Fifty Plus (50+) - Smells and cycling

This is probably and oldie but a goodie to help ward off the winter blues.

What smells have really got your attention while out cycling? And what memories from another non-cycling encounter do they bring back? Both good and bad...

When riding the Rhine Route a couple of months ago, we had to go through a section right next door to what I presumed was a metal refinery. A canal barge was unloading a reddish sand on one side, and the refinery was on the other.

There is a smell that permeates from such industrial complexes and it's difficult to describe. It's sort of a sharp, metallic baked-earth smell, which I suppose it was.

But it reminded me of the smell that came from the zinc refinery on the shores of the Derwent River that, as a member of a foursome rowing crew, we would ride past every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

What about your nasal recollections both recent and past?

The unfair smells when riding past restaurants at the local mega mall shopping area. Krispy Creme, steakhouse, chinese place etc.

Also riding past the local Busch brewery. Mmmmm.... Beeerrrr....

THe good, Peach and Apple orchards - blooms and fruit. The bad, Hog farms in the spring. Thats a stench that goes for miles and miles.

The unfair smells when riding past restaurants at the local mega mall shopping area. Krispy Creme, steakhouse, chinese place etc.

Also riding past the local Busch brewery. Mmmmm.... Beeerrrr....

Yes, we rode past some whiskey distilleries in Scotland, and while I can't drink whiskey after an unfortunate incident with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label in my early 20s, the smell certainly was alluring.

Some of my routes can take me through farmland (crops). Normally it is great, it has very few vehicles and lots of open roads. Every now and then, they spread liquid manure.........now that's a treat! When I get home, the smell seems to be on me and my clothes. I get right in the shower and clothes in the wash.

White tail deer musk in the woods - you smell it where there they had been "marking". It gets your attention.

Sometimes, a rotting animal in the ditch hidden from a roadside view. Yuck.

There's a 3-mile perfect loop that I ride for fitness at night and in the winter (near my hoouse), where I can choose the number of times around for a particular workout. It passes through a neighborhood where I simetimes smell marijuana smoke.

Several of our Potomac River parks share access with undergound sewage and storm drain lines. That smell isn't so pleasant.

50/50 mixture of Phil's Tenacious & Finish-Line/Tri-Flow has an unmistakeable fragrance, and not only reminds me of many happy hours in the workshop, but that all is well-lubricated and happy!

- Wil

Our Sunday morning club rides leave bright and early in the morning and takes different routes each week. The best smell of all the rides is riding through some of the residential areas when they are cooking bacon for breakfast. Wants to make you knock on their door and see if you can get invited. My daily rides are in a wilderness MUP where I get the standard smells of the wild.

Overheating brake pad smell from both front disc brakes because the local police stopped me at the bottom of a long hill :cry: south of London en-route to Dover during the return ride home to Copenhagen in 2011. His radar said I was doing 74 kmh (about 45 mph). I was hoping to carry that speed up the next few hills. The smell filled the cabin of my velomobile while the officer chatted me up, eventually letting me off with a warning and the knowledge that I had to climb the next rolling hills very slowly in my lowest gear (the first was at least a mile long and I was carrying all my camping equipment with me). :(

Country riding in Kentucky!
Spring - lilac bushes! Corn ( almost makes me feel like I'm riding in a Fritos bag).
Summer - Barbecue. Someone always has it fired up. Road kill. Yuck.
Fall - perfume bombs on group rides.
Winter - only time I'll ride out to Rubbertown. Ick.

From my youth, growing up in a rural area where about half the road traffic was horse drawn vehicles, you were never far away from the smell of horse droppings.
In the village where I lived, there was a sawmill and a feed mill. Both contributed a distinctive odor.
For much of the summer and fall, the smells of harvest were in the air. And of course, the smell of fermented manure freshly spread on the fields.
As we used to say about the air, dunno about fresh, but it sure is country.

Some of my favorite smells actually come with my winter rides. On one route I pass a place that makes Pizzelle cookies, and the scent of anise fills the air for about a half mile before and a half mile after the shop. On another ride I pass a bread bakery, and if you ride early enough in the morning, the air is filled with the smell of baking bread.

Now in terms of summer riding, I favor the routes taking be past lilacs in the spring and honey suckle and wild roses in the summer. During the hottest part of summer, there is one ride that takes me through a valley with acres of old trees on either side of the road. The rich damp smell of peat, along with the cool air is hard to beat.

Several: the Chicago stockyards is the biggest. The Vernon California (Los Angeles River) meat packing area. The auto tire reclamation yard with its distinctive smell of tires.

I can imagine what the smell of Gary Indiana, East Chicago would be like.

