Scott and Becky go East

Today was a long day, but the route was mostly flat, making it feel similar to yesterday’s ride. At about mid-afternoon, the sky clouded over cooling things off a bit. We were concerned it might rain, but fortunately, the threatening clouds went the other way, leaving us with a beautiful day for a bike ride.

On our route today, we passed through Pocahontas, Iowa –  affectionately known as “Poky” to the locals. There we found a church that had opened up it’s basement restrooms and kitchen, so cyclists could use the facilities and fill their water bottles. We took advantage of the cool space to do some yoga before continuing with the ride.  We’re finding it’s the random acts of kindness which are making the trip special for us – people offering free water, church basements and random passers-by cheering on the stream of cyclists.

Becky got a new nickname today: “Rumble Girl”! In Iowa, there are rumble strips across the entire lane as your approach a stop sign (usually 3 sets of them). The riders generally go around the rumble strips and yell “RUMBLES”, so that the following riders know they are there. Becky on the other hand, rides over the rumble strips while yelling “RUMBL-L-L-L-L” with a fun vibrato caused by the bumps. This usually causes everyone around to smile and laugh. After the second or third time, a couple of kids on the back of tandems started to call Becky “Rumble Girl” whenever she passed them.

Later in the day we passed through West Bend, Iowa – the home of the Grotto of the Redemption. From a distance, the Grotto reminded us of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. On closer  inspection, they look nothing alike – the semi-precious stones decorating the Grotto creates busy textures reminiscent of Gaudi’s designs – perhaps his inspiration was a Grotto in Europe somewhere?

We tried a different food strategy today – that is, we tried to avoid waiting in long lines so we could spend more time biking – but it didn’t work out as well as we had hoped. We had a decent breakfast at the local coffee shop before leaving town (a breakfast burrito, but not nearly as good as Farm Boys though the shop had  great coffee). We stopped for some food in one of the later towns, but it turned out to be pretty awful fast food (processed turkey on processed white bread and a “walking taco” – a small bag of crushed Doritos with ground beef,processed lettuce, cheese, and sour cream on top – yuck!).

When we arrived in the overnight town, we decided to head directly to a church dinner, rather than the campsite.  Since we had a charter, we knew that there would not be any issues with finding a place to camp. Arriving into town late meant that church dinners would run out of food soon.  In addition to a good meal, the church dinners often  provide an air conditioned place to sit and relax and no lines for the flush toilets – definitely something that you want after a long hot day on the bike.

At the end of the day, Becky tried out one of the shower trailers since it was setup close to our campsite. Amusingly, the line for the women’s was much shorter than the line for the men’s – quite the contrast to any lines for  flush toilets!  Fortunately the kybos are unisex – there are many more men on RAGBRAI than women. The $5 shower was luxurious – pressurized hot water! It felt great to get clean after the long day’s ride.

Another day another traffic jam – riders walk their bikes as they enter a pass-through town.

Banana bike.

A farmer setup a corner “corn boil” stall. For $1 per cob, it was the best and cheapest corn we had the entire trip.

As we entered this pass-through town, they welcomed us with decorated hay bales.

Walking through another pass-through town. There were a disproportionate number of ‘bents on the ride.

Bikes strewn everywhere outside of the Grotto of Redemption in West Bend.

The grotto was decorated everywhere with semi-precious stones.

Tonnes of cyclists taking a break to check out the Grotto of Redemption.

A necessary self-portrait. We are looking a little warm!

Statistics

• Storm Lake to Algona (PDF route map).
• Reported as 79 miles (127 km).
• We rode 142 km to campsite.
• Route ride time 7h min.
• Total: 266 km.
• Costs: $60 food, $5 hot shower

We awoke at 5:30 am to the sound of tent zippers. A surprising number of people were already out and about, but for us this felt way too early. The midnight fireworks left us groggy and tired, but we quickly packed up and had a small bite to eat. (We brought some granola with us – and we were very happy to have it).  By 6:30 am we were on the road. Becky desperately needed coffee, so we stopped at a Burger King on the way out of town for a cup. Mornings will definitely be a challenge as we are used to eating a full breakfast before getting on the bikes and riding.

