This year, it was great luck that my birthday fell on Labour Day Weekend.
Saturday we had a back-to-school party for some university friends, Sunday was my birthday party, and Monday was my birthday bike ride. That was the plan anyway.
But when Kim cancelled because of new dog duty (and that’s just fine, we all understand new dogs take some work to settle in) and Sarah and I just kept working away getting things back in order in the house. And then Susan and I took Cheddar on a long walk along the river. And then I had a midday nap. Briefly, it looked the birthday bike ride might not come to be.
We rallied mid-afternoon and settled on a 3 pm departure. We didn’t quite make 3 pm but we were close. I’ve been wanting to do the St Jacobs ride again, on the Guelph to Goderich Trail. It’s 80 km round trip from here but if we started at Speedvale–and drove to the actual start of the trail, we figured it would be around 60 km.
All fine. Except for one thing. The Kissing Bridge is closed for at least a year. Uh oh. And we didn’t see any alternate route signs. So we tried some dirt back roads. After all, we had our gravel bikes. And then found our way to road roads and made our way to St. Jacobs.
That was problem number 1.
Problem number 2 occurred to us when we stopped for dinner. This is the week when it starts getting dark before 8 pm. How soon before 8 pm? We weren’t sure. Did we have any lights on our gravel bikes? We do not. Another uh oh.
We also had to find the official alternate route that didn’t involve the Kissing Bridge.
Route found, and we did some speedy riding. We made it back to the car just as it was getting seriously dark. Hence, the PRs on the G2G trail!
The ride ended up being 57.7 km. Not 61. But luckily, there are no rules for birthday bike rides. I’ll add in my 4 km of commuting tomorrow to make it 61 even.
One wonderful thing about riding in this part of Ontario is all the Mennonite horse and buggy traffic. That means there’s a very wide shoulder and lots of signs telling car drivers to watch out for buggies and bikes.
We also rode for a bit with a young woman in a bonnet and a long black dress–also racing the daylight, though she was headed back to her farm. Given her garb and the bike she was riding–definitely not an e-bike as that would have been forbidden–we were impressed by her speed.
Anyway, birthday bike ride complete.
Our next big ride is the Parkinson’s Ride from London to Guelph (in 2 days) September 11 and 12, and then the Grand Finale from Hamilton into Toronto on September 13th.
Looking forward to riding with you!
Oh, there was also a snakes on our bike ride.
