Urbanus Magnus

My buddy O'Malley and I got up early Saturday morning, strapped our bikes onto the back of my family's van and drove up to East Duffins Headwaters for a few solid hours of biking. This fairily well-kept secret of the GTA is a hiking and mountain biking park located in Glen Major forest. The park is owned by the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority (TRCA) and, although not fitted out with large berms, beams or MTB-specific structures, it is spectacular for its single track and quite a few good hills. Not to mention the *huge* length of its trails - there are enough winds, forks, and parallel paths that you wouldn't have seen them all in one full day of riding. Its on Sideline 4, a few kilometers north of Concession Road 9. Here a map of the place: Lots of multi-use, and MTB-oriented, trails. I fooled about with my phone and set it up so that GPS was on, and tracked the expedition: View MTBing the Glen in a larger map --> There are some more routes on...

In the spirit of  comparing how things have changed over the past half year , I thought I'd continue the theme, but this time, with a little trail construction. June 16th: And we've come a pretty long way since then, with the trail going out a good 300m more than before. February 11th: Yes. Quite the change, as the trail is now rounding the promontory made by the bluffs, and we can clearly see the beach of Bluffer's Park, whereas we could only really see the tip before. The story is that the breakwater is to be connected up the the beachfront trail at Bluffer's Park, so that it can form a single multi-use trail. But what if we turn our gaze from westward to northward, and look at the bluffs? Why, we see this! If you don't see it already, there is a small dwelling leaning precariously off the bluff's edge. Here's a closeup: Hello, Mrs. Van! Is Billy home? This Meadowcliffe Drive building has actually been hanging off the bluff's edge on  ...

Other than the lack of green leaves, one wouldn't guess that one of these shots looking west from Highland Creek is taken  6 months  after the other. But that's global warming for you! July 15th: January 30th: *Sigh*..... I REALLY  wish there were more snow this year that the few scattered and weak ones we've had.

Quite a few years ago, Surly introduced the then-revolutionary Karate Monkey frameset (they claim it was one of the first commercially-produced 29er frames). Now, Surly has taken the concept behind their utility bike, the Troll, and bumped it up from 26in wheels to 29in: The new Surly Ogre.   Credit: Surly Bikes Surly says that their new frame has geometry similar to the Karate Monkey (which, by following their numbers, it does), but with all the function of the Troll. What does this mean? Well, it has: - Front and rear Canti/Linear brake mounts - Disk brake tabs - Double dropout eyelets, both front and back (so you can mount fenders and racks all round!) - Specifically design for fender clearance (yay!) - Fits up to 29 x 2.5" tires, more that one should ever reasonably need - Full-housing cable mounts  - Surly-compatible trailer mount The bike seems well-equipped to be an all-rounder, off-road (or road) tourer, or nice singletrack companion.  The only quibble I...

I was wrong - the city is actually making pace with construction down by the bluffs. In fact, they currently have finished the  path connecting to Gates Gully.  I'm quite surprised at the speed with which they are progressing every day; after visiting the construction site a few times, they seem to mark progress with posts, which (by my measurements) average 4m of new road each day! At this rate, including all weekends and holidays, the 1.5 km segment remaining between Bluffers Park and Gates Gully should be finished in roughly one year from now. I accessed the trail via the Guild Inn, just as the last of the dump trucks and Toronto and Region Conservation   authorities were packing it in for the day. That's right - from what I can tell, this project seems to be planned from a "parks and rec" as well as "watersheds protection" angle, not so much for cyclo-commuting (insert sad emoticon of your choice here). But, I didn't really expect that it would eve...

Last post involved the path down at the base of the bluffs, and how it would make a great bike path (read the dedicated "Commuting, a Trail Proposal"  page). However, construction efforts have been stupendously slow.  Almost no actually progress has been made since two summers ago; dump trucks are only piling up the fill at the one end of the path. The red circle is where the current construction is ongoing.  Upon closer inspection of the site, a bulldozer and an excavator can be seen - these have served only to force the dumped loads into mounds. In the future (who knows how long), the rubble will be pushed into the water to construct the remaining section between Gates Gully and this path situated below the Guild Inn. The red line indicates the path being built now - about 240 meters. This is less than 1/17 of the amount of the path needed to be newly constructed (including breakwater trails), and has taken a full year to get only th...

School may have come to a close for this year - but it will soon rear its ugly head (on the 3rd of January - ugh!). There are only...  4 days left as I am writing this There are a few more highlights to go through on the 2010 review itinerary, this one being about cycling. What's not to like about it? I personally am very fond of the sport, recreation and leisure offered by the activity. Well, so far, I'm still fairly novice - I've only logged a little over 5500 km in my life - but that's not  too  bad a start. This year's cycling mileage is roughly 2000 km - almost half of my total. Why 'roughly'? My cyclometer died half-way through the year, resetting its data, and I don't ride with it all the time. Counting school commuting, I'm much closer to 2750 km. A milestone in itself, at least, one to note and beat in the coming year - once I manage find my cyclometer again (*sigh*). Another milestone: first long-haul tour, from Toronto to Kingston. O...