Once we left the campsite area, the police had placed cones to keep riders to one lane on the road. This very quickly became futile as the number of riders expanded to fill both outbound lanes. At first we were nervous about oncoming traffic and riding in the left lane, but soon we discovered that riders take over both lanes for most of the day.

We moved along quite well for 20 km or so, then crested as small hill and a sea of humanity and bikes appeared.  Shouts of “slowing!”, “slowing!”, “stopping!” filled the air.   We slowed to a stop, and walked our bikes forward for a few hundred metres before discovering the cause.  It was The Farm Boys – purveyors of quality breakfast burritos, and very popular.  We were ready for a real breakfast, so we  decided to join the line up to see what all the fuss was about. We had been warned about long food lines, and this was to be our first experience with them, waiting over an hour for our breakfast burritos (fortunately, the coffee didn’t require waiting so Becky enjoyed her second cup of the day while in line). The burritos were definitely worth the wait – fresh shells loaded with real scrambled eggs, hash browns, ham, bacon, cheese, and salsa – yum. Becky can also attest that they had excellent coffee too.

Our first traffic jam of the day – at the Farm Boys kiosk.

We soon discovered that bicycle congestion is common, but riders handle it well, with good communication.  Mostly it happens in the pass-through towns as riders stop to buy food, use a kybo, listen to the music or just rest for a bit.

Pulling into Kingsley – the first real pass-through town. Note the mass of riders on the road ahead.

Our second food stop of the day was for lunch at Pastafaria – where they had great pasta accompanied by great reggae music. This too was a RAGBRAI tradition, and the lines were long. We waited for about an hour for lunch, but the pasta was precisely what we needed.  Yum!

As we approached Storm Lake, we found our charter in a park along the lake on the outskirts of town. After yesterday’s experience, we were happy to have found the charter so easily. We quickly found a spot in the shade for our tent and jumped into the lake to cool down. Unfortunately, Storm Lake was really warm – so warm that it didn’t do much to cool us down. It did however remove the first layer of road grime and sweat.

We ran into Nancy at the campsite and was glad to see that her wristband had been found. We asked her about the showers, and she explained how they worked with the charter – we need only find a solar bag that was not in use and fill it. The longer it is left in the sun the warmer the water will be. The water directly from the truck was pretty cold, which on a hot day was nice but a bit of shock to the system. We quickly found shower bags and enjoyed a nice cool shower.

Next on our agenda was food. Unfortunately, there was nothing near the campsite. One of the other cyclists mentioned that he had a nice lasagna dinner at a local church, just up the road. Since there was a risk of them running out of food, we needed to get there quickly, so we hopped back on our bikes in search of food. It turned out that both that church and the school dinner had run out of food – it was almost 7 pm. We did find a loaded-baked potato dinner at the local historical society. Apparently, they didn’t get much traffic early on, so they reduced the price to $5 per person. Since they had food, we were happy to enjoy the baked potato with all the fixin’s (ham, bacon, beans, salsa, sour cream, fake butter, broccoli, and cheese). Dinner included a banana split dessert – but they ran out of bananas just as we got there (we managed to share the last 1/2 banana).

As we crawled into the tent at night, fireflies started to dance out of the grass. It looked like small sparks launching out of the ground. Becky has never seen fireflies behave like that – we usually see them fly around bushes. It was really cool to see them jumping up around all the tents!

RAGBRAI TIP – Cornfields make great outhouses with no lines and great privacy – bring a trowel!

The morning traffic, taking over both outbound lanes.

Bikes filling the roads – and this isn’t event a busy time!

There were several fellow Canadians proudly displaying the maple leaf – we didn’t actually meet these guys.

Can you pick out Becky in the crowd as we approach a pass-through town?

Bike parked/abandoned along the side of the road as their owners waited in line for food.

Bike littered everywhere as riders take a break.

A creative recumbent rider – he rode the entire week as a shark! The number one question asked of him: “Aren’t you hot in there?”

Throughout the ride, there were posters proclaim the various benefits of hog farming in Iowa.

