Opportunities - it's what you see in 'em.

Well, today is the winter solstice here in Canada - and, indeed, anywhere north of the equator. Last night was also the December Esbat (full moon) and, lo, a total lunar eclipse. Astrologers and even the media made it a point to let us know just how odd it is to have a total lunar eclipse right up against the solstice...as though those two events coinciding actually means anything significant.

For me and Adam, the eclipse meant an opportunity. He set up the digital camera and the tripod so that at the time of maximum totality, we would be ready to take as many pictures as we comfortably could. Snapping pictures of an eclipsed moon would involve opening the window which, in December, would not have been a cozy prospect. Still, it was an opportunity not to be missed.

We missed it.

It isn't that we couldn't drag our sorry behinds out of bed at 03:something-ghastly in the morning but that the low clouds we had noted before going to bed were still hanging in there. Now, at 07:01, I have the time to consider that our having missed last night's total lunar eclipse wasn't so much a lost opportunity to see this wonderful event but an opportunity to sleep all through the night. This has major implications for me as a both x-c skiier and cyclist.

I have had it expressed to me in the past that my having MS must make it easy for me to get a lot of sleep. MS is an incredibly fatiguing illness and if I had to pick just one symptom that negatively affects me the most I'd have to say it's the fatigue. However, fatigue doesn't necessarily mean sleepy and many are the nights where I toss and turn and wake regularly so getting a good night's sleep is both a gift and quite rare.

For me to be at my best, physically, I need to be well rested just like everyone else does. Think about how you feel when you're not well rested; cranky, muddy-headed, impatient, pain-more-easily-felt, et cetera. If I haven't been able to sleep properly, no matter why that is, then the chances of me being able to cycle, ski or even read a book where I understand it are similarly reduced.

So, while I am certainly disappointed for having missed the opportunity to see last night's total lunar eclipse, even if it was due to the overcast skies, I at least took the opportunity to get that much more rest. Now, today, I can head out on foot and get some exercise. We still don't have much in the way of snow though there is some in the forecast (for now), but at least the skiing conditions haven't deteriorated as far as I can tell. If I can ski, I can stay fit for the trike season. For me, it's a matter of seeing the chance when it shows itself and taking the opportunity to just do it!

complementary activities in a winter funderland...

The weather outside is...

...snowy, which is awesome. Indeed, the EC radar for here is showing what looks like a snowy streamer making a beeline for Ottawa. It's not like the mountains of snow they're getting in the UK but any amount for our purposes is good.

I'm writing this over a breakfast of rice, my just emptied cup of coffee still sending light waves of hazelnut vanilla through the air. The type of snow that's falling right now is the really lovely kind, too. Great big fluffy potato chip flakes are tumbling through the silence of Sunday morning.

We went cross country skiing yesterday. We gathered our skis and poles and sauntered over to our beloved Sawmill Creek Constructed Wetlands. Ever since the city both expanded the trail network and improved what was there already, I had been chomping at the bit to find out how the skiing would be. Ever since we became aware of this very-close-to-home gem, we had always made it a point to go there as regularly as possible and that included for skiing. Last winter, I only managed to get out twice and that was before Christmas. Afterwards, the weather just wasn't good for skiing. Adam managed to go there a few more times by himself but even he admitted the conditions just weren't the best.

So, we went out yesterday afternoon and did some trail setting as no one else had been there recently. Oh, we did see tire tracks and footprints - some of which weren't human - but as far as we knew, we were the only ones on skis. We wound up skiing from the southern entrance to the SCCW all the way up to the Walkley transit station and back - 5 kilometres. This morning our plan is to do that trip twice. Given the amount of preparation necessary, such as waxing one's skis and the elaborate ritual of layering clothes for the trek, it's really best to do as many kilometres as possible. That's the plan anyway.

Soo...what does this have to do with catriking? Well, I really don't like not being physically active in at least some manner. I get such a big kick out of my catrike that I really prefer to be in as good a physical condition for the season as possible. Since we don't catrike in the winter, neither of us wants to get out of shape for spring. So, we make it a point to have two utterly perfectly complementary activities so that we always stay in a good shape. I use the long catriking season to prepare for the cross-country ski season and the cross-country ski season to prepare for the catriking season.

