Recent Documentaries: The Weather Underground; The Saltmen of Tibet
Current Food: Organic garlic stuffed olives (yum), green pepper, beets boiling on the stove
We went on our inaugural bike club trip today. We’ve been trying to get this together since late August, and as my most recent email to the group said “we’ve got to get out there before we’re talking about this in 4 feet of snow”.
Toronto has plunged into cold wholeheartedly this week. We went from unseasonably warm 20+C weather to 7C overnight. Break out the mittens people.
So, bike club arranged to meet at 11 on Sunday at the Cherry Street Bridge for what was supposed to be a gentle first outing. It’s going to have to be a bit gentle for a while, since I’m riding a beater bike that flies under the radar of bike-thieves, but is not built for offroading.
Toronto weather this morning (we sort of saw this coming): cold and wet and windy. Like, really cold and really wet and super windy. We left at around 10:30 (Cherry St’s the other end of the city). Woah nelly. Glad I bought my MEC “you’ll be glad to have this bike top on for those chilly morning commutes” shirt.
Rode some of the trails, then right as it starts to really piss down with rain – both BCGirl and I blow our tubes. Huddled under a tree, I get a taste of the real mountain biking experience – fixing your tire by the side of the road. While this was old hat for my three companions, I loved watching them whip out their special tools and spare tubes from outta nowhere (actually ‘nowhere’ being the bike repair kits stored under their seats) and fix up bikes on the fly. Neato 🙂
So while it meant our group ride was cut short (having to stop mid-rainy ride meant everyone was quick to agree to stop this madness and get coffee and croissants), bike club has officially begun – huzzah!
I should qualify that – the group ride was cut short, but CPwr and I still had what turned out to be another 1.5 hours ride to get home again (home at 3:30). Despite crazy wet and wind coming off the lake it was really lovely, I’ve been wanting to bike along with CPwr since we met. And I had the ingenious idea of stopping on the way home to pick-up veggie burgers at BK. Which CPwr really enjoyed, since we packed 4 warm veggie burgers into his coat.
*happy sigh* Slept the rest of the day away on the couch, snuggled inside of three layers of clothes and three fleecy blankets… happiness is.