There were also lots of clever roadside signs to keep us amused as we rode.

Ever wonder what happens when a windmill blade gets hit by lightening?

Note the Canada flag flying with Becky’s sign. Throughout the week, we were greeted with “hello Canada” and “Oh Canada”.

Team tutu were wearing tutus all week – not always wearing them where you would expect them too.

Statistics

• Sioux City to Storm Lake (PDF route map).
• Reported as 68.5 miles (110 km).
• We rode 115 km to campsite, and an additional 9 km to and from dinner.
• Route ride time 6h 38 min.
• Route to day total: 124 km.

We are very glad we did not tent last night – Dubuque got another 3 inches of rain – add that to the 5 inches they got on Thursday night and the ground is soaked. It would suck to start the week with a wet tent.

We arrive at the Dubuque Bowling and Beyond to a flurry of bus traffic – buses are still arriving, and others are moving about to find the right location. Some buses have nice clear signs, but others are not so well labelled. We find bus 3, 4, and 5 with Pork Bellies charter, but aren’t immediately able to find bus 1 – the bus we were assigned to take. As Becky sits in a corner with all our bags, Scott walks around all the buses in search of bus 1 – eventually a Pork Bellies staffer comes and puts a ‘bus 1′ sign on one of the unlabelled buses and we quickly load up. Our bus appears to be the least nice of the Pork Bellies buses – and definitely not the fancy coach that they promised us. As we enter the bus, we are immediately hit by the smell of old smoke – yuck.

We find ourselves a seat and immediately start talking to the people around us. We are inspired and encouraged by the friendliness of other RAGBRAI riders – the friendliness of riders turns out to be one of the best reasons to participate in RAGBRAI.

The bus stops at 10 am for the designated “lunch stop” at a truck stop just off the Interstate. This seems a bit early, but we are happy for the opportunity to get out and stretch our legs. The lack of decent food at the stop makes us glad that we picked up lunch at the grocery store yesterday – no need to eat processed “instant” fast food.

We pull into Sioux City and the bus driver takes us to the Pork Bellies camp site. Unfortunately, this is not where we need to go. It is not where the RAGBRAI campsite is, or many of the other charters. It is also not where our bikes are expected nor where we were told we would be dropped off. Scott goes of in search of someone from Pork Bellies while most of us remain on the bus – refusing to unload at what we think is the wrong location. Eventually, Scott returns to inform us that we are indeed in the wrong place and someone from Pork Bellies will inform the driver of where we are supposed to be – but before we can leave, we have to wait for bus 6 to arrive because we are carrying some luggage from bus 6. We definitely felt like second class citizens on the Pork Bellies charter.

The bus takes us to the very busy dip site parking lot and drops us off. We have no news of when or where the truck with our bikes will appear. We only hope that Pork Bellies has told the bus driver and the truck driver the SAME location! People that are staying with RAGBRAI (that is, not on a charter) are setting up their tents in a nearby field – people who are in larger groups are sending some people off to their camping locations while others wait for the bikes. The kind folks in Sioux City have arranged golf carts towing trailers to ferry people and gear from the parking lot to the various camp site locations. After sitting in the sun for half an hour, Scott recognizes the transport carrying our bikes. It drive past us so Scott chases after it while Becky sits guarding over our gear. Unfortunately, the truck doesn’t stop and Scott chases after it for 3 km before it gets back on the highway for a second loop. Scott is stuck walking back to the dip site – after spending 30 minutes chasing after the truck – with no hat and no sunscreen. By the time he gets back to the dip site, the truck has returned, and has almost finished unloading bikes.  He is very hot and grumpy. Becky has been waiting for over half an hour and has no clue where Scott has gotten too – she too is grumpy and concerned that the truck will leave without us getting our bikes, as she is stuck watching our huge pile of gear and can’t go get bikes. Fortunately, Scott is able to find the bikes and a family takes pity on him. One of the kids helps him push Becky’s bike over to where she is sitting. So far, things aren’t going quite as smoothly as we hoped.

