Another week, another episode of Cycling Chit Chat! Well... I guess it will be because with time zones and all, I'm like six hours ahead of @nanixxx so the new Chit Chat won't be launched for another twelve to eighteen hours probably. 😄

At the time of writing it's an early Sunday morning for me, it's 7:18am and it's still dark outside, and my PC tells me it's 0 degrees now, not the best motivation to go out for another ride later today I can tell you! 😋

Around Christmas and New Year it was a bit of a unusual time where a cold and later snow and ice prevented me to go out on my usual rides so I'm glad it's now back to normal again and I can just do my usual rides on Sundays and Thursdays, I like things to be in order. 😄

After my 51km ride last Sunday that was a lot of fun but also exhausting with a high average heart rate so my next ride on Thursday needed to be a normal one, just a chill ride in heart rate zone 2, and the sun was shining so that made me happy, everything looks so much better with a blue and sunny sky!

The wind was from the East, like it was for the last weeks blowing cold air from Russia and the Baltics to my country so I searched whether I had a nice route to start out East so I could return with tail wind and I had, a 50km route so that was nice, no need to build a new route - I loaded it up to my Garmin and after preparation I got on my bike in full winter gear with only 1 degrees outside, the sun was surely making things LOOK nice but it didn't provide me any warmth and especially the first half with pretty strong headwinds was very cold when I got out in the open, unprotected by trees or buildings.

Unfortunately the old camera I'm using isn't the best when photographing with sunlight, and I haven't found a quick way to enhance my pictures and of course I know it's better not to take pictures facing the sun but it was a pretty view, riding in to this little village with the church on the left, it's where I got married! Well, not in the church but in the municipality (I hate that word) building next to it.

Nice smooth asphalt just out of the village on to the dykes next to the river, and almost no one to be seen outside, I wonder why - maybe people think it's too freaking cold outside? 😅

So, now every time I see a flock of birds it makes me think of @nanixxx and her passion for them, I only know the names of the common birds I see, and the geece, ducks and moorhens in the river are very common and not that special. Occasionally I would see a bird of prey up close but I'm always too late with my camera.

Well, looking at the sign we have to watch out for livestock on the road! 😄

These pictures were all taken on the first half of my ride, once I turned around and the wind was not fighting me anymore, no more resistance but also not as cold I completely forgot about taking pictures and was just enjoying being out there finally able to get some decent speeds and living the moment. 😊

Because of a closed road, I had to take a little detour to find my way back home again. It's the only downside for when using a Garmin, it doesn't know where roads are closed and sometimes it will just keep sending you back to that same route again, this time it was in an area I know, so I could just find my way around it by myself and Garmin recalculated the route and apparently made up a completely new part, taking me to little paths and roads I had never been to so that was nice! 😄

These are the stats for my last ride, a little over 50km with 0.6 degrees and a 19km/h eastern wind - I learned in a podcast that as a cyclist riding in cold weather there is really more air resistance compared to riding in the summer because cold air is more dense, 'thick air'. Interesting!

Sunday Chit Chat

finally... FINALLY, the new chit chat post launched

I'm kidding 🤣

I’m inviting you to go to a bicycle shop or workshop and bring back photos or videos of those places. Talk about the prices, the offers, the bike you dream of having… whatever comes to mind. If it’s a workshop, how would you rate their services?

Soooo, I cheated a little bit here because I'm not visiting the local bike shop very often, I DID however purchase my bike there and so far I've visited the shop twice, once to buy a spare inner tube to put in my backpack and once when I tried cycling with only one crank which I don't recommend to anyone but mine came loose so I didn't have a choice.
I have to admit I just got the pictures below from the website of my local bike shop but I can confirm this is exactly how it looks in real life... 😁

The reason I don't visit the local bike shop very often is because I do simple maintenance like replacing chains and all that myself plus with buying the spare inner tube I found out the price difference is HUGE with my favorite online bike supplier. The inner tube was €9,99 while online I would've paid €5,99 so that's almost double.

I'm all for supporting your local shops and I will with a yearly maintenance / checkup appointment but I don't like to be screwed over so most if not all of my gear I will buy online or at the bigger stores like Decathlon and Mantel.

source

Soo, that's it for this week! Keep on pedalling!