Adventures of a New Cyclist

Cycling definitely runs in my family.  My grandpa was an avid cyclist, cycling into his 80s.  His kids, my mom and her brother, picked it up bigtime and it was a usual event in my house growing up to have my mom disappear for most of a Saturday morning out on a ride (often meeting my grandpa for lunch afterwards at the IBM country club - this is such a lovely image in my mind! :)).  My mom put me on a bike when I was pretty young, and I rode it pretty regularly until I was about 12-13.  Then I was a teenager, rebelling against anything that could be considered uncool (though rollerblading and wearing terrible clothes made the cut.. go figure!).  I brought my bike to university, where it sat for three years, unused in our shed.  I gave up after that.  I finally picked it up again in 2011, in my valiant attempt at wedding weight loss.  It was terrifying getting back on a bike after all those years off - I felt so unstable!!  But once I started riding it to work occasionally I was feeling back in the saddle (small issue: was same bike purchased when I was 11).  Busy summers don't leave a lot of time for riding, and last summer my mom said "if you haven't taken it up by now, you never will.  I'm giving up hope."  Never one to turn down a challenge, or not be that rebellious teenager doing the opposite of what my mom said, I picked up a hybrid bike this spring and went out a grand total of at least 7x this summer.  Not exactly Tour de France material, but I am on the bike and loving it!  My most fun ride was me and Jeff's massive tour of Guelph that took us all the way from the far east end of town to the city limit on the west and down to Pam and James' for a much needed water refill on the "way home"!  I clocked around 25 km that night, which was awesome.  I also loved riding Canada Day weekend with Jeff when we got to watch a variety of fireworks on the way home as the darkness settled over the sky.  My most successful ride was 35 km with my parents and Jeff in the flat and fabulous Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Maintaining a speed of over 20 km/hr was a breeze down there! (around these parts I'm 18 km/hr average if I push!).  But taking the cake for the category of most ridiculous, hijinx-filled ride goes to: TODAY!

Jeff was slammed after a long day of roofing yesterday and took to the couch pretty hard today.  Inspired by the rapidly approaching end of field season (3 more days this week, then I come insiiiiiiide!!!!!!) and its promise of return to regular life, I decided to kick start my much talked about/dreamed about "healthy lifestyle" today, instead of waiting for Friday when I'm officially done and done (healthy today logically followed behind pizza and Reese peanut butter ice cream sandwich Saturday - oh it was so good, as I eat my bowl of dry popcorn... noooo junk food why must you be so delicious?!!).  So off I went on a ride that I started to get pretty excited about when I decided I'd stick mostly to conservation trails and parks in Guelph.  Jeff's been riding his new road bike all summer, so me and my hybrid have been mostly sticking to roads with him.. but I looove a gravel trail ride and the views of nature they tend to afford!! :)  Eastview Park was amazing!  The fall colours are already spectacular, and as I have a "thing" for dappled sunlight, it made for the perfect jaunt around the ~4 km loop through there.  I had a "mountain biking" moment when I realized the place Bailey and I usually cut across by foot is a steep grassy hill, which had a mud puddle at the bottom today after the big rain this morning - and let's be clear, the most adventurous thing I've ridden on is a gravel trail, or sometimes a moment of grass to get around an obstacle - so I just held my breath, pushed my bike down the tiny, 1 m hill, and came out alive, much to my surprise. ;) The gravel trails around the city were full of washouts today after the rain, so I was having to do some slick maneuvering (or so I thought... foreshadowing alert!).  I rode the craziest path ever between the Angel's plaza and the river downtown - it was a bumpy disaster, but I just made sure my bike's suspension was unlocked, and came out the other side in one piece!  Great views along the Speed River.. more of that dappled sunlight.  And I emerged at Gordon, wanting to head east across the road to pick my way home.  Of course there were 97,000 cars coming down both sides of Gordon, at all times, unrelenting, as I tried to make a left out of the driveway of the Speed River park.  I finally gave up and hung a right, crossing further up the street.  It was at this time I noticed another cyclist in front of me, heading down a dead end side street so instead of heading back along the north side of the Eramosa River as planned, I decided to see where this guy was going!  He got to the end of the street and whizzed right, disappearing into the bushes.  So I decided to follow him! Let me be clear, I never saw this clearly professional mountain biker again he was going so fast, and before I knew it the trail "we" were on had seriously narrowed to one of those one lane dirt trails heading deep into the forest, and suddenly I was a mountain biker....