We are carrying almost as much gear for RAGBRAI as we did for our trip around the world.  With the prospect of bad weather and the lack of opportunities to dry laundry RAGBRAI veterans recommend carrying enough clothing for the entire week.  Another little difference from self-supported touring, where we travelled for 16 months with two pairs of bike shorts, and two other pairs of pants!

We stop a baggage cart and ask if they know where Ron Oman Charters is located.  These are folks that we have chartered with for the week – they will be carrying our luggage from city to city and claiming campsite space for us. When we first arrived at the Pork Bellies site, Becky borrowed a phone and asks where Ron was located. The person told her “in the main campground” (so not the Pork Bellies campground) and “upriver of the Casino”. At the time she thought the description was adequate, but now we discover that the entire campground (some 5000 + tents over 4+ km of riverfront) is upriver of the Casino! We load up our bikes and ride the strip of campsites from end-to-end. First a cursory glance looking for Ron’s logo, then a more detailed search, asking each group we find. Finally, a third sweep and still we are not able to find Ron Oman Charters. With each lap we stop by the Info Desk to ask if they know. They say we are not the only ones asking and that if we do find them, to please let the info desk people know! After the third pass, we give up.

We go to the dip site for the ceremonial dip of our rear tires in the Missouri river – bikes fully loaded!

Dipping our loaded bikes into the Missouri River. Can you see the frustration in our smiles?

With 5 pm approaching – (3 hours after arriving on Sioux City) – we need to head up to the Bike Expo to pick up our registration packets – the folks at the Register decided that they did not want to risk our packages not arriving in Canada, so they didn’t mail them. Instead we were to pick them up. The ride up to the Expo (about 4 km away from the campsite) involves wading through many cyclists and pedestrians – this turned out to be only a small taste of what was to come. We walk our bikes through packed crowds to find a quiet spot in the shade against the building. There we rest our bikes and Becky goes into the conference centre in search of our registration packets. Becky is greeted with a long, almost unmoving line. Anyone wishing to change their registration is also in the same line. Anyone looking for parking passes and day passes are able to go to a different line and be served almost immediately. After half an hour, the line moves enough that Becky can see in the room. There are 4 people providing crowd control and only one person serving the people who need registration changes – it appears that only one person can operate the computer. Becky tries very hard not to grit her teeth in frustration. All she needs to do is pick up a packet. Someone behind the desk says “Can I help anyone?”, the person behind Becky says “I need a parking pass”, and the gentleman behind the desk calls him out of the line and serves him. When he says “Can I help anyone?” again, Becky blurts out “I just need to pick up a packet”. He motions her forward, and digs out the registration package. With a quick flash of her ID, Becky now has the package in hand, with our essential wristbands and bike bands.
In the interim, Scott has found the telephone number for our Charter again. The person we speak to is back in Omaha, but tells us to look for the giant American Flag upriver of the bridge. This is more like it!

The next order of business is dinner – we haven’t found our charter yet but we are both hungry. Becky asks the information desk about where to find food and is told there is a church serving a spaghetti dinner up the street two blocks (literally up – Sioux City isn’t flat!). We make our way with our loaded bikes to the church and are happy to discover they still have food. Not long after we arrive, they run out of food – so we got there just on time. We savour the air-conditioned sit-down dinner after being out in the hot sun. A church gymnasium never felt so nice! Dinner is so good that we don’t have room left for the wonderful baked goods served for dessert – luckily we have a container in our bags… a snack for tomorrow. We also take advantage of the church washrooms to rinse the sweat from our faces – perhaps our last flush toilets for a while. We feel much better and at 7 pm, we head out again in search of Ron Oman Charters.

We find the giant American Flag, and it’s right beside the information desk. Unfortunately, no-one near it knows anything about Ron Oman! We go back to the information desk – which now has a note on the board with a brief description of where to go – pretty much around the corner from the information booth. We follow the directions but are still unable to find our Charter. We ask around, and the super friendly folks from Bubbas suggest that we join them. If we had not already paid Ron, we certainly would have joined Bubba then and there! We kept asking people around the Kybos until we found someone that knew where Ron Oman Charters was. Someone kindly leads us to the marked off area in the middle of a stand of trees – a lovely site, but certainly not obvious. No big surprise that we couldn’t find it.

