Bikes and boats!

Tracy knows this much better than I do. It’s hard to get much movement on a boat. You can read a bit about that here. Though she’s had some success with sun salutations and end of day dancing.

Jeff is spending the summer on his boat, touring canals and waterways, going through locks, exploring new places. You can read about Jeff’s boating adventures over at his boating blog! Mostly I prefer the land and I prefer active weekends, usually on my bike. Often we’re happy to each do our thing but we’ve been scheming about ways to combine the two activities and this weekend we had some success.

Here’s his boat:

One challenge of visiting Jeff on the boat is getting back to your car. You see you drive to where the boat is but that’s a moving target. You get on the boat and motor away from your car. For those of us just enjoying weekend bits of boat life, we need to get back to the car to get to work Monday morning. Bikes are the obvious answer since Jeff’s cruising at slower speeds the distance works out okay.

Sarah and I boarded the boat in Westport with our bikes on Friday, leaving the car there. We noodled over to Perth for lunch on Saturday, and then anchored for the night near Rideau Ferry. Sunday morning we hopped off the boat and got on our bikes.

The little trip over to Perth was my favorite part of the trip. All of the locks are manually operated but these ones seemed especially old and quaint. The trip after the lock was through beautiful park land. We couldn’t quite make it to downtown Perth. Instead we tied up at the public dock and walked over to grab lunch at a Mexican restaurant on the water.

The only downside of our plan was carrying stuff in backpacks. Next time we’re leaving things on the boat for their return journey home.

Here’s the bikes on the boat, still with their bike rally plates attached:

I got some relaxing in, putting my pink toes up:

While Sarah and Jeff did the work of actually getting the boat through the locks:

Here’s Jeff on the Beveridge Lock:

And more:

And I did less useful things like take a boat selfie:

From boat to bikes!

There might have been a few hills on the 40 km ride back to the car. Luckily at the end there were also blueberry scones and lattes!

Thanks Jeff and Sarah for the boat-bike adventure. Let’s do it again!