It's still snowing and I still like it. When I hit the trails again today, I will thoroughly enjoy them knowing that I am in training for catriking season '11.

**********Later, as in, after a good lunch**********

Well, we did 7 kilometres and not the 10 I had originally said. Lots of reasons, mostly to do with me getting tired from the extra duty upper body workout. This is what happens when one waxes too cold!

In the catriking world, there really isn't much of an analogy. If the tires are pumped up properly and one isn't riding on several centimetres of mashed potatoes then conditions shouldn't be too - uh - challenging. Cross country skiing is different...but at least we got good exercise. Gotta keep those arms and legs in good shape for cycling, right?

When they build it...

...we will be there.

The triking season is certainly done for the year. We have a few centimetres of dry snow that have been whipped about by the really high winds we have had as of late. We have some more snow in the forecast and so my thoughts are now mostly on the hoped for cross country ski conditions.

We do the vast majority of our cross country skiing in the nearby Sawmill Creek Constructed Wetlands, a simple series of pathways located about 400 metres from our house. We often go for walks there throughout the year as well as ski there so it's a useful facility for us year-round. Indeed, this past summer, the City of Ottawa extended the pathways so that users can easily get to the Walkley transit station. That's good news for us as it gives us more places to trike, walk and, at this time of year,

ski. However, the pathway system at the SCCW is still a closed loop. It doesn't allow for easy access from any nearby neighbourhoods...until now, that is.

The Sawmill Creek Constructed Wetlands are located where Hunt Club Road meets with Airport Parkway. It's kind of wedged in between Airport Parkway, a busy road leading into the city from the airport - hence the name - and the South Keys shopping centre. As it's a wetland, bird species like red winged blackbirds, the ubiquitous gulls and a few graceful looking herons are common there. However, it's also a recreational area for joggers, dog walkers and cyclists...and the city is moving to expand its use.

Enter, the bridge. We learned of the city's plan to construct a bridge to join the Hunt Club Community to South Keys and then learned of the public information session held last night - December 7th. City engineers and planners came out to the Hunt Club-Riverside Community Centre, set up a series of information panels in a medium sized gymnasium and were available to answer any questions members of the public may have had.

The information panels consisted, in large part, of descriptions of the project. Such descriptions must have been written by marketing people as promises were made that users of the bridge would feel nothing less than "delighted". Mostly, I just wanted to see what this bridge would look like, who would use it and how it would open the community to cyclists and pedestrians.

The bridge, as yet unnamed, is supposed to start around Cahill West, rise and cross Airport Parkway only to settle back onto the SCCW pathway. Hypothetically, it should both connect residents in the Hunt Club West community to the South Keys shopping centre and provide users a way to get to the shopping centre and transit stations there without having to negotiate the rather busy Hunt Club Road. It should also allow people who live in South Keys and points east (I'm thinking Greenboro) to cycle to Hog's Back for the ever-welcome Alcatel/Lucent Sunday bike days, again, without having to negotiate busy roads like Hunt Club. The bridge won't replace the use of such roads for cyclists but it will provide an alternative, and that's its job.

The bridge should also make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists alike to access the South Keys transit station. The plans include the building of a shiny new tunnel connecting the wetlands to the transitway station's lower level pedestrian underpass. This also means the dismantling of the old, crumbling tunnel that is currently there. Two doors at the west end of the transit station will allow entry of both cycles and wheelchairs. As well, a ramp of no more than 5 degrees and hugging the South Keys station will allow people to gain access to the transit platform itself. The gentle slope will make this both cycle and wheelchair accessible. This is put in place to accommodate the difference in elevation between the South Keys transit station and the wetlands. Right now, hardy walkers need to first hop over a railing, negotiate a fairly steep drop from the transit station to the wetlands, as strewn with rocks, bushes and the odd tree root just to make the whole process interesting. Oh, did I mention the "Keep Out - this means YOU" sign that is both present and thoroughly ignored? Currently, it is not possible to bring a bike through and the new tunnel promises to fix that.