When I ride through the southside (the less affluent part) and I can smell the Mexican food cooking. I want to knock on doors and invite myself in for dinner.

Good stuff: the molasses smell from the sugar refinery in downtown Toronto, and the fresh aroma of baking bread from the Leslieville bread factory.

Bad stuff: The always-there stink from the sewage plant on Lake Ontario, and that acrid ammonia smell when you ride past a big, white poultry barns.

Yeah, there is a water treatment plant near the river trail here. When the wind blows right.... :eek:

Spring early summer in the deep south brings the smell of the Magnolia trees blossoming, early spring the sweet olive shrubs bloom, spring though late fall has the smell of earth from the cotton and soybean farms I ride through. There is always the warm, sharp smell of horse dropping road apples from the horseback riders all over our rural area for the entire distance it is possible anywhere along the roadway. Just ride around them and wave at the Mennonite families riding around their farms. Late evenings and weekends has the smell of charcoal grills and steaks, chicken and ribs cooking from early spring through the mid-fall.

Bill

This time of year, all I smell are laundry soap and fuel oil, maybe because all my riding is done in the cellar, bike is between the washer and dryer, and the oil furnace is over in the corner, it doesn't smell that much, you get a whiff when it fires up, but that's all. Worst smell riding, going along a road, after the garbage truck had been by in the summer time :eek:, nicest smell, spring when the blossom trees are in full bloom....

Wild onions growing in the woods and cultivated tobacco growing in the fields that I enjoyed commuting to Heidelberg.

Fields of hyacinth in conjunction with the visual beauty of the fields of tulips in bloom while cycling in The Netherlands in the spring. Reminds me of nothing else because nothing else comes close.

Commuting past an Iowa ethanol plant reminds me of the smell of Sunday mornings after a hard partying beer drinking Saturday night.

My morning commute takes me by the Sara Lee Bakery. Hmmmm! Fresh baked bread!

Wild anise (or maybe fennel) on the American River Trail: the strong licorice smell makes me hungry!
Dead skunk: makes me want to go really fast.

Just want to say that this gets the Biker395 award for the best thread title of the week.

Now that that's out of the way, here's my two cents:

Good: Bacon
Bad: Toss up between dead bodies and homeless people.

Nice commute, eh?

One road out of town has a pork rendering plant, another has a large production bakery. I don't have to tell you which road I take.

Dirt roads after rain. Burgers on backyard grills. Spring flowers. :)

Chicken houses in August. :(

The myriad smells of a damp forest floor - evergreens, decaying leaves, berries, pollen. Newly plowed or fertilized fields. Freshly-cut grass and the exhaust from lawnmowers. Horses.

Smells on my commute are one of the best parts of commuting on a bike - some of the things that I have enjoyed most:
Early mornings in Maine winter, mix of pine resin and woodstoves smoke.
Going past the bakery when they are baking bagels.
Passing a KFC on my way home (I don't like their food, but the smell sure gets me ready for dinner!)
Spring flowers
Dinners cooking - especially indian food :).

Berrien County, MI: There are vineyards all over the place, making the air so sweet it's like inhaling grape-scented sugar mist.

Any CO mountain valley climb: Intense pine smell.

When I ride through the southside (the less affluent part) and I can smell the Mexican food cooking. I want to knock on doors and invite myself in for dinner.

One of the greatest smells in the world. As I try to lose weight I really miss good Tex-Mex. I have to break down and eat a little trusting my portion control to keep the calories down.

Although I like hamburgers too much, and so try to avoid them, almost every burger joint I cycle past has a lingering hamburger-burned-to-charcoal odor around it. Still can't compete with the sewage treatment plants, for which I should be grateful.

Cycling through a lane lined with wild roses in bloom -- unforgettable in a much better sense!

Manure spreading is something that just doesn't happen in Australia. There might be a whiff around dairy farms where the cows are milked. So it was an awakening for me when riding through France for the first time in 2003 where spreading of cow and pig manure is an everyday occurrence.

Then the same smells in the rural parts of North America where I have ridden. And even on our recent rides in the far-eastern suburbs of Vancouver have taken us past the huge sheds where dairy cattle are now domiciled for the winter.

It's now such that a ride in these places isn't complete without the sharp bucolic odour.

Skunks don't exist in Australia. And I thought the smell from them was more like crap than urine. I can identify the smell quite well, now.

Machka told me the other day about an American rider who rode with her on the Great Southern 1200 Randonnee in Victoria, Australia. Larry kept saying he could smell skunk all along the way, and despite being told that was impossible, he wouldn't believe it.

