to 60mph, and a lot more, since.

Saturday was a bit brighter although the bitter wind continued. I didn't fancy fighting my way along the road on the Long Haul Trucker so I took the Fatty for a beach ride instead.

The above photo shows one of the grin inducing features of a fat bike. It still gets me every time I cycle off a firm surface onto soft sand. The front wheel should tuck in and I should be over the bars but the fat tyres just float and I can't help smiling.

Fly wasn't smiling though, as the wind whipped up a stinging blasts of sand.

The observant will notice that the Fatty is in the second lowest gear of the 10 speed cassette. To be honest there were a few times when I was trying to down change a lot further. My legs were taking a pounding just trying to spin away into the wind and I would have liked an extra couple of cogs for climbing the dunes and rocks.

It was still great just to power up the dunes and freewheel down in big arcs. Some places the storms have cut away a lot of the dunes but the beach is always changing and the sand will soon build up somewhere else.

There were a couple trying for sea bass but otherwise the beaches were empty. I cycled as far as I could toward the rock arches but it was getting cold in the shadow of the cliffs and the photos were too dark to use.

An hour or so of playing and I stopped for coffee in the shelter of the marram grass. I needed the hood up on the smock to try to stop the worst of the blown sand. A hard pedal, but good exercise and plenty of smiles.

And on an entirely different matter, my orchid at work has finally bloomed! I have been nurturing this one for about three years. It was close to blooming on Christmas eve and then when I went back into work on Friday it had opened.

Global Fat Bike Day - On One Fatty - Dunbar

Saturday morning and it was Global Fat Bike Day.

Realistically I think the passing of Nelson Mandella or the commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbour means more to the population of the world than the bumblings of balloon tyred bicycles. But I made the effort and went for a pedal on a dreich winter morning.

Coastkid had been rounding up the troops for a beach ride at North Berwick which sounded good, but unfortunately I had other commitments. Instead, I had my own little fat bike outing along the east beach at Dunbar.

First stop was to check the wooden chocks under the Heron. The tidal surge was pretty high on Thursday and the coast took a real battering. Fortunately, everything seems secure, so it was on through the winding streets to the beach.

The red sandstone of the pends and closes is typical of the old buildings of Dunbar.

Coffee time.

I picked a route through the rock and seaweed out onto the sands near the golf course. This sort of riding takes a fair bit of concentration, and effort. There was lots of slow, standing up, half pedal work. Mostly I just concentrated on keeping my balance with the background noise of the last of the week's storm spending itself on the shore. There was the occasional dog walker but mostly the coast seemed empty.

There was plenty bid life though. Rock Pipits and Pied Wagtails searched through the storm washed kelp for sand hoppers and Red Shanks scurried back and forth between the crash of the waves.

Fly kept busy collecting pieces of kelp.

I set out pedalling before 9am as I knew I had to be home by 11am. I only just made it. It is so easy to lose myself on the Fatty, just playing around, finding routes, straining muscles I had forgotten I had. The fun of owning one of these bikes is like being a kid again, and that's no bad thing.  Despite the suggestions on the Fat Bike Forums, I didn't find today "insane". Maybe that was because I was out riding and not sitting in front of a computer dreaming. Forums- pah.

On One Fatty in the woods.

Saturday morning and it's a cold damp start to the weekend. Days like this, it can be hard to go for a longer cycle, so this is exactly the sort of weather I built the fatbike for. I loaded Fly and the Fatty into the back of the car and headed south to Penmanshiel woods.

Despite being the route of the Southern Upland Way long distance path, this is a quiet area and its rare to see anyone else there. That means it's ideal for cycling along without having to keep too close an eye on Fly.

The overcast sky and the close cover of the trees meant the camera struggled to capture the full colours of the autumn leaves. You'll have to take my word that the woods were a lot more varied than these pics suggest. I stopped to look, but mostly just puffed away in low gears, playing around on the bumps and drops whilst Fly amused herself with some high quality sticks.

A happy wee dog showing a defenseless stick who is the boss.

In the occasional glimpses of sunlight there were loads of finches singing and hunting for food amongst the trees.

If you've got a fat bike, you know the feeling. I'm far too old for this sort of thing.

A cold morning but I went home warm. 

Sunday Morning, On One Fatty.

There are a couple of simple rules for taking photos for a blog. (1) Have a fully charged battery. (2) Have a formatted memory card. Well yet again I failed on no.2 when I went for a Saturday morning spin on the LHT with no memory in the camera. 

So instead, here are a few photos from a Sunday morning play through John Muir Country Park on the Fatty.

Half tide and many miles of open estuary to explore.

Just the occasional dog walker, but mostly it was me, Fly, and the distant call of wading birds.

Fly was happy to run alongside, but insisted on having a drink from the pond, and naturally got covered in mud. 

A few minutes later I totally misjudged a rut and went over the bars. So that was the two of us going home filthy.

World War 2 buildings, sort of industrial landscape, fatbike thing.

An hour and a half of pedaling on a sunny Sunday morning then home for breakfast. Simple.

Beach riding on the Fatty

I'm still missing my camera but hopefully a new one should be delivered next week. In the meantime I tried using my phone but didn't bother to post as the pictures were so poor. These pictures are taken on the little Vivitar camera which has an awfully small lens and aperture.

The weather forecast was quite poor on Saturday morning, so I took the Fatty out for a blast along the coast. I went east to Whitesands with clouds gathering and spots of rain in the freshening easterly wind.

I had plenty of empty beach, just the birds for company, and Fly of course.

There's not much chance of getting Fly to stay still for a photo.

On one Floater tyre print. If you read Fat Bike forums, you may be surprised to see this as these tyres are apparently no use for sand? eh?

It always amazes me how a bit of cold and damp drives people indoors. If you are prepared to put up with a bit of discomfort from the weather, then there are miles of empty coastline to be explored. Not the longest of rides but a fine way to spend a Saturday morning.