I love my ride to work.

I really, really love it. When co-workers ask me, "How's the ride going?" --sometimes disparaging, like how dare I ride my bicycle, but sometimes genuinely interested and enthusiastic-- I heartily declare, "Wonderful!" And it is. It's as though I get up and have some fun every morning. While I am not a morning person (Just ask my long-suffering husband, who has finally learned to ask after a few bitchy, crazy comments from me in the A.M.: "Have you had a coffee yet?") I somehow manage to become one in order to bike to work.

I love the way the city is still quiet. The wide, tree-lined streets are empty except for me and a few other cycle-commuters. It's the way cycling should be. I enjoy the subtle camaraderie that exists between us. A nod of the head, or a little tight smile. Like we're all in this together. Similar to the way you tentatively greet people you run into on portages while camping. (Tentative if you're from the city. I suspect that folk not from the Big Smoke are more forthcoming with the pleasantries.)

I share:

Going down into the park. Since I'm basically afraid of traffic, much of my ride goes through the park system. So I don't worry about running over a car, I just have to worry about being jumped by deranged perverts. However, I've discovered that even squirrels make an insane amount of noise moving around in the undergrowth, so for someone to surprise me by jumping out of the bushes in front of my bike they'd have to be some kind of deranged pervert ninja cat.

That's the sun! I see it first thing, it sees me first thing. I love sun.
As the summer heats up, it is so nice to feel the temperature drop, and get a good lungful of damp air that smells richly of earth as I glide down into the park.

This was in spring. I'm definitely feeling more connected to the seasons now that I actually experience them change in a real, tactile way. And I've become obsessed with the Weather Network.

I cross a river. A river! Did you even know there was one?

Wildlife!

This is the bit where flooding has washed the path away. AKA the Evil Sand Pit. Occasionally, the parks people will dump sand and gravel into the holes, which makes it into an even more treacherous, shifting mess. It's a new landscape after every hard rain. It makes me wonder what the planet would look like if we just left it the hell alone for a hundred years, or so.

This is a bit of perfect urban greenspace. It's a parkette that was planned and built with the surrounding subdivision. I think it works the way other parkettes -- those gloomy attempts at a spot of green wedged at random into the city -- only hope to. It connects two residential streets with a path. It's open and inviting. Some of the houses that back onto it don't even have fences cutting them off from it.

And it contains beautiful flowering trees.

I like this sign because it has clearly been here since the 50s.

I pass a hockey rink. Zamboni poop is cool.

A water tower! Did you even know Toronto had these? I always associate them with smaller towns, as if they have to ship their water in from somewhere very far away and then store it in the tower.
Of course, we all really know that these water towers are actually alien spaceships watching over us and waiting...

While I wait all day at work until I get to ride home! My ride home is slightly less fun because there's more traffic, but that does give me an opportunity to get my rage on.

Seriously, everyone should bike to work. It's awesome. And I have decided that I am awesomer than you because I ride my bike.

Adventures in Cycle Commuting

Who needs to go camping in order to enjoy wilderness and adventure? Not me, that's for sure. I get my fill on my daily cycle commute. My bike ride is fun but hard, so double fun! Since y'all know I like my fun hard. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more...) I get to experience torrential downpour. Physical discomfort and exhaustion. Surprisingly large insects flying at me and sometimes going in my eyes even despite my sporty, wraparound sunglasses. There's a place where the path has washed away and become an Evil Sand Pit, making part of my commute into a quest through the Fire Swamp. And the other day, I ran into a squirrel. A squirrel!
Here's what happened:
I had just dodged a large flock of seagulls. I guess they were eating some fast-food leftovers that had spilled into the street, and they took off as I went by, making me duck and weave to avoid them. Self, I thought to myself, wouldn't that have sucked if you'd been hit by a seagull? Anyhoodle, picture this: I'm coasting comfortably down a nice hill when, up ahead, a grey squirrel with a fuck-off gigantic nut in its maw comes hoppity-hopping out of someone's garden and onto the sidewalk on my right-hand side, and then starts crossing the road. Now, I'm going quickly, but not really fast, and I judge that Mr. Big Nut will be out of my way by the time I get to where he's crossing, though it might be close. However, squirrels are ridiculously stupid, and so when I'm about a foot away from him, he hears or sees the bike and, even though he's in the clear, he decides to go back the way he came. A space now occupied by bicycle. He jumps. I can't slam on the brakes, since I'm not about to send myself over the handlebars in favour of some dumb rodent. Undeterred, Mr. Nut tries to get through my front wheel. He's bouncing around: against the spinning spokes and the asphalt, making very upset squirrel noises. ("Did it make that lovely motorcycle sound?" my father inquired of the squirrel vs. spokes when I told him this story. Yes, yes it did.) Then the squirrel is desperately grabbing onto the front fork on my bike, and then hopping onto my left calf! Ack! The squirrel is freakin' ON me, and I'm still speedily rolling down the hill.
I shriek and shake my leg. Squirrel! On leg! Squirrel gets off leg and runs off across the street. Which he really should have just done in the first place, since now we're both traumatized, and he's lost his gigantic nut.

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Every Last Drop

Ride for Heart

So, I didn't get to sleep in at all this weekend. Saturday, it was up and at 'em for the St. Lawrence Market (it's just so much better when you're there early), and then Sunday I rose and shone for the Ride for Heart. By "shone" I mean foggily rolled out of bed and into my cycling clothes, and rolled down through the still-silent, foggy city to where the ride starts at the CNE grounds.
Undoubtedly the most fun part of the annual Ride for Heart is that you get to ride your bike on the highway. I don't think the novelty ever wears off. Well, maybe a little after 75 km.
After about 30 km or so, I began to be concerned for the health and safety of my lady parts, and started to reconsider my position on cycling shorts with padded crotches. (Old position: Never in a million years will I wear them. New position: I like my lady parts, and want to be kind to them. If that means padded spandex shorts, so be it. I'll just top them with a cute Lululemon dance skirt or something.)

It's wonderful to see the highway taken over by bicycles. Like a vision of a future utopian society where everyone cycles everywhere, and rush hour is not set to the sound of honking horns, but hearty inhales and exhales and the gentle ka-chunk of bike gears changing.

Although, I could have done without the massive pack of dudes on road bikes whizzing by, screaming: "LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!" I swear there were about fifty of them, although other witnesses put them at about fifteen. I was like, dudes, it's a charity ride. You're scaring the kiddies. And me.

Here I am, keeping to the right...



















The altered signage on the Gardiner Expressway and DVP was a nice touch. Although I was a little insulted by the one that reminded drivers to "Quit idling." There was nothing idle about my morning!


I completed the 75 km in 3 hours and 36 minutes. Including stops for stretching, phone calls and slices of oranges.