The bridge won't really do much for us. It's just as easy for us to ride the short distance (and it is short) along Hunt Club to reach places like Hog's Back or Colonel By Drive. It will provide an easier way for us to access the Hunt Club community's roads like Cahill West, Plante and McCarthy. Mostly, it'll just be one more cycle friendly route for us and others to explore.

I know the title of this blog entry is a play on the oft-used phrase "If you build it, they will come!" but, according to the city councillor for the area, Maria McRae, it isn't a matter of "if" but "that". The bridge's construction costs (estimated at around $5 million dollars) have been accounted for in the city's budget and the bridge itself is scheduled for completion around this time next year. Unfortunately, that means that we won't be able to try it out for the 2011 cycle season but it should be wide open to the public for the 2012 season.

The local paper, Ottawa This Week, has a write-up.

Segregated lanes?

Well, here I sit sipping a cup of coffee and watching the closest thing to lake-effect snow squalls that Ottawa gets. Actually, if the wind and moisture profile is just right, Ottawa can get some pretty good snow squalls though I readily concede that they're nothing like the kind places like Barrie or Trenton get. If you drive up the 400 from Toronto to Barrie you will pass a number of big yellow road signs warning of potential sudden white out conditions due to lake effect snow squalls.

It isn't called the snow belt for no reason!

We have had a couple of little snowfalls over the past few weeks or so and we now have a good 2 or 3 centimetres draped on everything. With the prospect of a few more snow squalls drifting through here it would seem that ski season is not too far off - but it also means that the triking season is done.

So that leaves us the prospective good winter's worth of x-c skiing, likely at the Sawmill Creek Constructed Wetlands whose trail system the city had expanded earlier this year (yay!). It also leaves me to watch for news items about cycling. With the city of Ottawa having just elected a new mayor, one who is purportedly extremely pro-cycling, Adam and I were more than pleased to learn of a proposed dedicated bike lane on Laurier Avenue. Of course, the article in question seems to be just as focused on how the BIA feels about a segregated bike lane on Laurier. It seems to me, though, that the BIA feel as though they own Laurier Avenue and that anything even remotely different from what they, personally, want is tantamount to a declaration of war.

Come on, what kind of garbage is that? Since when does making business easier to get to by cyclists cause serious problems? I would think that business could be boosted by a comparatively slow moving cyclist who could then take the time to actually look at a business rather than zooming past in a faster travelling car or truck.

In my mind, this amounts to nothing more than mere NIMBYism. The proposed plan addresses the concerns of business owners as far as such matters as access is concerned but the real issue here is how the city of Ottawa can improve accessibility for ALL people, not just motor vehicle drivers. Page 4 of the plan (it's a .pdf so keep that in mind if you click on the link) clearly states that,

"Emergency vehicle access, access to off-street loading zones, and access to building entrances and parkades are all maintained." (italics mine)

Unfortunately, this kind of having-to-justify-improved-access-to-businesses is exactly what's wrong with a lot of cycling and car problems. The fact is that bicycles of any description and cars do not mix well on roads and a large part of the reason for that is simply to do with visibility. My own experience has been that car drivers don't so much loathe having to share the road with cycles as that they simply do not see us on the road and that when they do see us they cannot know what we are going to do. In that respect, I can't blame car drivers for, what would you think if you saw a cyclist beat on down the road, hop onto a sidewalk, zip into a parking lot using the exit lane, run stop signs, sail through red lights and travel the wrong way on roads? My own thoughts on this are that the building and designating of segregated bike lanes can and will do so much to solve a lot of those problems. I'm not saying such a resource will stop any and all dumb shit some cyclists do but it will significantly reduce the occurrences. It would also reduce or even eliminate the reason for doing dumb things in the first place. Ask cyclists who are riding on the sidewalk why they do that and a lot will tell you that it's too dangerous to be on the road (which is BS, by the way, as evidenced by the large numbers of cyclists who do use the road and live to tell the tale) or that it's a lot more convenient. If the city builds a whole, connected system of roads with segregated bike lanes, this problem goes away.

