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.