vic.gedris.org

This page will eventually have a complete description of my HP Velotechnik Streetmachine recumbent bike. For now, there's just a picture and a link to the HP Velotechnik Website.

Jen and I spent another weekend exploring Toronto. On Friday after work we met up near Broadview Station for the annual Taste of the Danforth street festival. It was fun to be able to walk down the closed-off street and buy samples of food from all the vendors along the way.
On Saturday, we rode our bikes downtown to do some shopping and visit the Toronto Islands again. What a great day to be out! Had a fun tme, and saw some interesting and funny sights.

Photos are here:
Friday: A Taste of the Danforth
Saturday: Riding around Toronto

The fun weekends are really adding up this summer! For the August Long Weekend (technically, most of it was in July), Jen and I did a little bike tour down to the Hamilton and Cambridge area. Of course it is all photo-documented and posted online now. ;-)

All the details and photos are here:
Friday: Riding from Toronto to Hamilton
Saturday: Visiting family, and Bayfront Park in Hamilton
Sunday: Riding from Hamilton to Valens Conservation Area, mainly along the rail trails that go through Brantford, Paris, and Cambridge.
Monday: Riding back to Toronto from Valens Conservation Area

Hmmm...lately it seems that all of my postings are about riding my bike to Hamilton.

How to make myself look like even more of a nerd:

I want to take my HP Velotechnik Streetmachine with Streamer fairing and add a partial body sock to it for cold/wet weather riding. The original bike looks something like this picture from the HP Velotechnik website (except that I do NOT have a tail-box):

One of my goals is to build a tall-bike. In fact, it will be a touring tall-bike. The idea is to build a bike that is about 5'5" to 6' tall, and equip it for long bike rides and touring. These first few drawings were inspired by Mike Watson, with interactive feedback on the HPVOoO IRC channel.

Tonight I finally completed typing up my Ottawa to Hamilton bike tour diary. Yeah, it happened over two years ago, so I've been procrastinating quite badly.

This five-day ride back in the summer of 2003 was my first real bike tour and one of the most memorable things I've ever done. The freshly completed tour diary and pictures can be viewed by clicking this link. Enjoy!

It was another great summer weekend! I went on a camping and cycling trip with Jen and her parents to the Waterloo area. We stayed at Laurel Creek Conservation Area in Waterloo, and did a couple of day trips by bike from there.

I hadn't been to this part of Ontario in many years, and I think I forgot how beautiful the countryside is. Perfect weather (maybe a little too warm), good company, fantastic scenery, and bicycles...what more could you ask for?

Plenty more details about the weekend in the photo galleries:
Friday: Laurel Creek Conservation Area
Saturday: Laurel Creek, St. Jacob's Market, YWCA Camp, etc.
Sunday: Riding around St. Jacob's Elora, etc.

I went to Ottawa with Jen for the Canada Day long weekend. The nation's capital is, of course, the best place to celebrate Canada's birthday, while at the same time visiting family and the friends we both met during our many years living there.

We rode the Dirty Dog to Ottawa after work on Thursday night, and settled in to our friend Mark Rehder's place when we arrived after midnight. There was a note on the door from Richard to come meet him for some food when we arrived. What the heck, Richard is just a couple of blocks away from Mark, it's a weekend so it doesn't matter if we're out late, and there's plenty of good late-night eating in Chinatown. We ended up staying out until about 2:30 while we chatted over pho.

Saturday was a fun day! After sleeping in for a while, we went over to Jen's friends John and Anna's place for a bit of a Canada Day get-together. This was the first time we met John and Anna's newborn son, Dylan. John's brother Steve (who I met years ago through the Ottawa Perl Mongers), Kelly, Jody, and Henk were all there too.
For the evening, we headed back to Mark's place to meet up with some of the HPVOoO folks for food and crazy bike riding fun. Gathered up the bikes, lit them up, stuck Canada Geese on our heads, and went to entertain the crowds. More details in my Canada Day Photo Gallery, and in Richard's gallery.

On Sunday, Jen and I borrowed Richard's Greenspeed tandem recumbent trike for a ride around Ottawa. After touring around the city, we rode up to my brother Andrew's place to visit him, his wife Jurga and their daughter Agota. It was great to see them again for the first time since I moved out of their place in May. It's amazing how much a baby can change over two months. I took plenty of pictures of this day too.

On the last Friday of every month, cyclists in cities around the world get together for group bike rides. No organization, just cyclists having fun. This was my second Critical Mass ride in Toronto, and again it was very laid back, festive, and relaxing, all at the same time.

Although I really have to boot it to get to downtown from Missisauga, and the fact that it was 34 degrees outside when I left work, AND it was very smoggy today, I enjoyed every minute of it. I always arrive at Critical Mass in a heap of sweat. But today I changed into my Hawaiian shirt, attached my palm tree to the bike (for extra shade, of course), and cruised around the city. Fun fun fun.

The Toronto Critical Mass rides gather at the corner of Spadina and Bloor at about 6pm on the last Friday of every month.

Of course, there are plenty of pictures to see over here.

Jen called me up at work this afternoon with a great idea. "Let's have a picnic dinner in High Park!" Great idea, Jen! So when we both got home from work, we grabbed our bikes and headed out.

More pictures and commentary over here.