But it requires a shift in behaviour on the part of cyclists and, more tellingly from the article on Laurier Avenue, a serious shift in understanding the realities of higher fuel prices, the fact that some people are choosing to give up their cars and do everything on bike and the fact that at least a few people are choosing to improve their own health by cycling instead of driving. I'm looking at you, BIA, so don't pretend I'm talking to someone else.

As for me, well, my trike is, for all intents and purposes, parked for the winter. I won't take it out again until next spring and only after a good rain washes away all the salt that this city likes to dump on everything. I will continue to write about cycling issues, including a few goodies like maybe some trail mix recipes or just some musings about prospective triking trips while slogging away trying to break a new trail in the wetlands after a good dumping of snow.

-Peace

Trail on the trail

Monday turned out to be a somewhat sunnier and, thus, slightly warmer day than originally forecast. However, at this time of year, the weather can and does change quickly and so it's a tough call for even the most experienced forecasters to stay on top of things. October in Ottawa is often a breezy affair as the predominant weather pattern changes from the sultry lassitude of summer to the chilled wet of autumn.

Consequently, we thought it would be a good idea to head out on a cycling venture. It actually hadn't rained a great deal recently and so Adam thought it would be a good opportunity to show to me some more of this city's trail network.

The city of Ottawa, in conjunction with the National Capital Commission (NCC) has a plan to create an intricate network of recreational trails from the Mer Bleue/Green's Creek area to the east of here and joining with the trail network around Shirley's Bay to the west of here. These recreational trails are multi-use which means anyone can hike, presumably ski in the winter and - on Monday - cycle through it.

While the colours of the foliage in autumn have already peaked here and the now everpresent winds are s-l-o-w-l-y stripping the branches of their leaves, we thought there was still enough colour and beauty to take a video of me on my Catrike Trail. Adam filmed me from his mountain bike as his Catrike Speed has too low a clearance to easily negotiate the thick clumps of soggy, drag-inducing leaves. In fact, for most of the journey on the trail itself, I had to gear down to the first sprocket. My Trail performed well anyway but it's really designed for road use, despite the name. In fact, at a couple of points, even the lowest gear still had me struggling a bit. Partly it's that I hadn't been out too much lately and so my fitness level had dropped a bit (it happens with startling ease) but it was also that it was late afternoon when my energy level can drop pretty precipitously. It didn't help that we were trying to negotiate trails that consisted mostly of 10+ centimetre thick leaves. Whenever we stopped, we would take a few seconds to pick leaves and twigs from places like the idler on my trike and even the brakes on Adam's mountain bike. It was slow going, mostly because of me. At one point, even in the lowest possible gear, I was still slipping a bit unless I crawled along at the amazing speed of a glacier. Yes, I was more than up to the task but it was still a struggle at some points.

Once we were back on the paved road and heading home, I was able to sail along at my usual speeds of anywhere between 12-23 km/hr. The total distance for this trip was 11.77 kilometres.

You take what you can get at this time of year.

-Peace

"Weather" or not...

I don't have plans to go out on my trike today. Shame, really, because it's sunny and not too frightfully cold - however, it is a bit too windy for me. I'm relying on the forecast for continued sunny skies and seasonably cool temperatures to reassure me that the triking season, though old and aging, is not over.

As I had written in my last post, the seasons here in Ottawa do tend to follow the calendar pretty closely so I am anticipating at least a few more weeks of triking weather before we get into that in-between-time when it's too cold, windy and wet to trike but not snowy enough to go skiing. With any luck that post-triking-pre-skiing "season" won't be too long. Sure, I can do lots of indoor activities, most notably crocheting, but I really can't exercise much more than the muscles in my wrist and if I can't get out for a good trike run or to hit the trails I can get pretty antsy.

