Banner bird day

From blog June 23, 2005

There was a very big bird one of the two osprey nests that I can see on my ride to work this morning. The morning sun glare makes it hard to see anything but the profile. I’ll assume it was an osprey, since I think I saw a white breast. And the low water in the marsh near the river is still hosting swarms of herons. I think as the water shrinks, the fish are concentrated and the herons love it. I’ve seen about 20 at one time out there in the last few days. The big excitement today was seeing a kingfisher flying over the marsh. And then there was the bald eagle last week. There was a small crowd of people with binoculars clogging up the bike path, so it was easy to notice the eagle. I’ve been a little more careful to look up at the treetops by the river as a result.

The gnats have not been a problem lately. I can’t remember when they stopped peppering me on my commute… The cottonwood fluff has been pretty consistent, drifting in the air like snow and tumbling along the bike path. Rain will knock it down for a day, but then it comes right back.

Oh, and have I mentioned how big a power boost I got from adjusting the height of my bicycle seat? By raising the seat to allow more leg extension, I was able to make it easy to get more power from my upstroke. I guess before, I was getting about 10% from the upstroke and 90% from the downstroke. Now it feels closer to 30%/70% and that is only because I’m lazy. There really isn’t any excuse for me to use my downstroke more than 50% except that it feels more natural. I figure that eventually I’ll work toward 50/50, but already I’ve added about 4 mph to my average speed over 6 miles.