Mowed Fields

Yesterday was a gorgeous day for cycling, and I regret not taking the camera along: there were so many opportunities of the sort displayed on the blog banner. After a week or two of steady rain, we finally got a stretch of hot sunny days that made for perfect haying weather. I pushed myself through 16 kms of loamy perfume. The wind was slightly from the northwest, making the air less humid than it can get in Central Ontario. The wind also kept the aroma of the fields from getting too thick for me. Very fine.

Old Churches

The countryside is dotted with old churches and schoolhouses, most of which have been converted into residences. Having spent some time in just such a structure, I can attest that there are some practical negatives that accompany the funky positives. These places are great for holding family gatherings, art shows and parties; they're lousy for holding in heat.

But I digress. They're very lovely to pedal past. Here's one such. I'm not sure of the denomination. The sign on the door seems to indicate there is still a congregation that meets there. Either that, or the denomination is putting in a minimum of maintenance to hold on to a heritage building. The bizarre eaves-trough configuration would seem to bear out the latter theory.

Over Hill, Over Dale...

My route of choice just received a fresh drop of gravel and some grading. The Jake is built to withstand a hefty punishment, but it is not built to navigate through sand or gravel, so I took it down some unexplored roads (which have yet to receive a spring grooming).



One hill pretty much looks like the other when you're looking at it through a camera's viewfinder. It's a different story when you're pushing the pedals, of course. But I am gratified to see how quickly my aging bod is acclimatizing itself to the new regime.

Season's First Ride

I finally released the Jake from the trainer and took it for this year's first ride on the gravel roads. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but the view hasn't changed much from last year.

The temptation during the first ride is to go ahead and see what's over the next hill. After all, I was fairly disciplined with my basement sessions: the legs and heart and lungs should all be up for it.

The ugly truth, however, is there will never ever ever be an indoor workout that matches the effort required out of doors. I kept the first ride to 20 minutes; I'm guessing my resting heart rate will return to me sometime before supper.

Stem Research

One of the locals asked if I wanted to join his cycling club. They're a bunch of guys whose median age is 44, who plow through a given stretch of woods when the moon is full. I thanked him for the invite, but turned him down. I would have jumped at the opportunity in my 20s; in my 40s it sounds like a short path to humiliation and serious injury.

My winter cycling consists of 15 minute stints on a magnetic resistance trainer, usually doing variations on sprints and only occasionally working a 20-plus minute aerobic spread (i.e., dying of boredom). Since I'm not climbing in and out of the saddle to navigate hilly terrain, I am discovering that the Jake is just a little long for my grasp: my shoulders and neck can get pretty stiff after the longer sessions. I'm hoping a shorter stem (7.5 cm, down from 10.5) will fix that problem.

The Power Toboggan

The guy who fixed our roof came into the cafe the other day. He was trussed up in three different braces. I gaped. "What happened to you?"

"Aw, snowmobiling. I jumped over a driveway and landed wrong. Then the next guy landed on me."

So far as snowmobiles are concerned, my first impulse is to be a scold. They are very popular in this part of the world. On any day of the week we're likely to see a 14-year-old kid rip through town, well past the speed limit.

But I hold my tongue. I was 14 once, too. And I jumped at any chance to use the family snowmobile: a 1970 Arctic Cat Panther.



My youngest uncle persuaded my grandfather to drop money on this machine when it was still new. It was a noisy two-stroke monster that couldn't break 40 mph. It was heavy, and gallingly dependable. By the time my uncle left town for university, my grandfather was only too happy to let my family take the snowmobile off his yard. I was 12-years-old by then, and only too happy to give it a go on ours.

I had a couple of friends with similar machines. My father would drop me and the snowmobile off at the outskirts of town, and off I'd go with my buds, cutting trails into acres of pristine snow. I also had friends with newer, snazzier, faster machines, but for some reason I never got together with them.

My love affair with snowmobiling began to cool as I grew older. The trouble started one Saturday when my father took me on a tour of snowmobile dealerships. We had no interest in actually buying anything -- we were just curious to see what was on the market. The long and short of it was that for a few thousand unavailable dollars we could purchase a lighter machine capable of reaching speeds in excess of 100 mph.

Also, it wouldn't be too much longer before I turned 16 and could drive a real vehicle -- one with over 350 cubic inches and eight cylinders under the hood. The snowmobile, seemingly in tune with my fickle affections, began to act up. If I pushed the accelerator, she responded only to a point, then cut out and died.

We took it to mechanics. We took apart the carburetor and replaced all the gaskets and aeration screws. We propped the rear on a cinder block and fiddled with the carburetor settings for hours. Nothing seemed to work.

For a while I could ride it at half-throttle, but before too long she wouldn't let me coax her past a quarter-throttle. My younger sister wanted a tobogganing/snowmobile birthday party, and I was enlisted as the designated rider. I ferried eight-year-old girls around the tobogganing hill and through a copse of poplars. The girls seemed pleased with the experience, but beneath my balaclava I burned with shame as cross-country skiers glided effortlessly past me.

I don't remember how the snowmobile finally disappeared from our yard. I expect my father sold her, and passed the money back to his father. The fact that this event didn't even register on my personal radar indicates just how out of love I was with the "sport."

Still am, really. I think these things are a blight on our landscape and a menace to our ecosystem -- possibly even to our survival as a species.

But I have to admit: it was fun at the time.