July Ride Report

No I have not forgotten this place, I just have not had anything to really say.

A couple of things happened this month, toward the beginning we lost Bartholomew our 16 year old cat, he joins the rest of the feline brigade that have called this place home, sometimes for a short while, sometimes a long while.... Blackberry, Creamsicle, Misty, Dusty, Theophilus and now Bartholomew. This leaves us without any furry people around, it's just a little bit empty.

There is a ride report for today - July 31st, we (my significant other and I) started at Union Station, headed South to Queens Quay (pronounced key) then East, I took the road bike, attached the mirror from the mountain bike, I never liked this mirror, but more about it later. After about a block there is a bike lane, condition on a scale of 1-10 about a 2, the road is in horrible condition potholed, cracked, broken and poorly patched in places, the brunt of this vehicular abuse is in the bike lane. One other thing I took was a backpack, in order to carry a few tools, left the rest at home as the bag was heavy enough with the camera gear in it. At one point there is an asphalt sidewalk, with clear stencils that it's for pedestrians only, this later morphs into part of the MG trail, there are no signs indicating this, or where another trail begins on the other side of the street, you have to just know they are there. We took a rather convoluted route to the Don River trail, and headed north to Queen Street. The trail is quite a bit below Queen, and at one point there is stairs, with a narrow trough for bicycle wheels to go up, the trough is about 8cm wide, and should be about 10cm wider so that pedals can clear the railing supports better. Now on Queen, we rode along a piece, I reached down and grabbed a water bottle, the cage came with it. I was not pleased about this, as I had left the screwdriver needed to reattach it at home.

We continued along Queen to the Sunset Grill in The Beach, had breakfast, then headed down to the lake and along the Martin-Goodman trail, heading West. We were debating about visiting Tommy Thompson or at least his park, but decided to skip it. We shifted to the Don River Trail on the North side of Lakeshore road, and rode to where we thought we could just hook back up to the MG trail, to get back to Queen's Quay, took the wrong road, but found the trail anyway. At some point the bike lane starts up again and the trail ends. There are NO signs indicating this, until you see the stencil that says no bikes. There should be a sign indicating where you need to go to the street bike lane. There probably should also be some kind of traffic signal there to allow cyclists to cross the street there, if there is heavy motor vehicle traffic.

This way the bike lane had several motor vehicles in it. I don't carry a cell phone, if I did I would have parking enforcement on speed dial. Parking in a bike lane, is blocking a live traffic lane, whether there are bicycles around at the moment or not. At one point the bike lane paint just stops, the road doesn't change, it's like they ran out of paint. Got cut off by one of those private hotel shuttle buses, and my knee hit the mirror and the mirror and frame came off the mounting, and went skittering across the road. I looked at the now broken mounting and left the mirror part to be pounded into the road by the heavy car traffic along that stretch. I always hated that thing, because it never seemed to stay adjusted right and fell off the mountain bike several times, it was all scratched up anyway. I'm replacing it with a helmet mirror, that I picked up at MEC this afternoon. I went with a helmet model because I always wear the same helmet, either bike and I can't forget to switch it from one bike to the other. I also picked up a handle bar bag, it's a small one, not sure about stuffing the digital camera into it, along tools and a spare tube. Thinking about the way we used to carry tools. You took a piece of cloth, placed the tools on it, folded the sides over the tools, rolled it up and tied it to the back of the saddle with toe straps, might do that again. You can always switch bikes by moving the tool roll to another bike. Thinking a square piece of faux leather would make a couple of excellent tool rolls, and probably considerably cheaper then a wedgie bag. I will experiment with making one this coming week. Needs a wrench, tire levers and maybe the Allen keys. Nice thing is you can carry a lot or a little. Put a piece of velcro around to hold it closed and just tie it to different bikes depending on who needs it. This would allow the bar bag to be used for holding the camera, although probably not the 70-300 zoom lens, would hold the spare battery though and be much easier to get at then panniers or a back pack. It's one of the problems I have, I don't take a lot of pictures because the camera is too hard to get at.

Total distance this trip, 23km.

Only got in 122km this month, after 214 in June, it was a hot July, August usually brings cool nights and that means early or late rides can be done with temperatures more moderate. Hoping August can be closer to plan.

Until next time....