Part of the problem for me there is that, with MS, I often feel as though I am on borrowed time. Sure, my neurologist recently declared my multiple sclerosis to be stable but that certainly doesn't mean relapses won't happen. The last thing I want is to miss out on a good chunk of outdoor activity because I can't walk or my fatigue levels make anything more demanding than reading a book nearly impossible. The fact is, that I like to stay physically active and, no, it isn't to do with "battling" or "defeating" MS. There's neither anything to battle nor to defeat. It has nothing to do with MS or any medical condition whatsoever - I have always been a physically active person long before I developed MS. However laudable that may be, though, anything I like to do depends a great deal on the weather. This is why I try to have a favourite activity for each season but seasons here don't just suddenly change - for that I would have to move back to Alberta (hee hee hee).

Catering to the weather is not some onerous task for which I must suffer. Suffering at all is an option, but I can feel disappointed when the hoped for sunshine or happily anticipated snowfall just doesn't materialize. To help there, I write some rambling dissertation on this blog about the weather, or maybe a neat recipe I discovered or even about some new crochet stitch I finally learned.

No matter, today is a great day and tomorrow's hike to take in the glorious colour of autumn will help to keep things in perspective for me.

-Peace

Borrowed Time

Ottawa is one of those cities whose predominant weather pattern seems to follow the seasons quite tightly.

For instance, the first day of autumn is typically cool and crisp with trees displaying their mantle of fiery oranges, reds and yellows. While we often see snow before December 21st, we generally don't get our first 'permanent' snow cover before that. Yes, that's a huge generalization as anyone who recalls the winter of 2007-2008 will attest when it snowed from mid-December onward. The ground is often a sticky morass of muck, rocks and old crusty ice by March - though the first day of spring is generally a warm and pleasant venture and we will have had our first sweltering heat wave by June 21, when summer officially begins.

Again, these are generalizations but they do allow for at least some modicum of planning and this year is proving to be no exception.

By late August, the green of the trees is noticeably lighter as the little chlorophyll factories in the leaves start to shut down and allow the "true colour" of the leaves themselves to emerge. By September, the trees were really starting to change and now, in early October, we are in the thick of warm coloured vibrancy.

September was also one of the rainiest months we have had this year. See, that's the interesting thing about autumn here - it can be dry and cool-bordering-on-cold or it can be a wet undertaking. Not only was it a wet month but it was also, by my estimation and from this side of my morning coffee in early October, a windy one. Wind is a challenge on the trike but rain and wind together always equal staying inside.

In other words, we didn't do much triking in September.

To be sure, the catriking season here in Canada's capital is a pretty lengthy one compared to, say, the prairies or even northern Ontario. Nevertheless, at this time of year, we are on borrowed time. The weather patterns have been shifting for the past few weeks and it would not surprise me in the least if we see our first few tentative snowflakes by this month's end. That means we need to get out when we can. There are a few advantages to triking in autumn which I think bear mentioning.

1. There are, generally, no bugs. Yesterday, we did a quick 17 kilometre trip to Mooney's Bay and slightly beyond. When we stopped, Adam noticed an electron cloud of gnats buzzing and hovering just above his trike. It was sunny and not too chilly. However, at least there weren't attack squadrons of mosquitoes.

2. The temperature tends to be reasonable. 'Nuff said on that.

3. The bike paths are often not too crowded. A lot of people will only cycle on sunny, hot summer days and that's just fine. They put their bikes away after Labour Day or whenever their season is done. We will be triking until the first snow falls.

4. I don't have to put on quite as much sunscreen. While I don't often trike in shorts (that's a good thing - no, really, it's a good thing), I will trike in a T-shirt if it's really hot outside and that means wearing sunscreen on my arms. In the autumn, I wear a very light windbreaker so no sunscreen is required. Plus, I wear light gloves so my hands don't get chapped and over-dried in the colder air.

Otherwise, triking in autumn is at least as lovely as triking in the summer and I hope to do more over the next few weeks...now that the cold rains of September have passed and we can get on with enjoying what is often the loveliest time of the year. Then, I can look forward to the winter (I'm one of those rare Canadians who actually enjoys the winter) and getting in some x-c skiing - perfect maintenance exercise for next year's catriking season.

-Peace