Flashback to 2008 - my oped was published in the Environmentalist punishing mountain bikers who stray off trail.  I'll include my favourite of all the forums that bashed me for weeks - this one goes on for 25 pages! happy reading! - http://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=26017  My only regret about this article was not stating sooner that I'm not opposed to mountain biking ON TRAILS.. it's freeriding (riding off trail) that was my concern.  However, for some reason (dramatic flair?) I saved the mention of sticking to trails until the very end, and the short attention span of a population of morons led to some fun e-harassment including threats to me, my home, threats of showing up at my workplace, facebook stalking/angry messages, etc. etc. - awwwwwesome!  This did a great job of shaping my view of the community of mountain bikers, to the point where even though I'd initially not been opposed to riding on trails (they're already ruined, so just stay on them!) I became a hater of mountain bikers as a whole.  Unfair to paint them all with the same brush, I know, especially that people I'm quite fond of like my husband are mountain bikers, but it was involuntary in the face of all the evil! ;)

**rant over

So here I am, suddenly riding through a forest on a very narrow trail.. on my relatively narrow wheels, and my average speed has dropped down to a sad 11 km/hr.   I'm making my terror face nearly the entire time, trying to navigate around roots, sticks and especially rocks, which keep knocking my back wheel and sending my back end askew.  AH!  I have to admit riding through the puddles was a bit fun.  However, this puddle was a bit unmanageable:

I like the pathetic attempt at a boardwalk - that made me laugh

After I'd finished portaging over this (I'm sure that's the correct word right ;)), I realized I must be about halfway toward my destination of Victoria Rd.  I figured this trail must emerge somewhere around there, as some more recreational trails can be found on the other side of Victoria and I'd hiked those before.. wide, gravelly, lovely... just gotta get there!  Well.. I didn't connect the dots that when I went under the giant bridge, that was Victoria.. I just had my eyes trained on the constantly changing ground, trying to avoid those damn giant boulder rocks!  A couple of times I gave up and walked my bike - navigating boulders uphill.. ummm.. I have enough trouble riding uphill on paved roads, no thanks!  I passed hikers and was completely confused about where they'd came from as it seemed I'd been in the depths of the wilderness between the Eramosa River and god knows where for at least 2 hours by bike (reality: I was back there for almost 40 minutes - RunKeeper keeps my exaggerations to a minimum.. but still.. that's ridiculous).  Suddenly I'm riding beside railroad tracks and feeling extremely disoriented.  But I passed a runner, and a hiker, and knew I must be somewhere near civilization. I had to "portage" again over the tracks which was very disorienting (but I was relieved to see the trail on the other side of the tracks when it had looked like it was just going to end and leave me stranded on the tracks!).  As I continued my silly adventure, I found that every time I looked up to try to enjoy the view or orient myself I would careen right off the trail due to my terrible sense of balance and coordination.  So I just trained my eyes downwards and kept on my way.  Finally.. cars!  Then I had the sad realization that this was going to be Stone Rd., wasn't it.  Yes... Stone Rd it was.  And there, parallel to the nonsense 1 foot wide rut I'd been riding on was a wide gravel trail for strollin' and hybrid bikin'.  Insert Sideshow Bob stepping on rake-esque "yeeuhhhhh-ahhhh" here.  Anyways, emerging onto a road quite far south from where I lived I realized I had two options: to go UP Stone Rd. W to Victoria (a kinder journey home), or go UP Stone Rd. E to then go UP Watson in the direction of home (Watson = entirely uphill).  Or there was the potential of heading DOWN Watson and riding off into oblivion, possibly laying down in a creek and waiting for coyotes to eat me, but somehow, unbelievably that road actually goes UP as well (Guelph: the city that scoffs in the face of science!).  While I contemplated where to go, I went to take a long haul of water from my water bottle as a reward for making it out of the forest alive, and ended up with a giant clod of mud in my mouth.  Nope, you can't make this stuff up.  So picture me riding, spitting and and freaking out along Stone Rd., then spitting water onto the mouthpiece of the water bottle to "wash" it.  Delightful.  Mouth rinsed, I decided that UP Stone and UP WATSON I would go.  After a fun moment in the Stone/Watson intersection where I tried not to lose all my momentum with a driver who was obviously unaware it was a 4 way stop, and me making lots of what I thought were helpful hand explanations, I bombed through the intersection, past that damn patch of Phragmites, and started my long journey uphill home.  But as soon I made that left turn I was smacked in the face with an insane 30 km/hr headwind coming from the north.  MY GOD!  I just kept pedaling, and pedaling, relieved when I could finally hide from traffic on the conservation trails near-ish to my house, so I could ride in gear 4 (I'm usually somewhere around 15-18! I swear!) at a snail's pace.  I almost cried at the last hill on my journey.. my legs were burning and my butt and back were so sore from all that bouncing around the forest. But I held it together and miraculously made it home.

I rolled into my house, literally caked with mud, cheeks aflame, helmet-freed hair a sad disaster and crawled up the stairs to a waiting Jeff, who asked "tough ride?".  "Yes," I replied.  "I accidentally went mountain biking for an hour, then rode for 20 minutes straight uphill into the wind."

BUT I managed to put in 25 km which is nothing to shake a stick at in hilly Guelph. And it was a GREAT workout on this healthiest of Sundays. And my bubble bath afterwards was the best thing that had ever happened to me.  AND I certainly had a new wild adventure and you can't have too many new, wild adventures in this life... even if you spend a solid 40 minutes wincing your best terror face, and realizing that 2006 Op-ed Writing Kristyn had it right: she is most certainly NOT into mountain biking!!

"Portaging" on my crazy trail-  I'd already decided to blog about this, so took this pic as I know my blogs are a bit word heavy.  Perhaps I shall include a couple more things to amuse you..

Kilometers 14 - 19: the path of misery

This is my bike, only I have the 2013 model and it's silver with purple writing (kinda girly but was a great sale :))