Shedding plastic like a crazy man

Riding your bike on a trainer in your basement leads to a lot of laundry.
A LOT OF LAUNDRY!

On a longish ride of 40km or more, I've often pulled one wicking sports-shirt off and dropped it on the floor beside me, and put another one on. And, I've yanked off my head band and wrist bands and replaced them with others, and I've mopped my forehead and neck and head with a variety of scrap clothing.
So, I often get off the bike and toss all this sweat-drenched stuff right into the washing machine and run a wash.

Lycra shorts, some manner of micro-plastic, sweat-wicking, sports-shirts.

Which makes you think about the plastic microfibers in clothing problem.
You're an active person - you own a lot of this sweat-wicking athletic clothing - you wear it, and wash it, over and over again, and you're sending plastic microfibers into your local waterways and adding to the large range of environmental problems the world is experiencing.

Yay Us!

If you want to stay active, and also want to minimize your impact on the earth, what do you do?
I guess - as a cyclist - you look at wool.

There are wool jerseys out there, but they're a bit hard to come by, they're expensive, and it worries me a bit that Vintage Velos (where the image below comes from) has a REPAIR link has one of the three main links on their homepage.

Image from Vintage Velos.

I don't think I can ever buy another one of these sweat-wicking shirts. It irks me too much from a tree-hugging perspective to think of buying even more of these things. And I guess I'll start trying to phase my current ones out, and treat myself once in a while at Christmas to one of these expensive wool jerseys.

The Zwifting Treehugger

It's May, and finally warm in central Ontario. I've been bike-commuting to/from work again, and it's as rejuvenating as it always is. There's really nothing quite like the feeling of pedaling away from your workplace on a summer afternoon.

I Zwifted like a madman this winter. My Strava account tells me that I have nearly 3200km in my legs, from Jan 1 to May 10, 2018. In comparison, I did 4280 km for all of 2017. I think I'd be pretty bored with Zwift if I hadn't discovered all the races that you can do. And then the big organized group rides, like the Tour of Watopia. The races obviously fulfill a competitive urge, and the organized rides provide a nice social element - both much more interesting than simply pedaling around Watopia (or London, or Richmond) by myself.

Now that it's spring and bike-commuting season, I anticipate my Zwifting will be relegated to just two or three races (or a group ride) per week, with the bulk of my mileage now coming from the commuting.

I've started using Strava the way that I used to use this blog - taking pictures of things I pass on my rides, musing about the things in those pictures. It's interesting how the "medium" changes over the years. Instagram is obviously where everyone is these days, but for someone who is wordy, a blog still makes some kind of sense - though people have to go to SO MUCH TROUBLE to navigate to your blog these days!    (as opposed to having your instagram / twitter streams come up on their phone every five seconds).

I like this tree.

It's on a route here in my town that I don't take often, but every time I do, I look out for this tree that looks like it'd be very much at home in a Tolkien book or film. It looks like it is waiting to give you a hug - one that you may not be terribly pleased to receive.