It is 8 pm and getting dark, so we swallow our frustration and set up our tent. We share some of our story with our neighbours and someone lets us know that we should be looking for the pink flag, which we could now see flying from the rented gear truck. Unfortunately, even if we had known to look for a pink flag, they had just set it up about an hour before. We discover that several other people suffered the same fate, wasting hours in search. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come…

Now that we have found everything, we decide to put all the frustrations behind us and get back into a good mindset to enjoy RAGBRAI. We visit with a few people camped around us and discover that the folks in the tent beside us are also from Ottawa – Ottawa, Kansas that is! We were soon to discover just how many other Ottawa’s there are (Kansas, Illinois, and even Iowa!). We also meet Nancy who is very friendly and helpful, even though she is missing the registration packages and wristbands for her group. Ron is frantically searching for them, which may explain some of the other disorganization.

Sioux City did do a great job of providing water and Kybos (porta potties). There were enough Kybos around that you didn’t need to wait in line if you were willing to walk a bit. There were many water stands set up throughout the campsite, providing safe drinking water. Most were an assembly of hoses plastic pipes and faucets. They worked great for toothbrushing, water bottle filling and rudimentary showers.

We were in bed before 9:30 pm, tired after a long day, and trying to get rested up for an early morning.

We slept well for several hours, then at midnight, Sioux City welcomed RAGBRAI with fireworks, launched from the river beside us. We are sure many people enjoyed them, but not us, and probably not many of the other riders. We aren’t exactly sure what the planners were thinking! Many riders awake before the crack of dawn (around 5:15 am) to pack up their tents and get on the road. We talked to several others who were quite annoyed with their disrupted sleep.

RAGBRAI TIP 1 – If you’re a RAGBRAI newbie, choose someone other than Ron Oman Charters. Many long-time RAGBRAIers are very happy with him, but we recommend choosing a charter who does a better job communicating their location and their services.

RAGBRAI TIP 2 – Bring good earplugs. Becky’s earplugs did not block out tent zippers and fireworks. (Bring Eyeshades too, ours were invaluable)

RAGBRAI TIP 3 – Bring copies of every piece of paperwork and email you receive, and everything you might think useful from the RAGBRAI site. You never know what bit of information you’ll need in the chaos of 10,000+ cyclists and their entourages.

RAGBRAI TIP 4 – Don’t rely on AT&T for cellphone service in Iowa.  From Canada (Rogers/Fido) our U.S. roaming partner is AT&T, but AT&T service outside the big cities in Iowa is minimal.

When we told people we were planning to ride across Iowa this summer, the reaction was always “Why Iowa?” We must admit, that Iowa wasn’t exactly the first place that came to mind for a one week bike trip – but that was before we knew about about RAGBRAI – the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. According to RAGBRAI, it is the world’s largest and longest running bike tour. This year marks its 38th year and they expect more than 10,000 riders and an additional 6-7000 support people to participate.

In March, we filled in the application and waited with bated breath for the results of the lottery – 8,000 spots are available for week-long riders. The remaining spots are saved for “day” riders – those riding 1 to 3 days,  rather than the entire 7 days. The route varies each year. This year the route is in Northern Iowa and is one of the flattest and shortest routes. It is dubbed the third easiest RAGBRAI route – we’ll see about that!

Planning the drive from Ottawa, we discovered that Paula and Dave, whom we met on our first freighter cruise, were exactly half way between Ottawa and Dubuque, Iowa.  Dubuque is the final city on this year’s RAGBRAI. We had to stop by for a visit! When we contacted them, they were delighted that we wanted to stop by.  They also told us that Dave’s brother Ed and sister-in-law Karin live in Galena Illinois, only 15 miles from Dubuque. Perfect!  Karin and Ed graciously offered us to a place to stay and park our car for the week we were riding. We are so lucky to have met such great people on our journeys.