But, there are combinations of possum pee and eucalyptus sap that when combined come very close to smelling like what I now know to be skunk.

Shady country road in the summer and the smell of honeysuckle on the fence rows.

Several: the Chicago stockyards is the biggest. The Vernon California (Los Angeles River) meat packing area. The auto tire reclamation yard with its distinctive smell of tires.

I can imagine what the smell of Gary Indiana, East Chicago would be like.

It isn't the meat packing in Vernon you smell. It is the rendering plants off of Bandini where it crosses Downey Road. In Fact didn't Farmer John and Hormel have a packing plant there somewhere?

Riding a desolate, dirt rail trail far from home years ago, I suddenly found myself within a stone's throw of a residential neighborhood. It was late Fall and very cold outside, but someone was barbecuing a steak in their yard. A long-time strict vegetarian, I was not captured by the aroma itself, but by what it represented, which was a cozy, warm, "homey" feeling many miles from my own house. I went home and gave my wife a big kiss that night and have never forgotten the feeling that smell prompted.

The wonderful perfume of rain on the desert. Outdoor cooking. Dry air.

There is this one spot on the SGRT where the skunks must congregate - the smell is unmistakeable.

The wonderful perfume of rain on the desert. Outdoor cooking. Dry air.

Yes! It doesn't even have to be in the desert for the rain to bring that cleansing smell into the atmosphere after a hot day.

The wonderful perfume of rain on the desert.

+1

And wet asphalt.

One of the signs I look for to herald the ending of winter is the appearance of the bright yellow skunk cabbage flowers. They have a distinctly powerful scent that I often notice before I see flowers.

Today was the first warmish day in a good while here in Raleigh. For several miles of my ride home the smell of grilling was wonderful. Doesn't take much to get people outside a firing up the Weber..

Fresh cut grass and honeysuckle hanging in the hot humid air of late spring and summer followed by dry leaves, a crispness and wood smoke in the air in the fall...

I tell my wife that it's like driving a convertible...at a slightly slower speed!

+ And wet asphalt.

Oh, yeah...+1 for that...and for dry, fallen leaves along a wooded Mountain Bike trail.

Some of my routes can take me through farmland (crops). Normally it is great, it has very few vehicles and lots of open roads. Every now and then, they spread liquid manure.........now that's a treat! When I get home, the smell seems to be on me and my clothes. I get right in the shower and clothes in the wash.

I ride a lot in rural farm areas too. Cow and horse manure is a recurring aroma, but thankfully, it's of the solid variety.

This time of the year, wood smoke.

Cooking smells from the Thai restaurant I ride by regularly.

Grilling meat from the campground.

The three car squashed skunks that I saw in the road during my ride Monday come to mind.

I started riding a wonderful road on the southern shore of Lake Ontario in 2012. Most of the time the lake is one side ( and doesn't have too much development, and none at all in a lot of areas ) while the other side of the road is miles and miles of continuous apple orchards. Riding there in the fall when the apples are being picked is absolute heaven, especially as there are fruit and ice-cream stands every couple of miles. Then let me tell you about apple-crisp ice cream...

Riding along the ocean can be a love-hate experience. When the bull kelp is piled high on the rocks and beaches after a huge storm, the rotting smell can be overpowering. But I always seem to know when we are close to the ocean because of that clean, fresh, salty aroma.

Big part of what I enjoy about riding (and when I used to run) is the range of smells. Many familiar odors that I can't necessarily identify.

But I always seem to know when we are close to the ocean because of that clean, fresh, salty aroma.

There's a downside to living by the ocean, though. You get so used to that smell, that it stops registering on your senses. :(

In certain conditions, I can smell the perfume of a woman driving past. Sometimes it's mixed in with that very obvious smell of cigarette smoke. Just occasionally, there is the even more discernible scent of a joint emanating from the window.

I can imagine what the smell of Gary Indiana, East Chicago would be like.

We rode through both places and there was not a distinctive smell. It was just wet. Actually, it was a pretty nice ride other than the rain. But then again, we also rode through the same section of the Rhine that Rowen did, and did not catalog anything out of context with the environment we were in. Heck, it may say something about the sensitivity of my nose.

Odors, "good" and "bad" are just part of any tour. While I don't put the smell of an Iowa pig farm or a California dairy farm at the top of my list, what else would I expect riding through farm country. Smell adds another dimension to our perception of an area.

I think that is why there will never be a war movie that captures the total essence of war; even 3-D movies lack the 4th dimension, smell. I also think that smells trigger memories, good and bad. Whether we perceive the smell as good or bad, may depend a lot on the context of where we first encountered that particular or similar smell.