I’ve written lots about how much I love fall riding. See here and here.
Fall is my very favorite bike riding season. All those beautiful colours, all that summer fitness, and sunshine-y cool weather. So much fun. See Reasons to start riding in the fall and Looking ahead: The quiet season and the joys of fall riding.
This weekend Sarah and I were at her family farm in Prince Edward County. We frolicked in the swimming pool. I did swim some laps but mostly I enjoyed splashing about.
We had friends visit for physical distanced BBQ dinners. We ate outside with lap blankets and toques!
This year I want to make sure we squeeze every last drop of pleasure and togetherness out of summer since we know we’re heading into a tough fall and winter.
We also made sure we got out for a Sunday bike ride. Our plan was to noodle around Big Island. What’s “noodling” on a bike? The dictionary says it’s the action of improvising or playing casually on a musical instrument. How does that translate to riding bikes?
Well, we had no speed goals. We went just as fast as we felt like. We were open to route changes.We stopped to adjust things on our bikes. We also stopped several times to take photos (see some of them above.) We smiled and waved at children and dogs. We chatted lots about houses and plans. We also created a new Strava segment, one that reflects the playfulness of the day. It’s called “Osprey2Osprey” and it’s from one osprey nest to another, It’s about 3.5 km. Later we’ll have fun sprinting that stretch and racing one another home but today was all about noodling.
We’ve got two more weekends with bikes planned, one more with road bikes at the farm and another, with our gravel bikes, on the Guelph to Goderich trail.
Here’s what our noodling looks like by the numbers!
Love this celebration of noodling! My partner and I have decamped to Montreal for the rest of the year and because of my sprained ankle, we’ve been noodling a lot, a alot on the Bixi bikes here. Which is super fun and super physically challenging. I’ll admit that I’m less good at noodling than my partner and need to be reminded that we are not trying for any distance or time goals. So this is another good reminder. Next weekend I’m going to stop for pictures!
This is so gorgeous — what a lovely weekend you had.