On Wednesday, July 21, we had a great visit with Paul, Owen, and Irene. Unfortunately, Dave was away on business, but we hope to see him on our return. We enjoyed a great walk through the park in Ypsilanti, Michagan and played a couple games of dominoes (Becky won at least one game). We also enjoyed some of Ypsilanti’s finest brews, although we were a day early for the Michigan Brewer’s Guild Festival. (Who knew Ypsilanti was a centre of microbrewery excellence? If you love small-batch beer, we recommend a visit to the area)

On Thursday, July 22, after the long drive to Galena, we were delighted to meet Ed and Karin. They have “retired” from the full-time jobs in Chicago, and are now working and farming in Galena. Between raising bees for honey and tending a large organic garden for market produce, we’re not sure they’re any less busy, and that’s not counting other part-time jobs. They sure seem to be having fun though!

We visited the farm to see the garden and bees, and also got a tour of the Prairie fields that Ed is restoring. They are members of the Prairie Enthusiasts, and have spent the last few years carefully seeding, weeding and burning their fields, working to restore the original prairie ecosystem.

Karin’s vegetable garden in Galena Illinois, carefully protected from deer.

Karin in the back of the pickup on our way to see Ed’s prairie.

Scott standing out in one of Ed’s prairie fields. Amazingly, it is all planted and weeded by hand!

Thursday night brought a thunder and lightening storm that lasted more than 3 hours and dropped more than 5 inches (125 mm) of rain on Galena and Dubuque. Things were looking rather soggy when we drove into Dubuque to drop off our bikes. With more rain in the forecast for Friday night, we happily accepted Karin’s offer of a ride into town in the morning. This meant we did not need to camp out in Dubuque on Friday night. Friday night, an additional three inches (75 mm) of rain fell, causing major flooding in Galena and parts of western Iowa. We were very happy to have stayed indoors!

Flooded Galena Main Street. Note the submerged minivan and closed flood gates. Saturday, July 24th.

Foggy but not-so-flooded Galena Main Street a week later. Sunday, Aug 1st.

Note: If you are subscribed to our email feed, you will be receiving these posts one to two weeks after the event. We did not bring a computer with us on RAGBRAI, so the blog posts are being written from the comfort of home as we recover from our adventure!

The bikes may be the same, but the faces are different. We must admit, it was a little odd seeing two touring cyclists riding the same bikes as ours.

This is a picture of Sylvie and Ben a.k.a. Frogs on ‘Bents. They have been on the road since April 2008. We originally connected with them via email, and kept in touch occasionally during our ride, so we were very excited when they told us they were coming to Canada this summer, and riding through Ottawa! That was, until we checked the dates… they would arrive in Ottawa just after we left for RAGBRAI 38. Very sad. Fortunately, we did manage to meet up with them at lunch near Brighton, Ontario, as we drove toward Iowa and they pedaled east. Hearing their stories, now we want to go to Patagonia!

We only wish we could have spent a few days riding with them. We would have been quite a sight too – four fully loaded HP Velo Streetmachines!

What the heck is an S24O you ask? It’s a short overnight bike tour (S240 stands for Sub 24-hour Overnight) for those of us who can’t get away for anything longer. Since you are not gone for long, you don’t need to bring too much stuff and you need less time to prepare. Once your bike is kitted out, you can easily do an S24O on a weekend and still have time for the Sunday afternoon BBQ with friends. Russ Roca describes it well in his blog post here.

For our first S24O, we decided to go south to Manotick and the Rideau Canal, about 65 km each way. Preparation took longer than it should because all our all our gear was spread about the basement and the kitchen. Becky took advantage of having a kitchen and did all the prep work for dinner and breakfast – what a change from expedition cycling!

We finally managed to get our gear all packed up and were ready to go by 2:30 pm. We looked into the sky to see some pretty scary clouds and questioned our sanity. It was all very reminiscent of our first day touring, leaving late in the afternoon with thunderclouds in the sky. Fortunately, the clouds seem to be moving out of our away. Each time we approached one, it moved before we got too close, making for a beautiful ride on traffic free back roads.

On our route out we followed a bike route from the Eastern Ontario Recreation Map. We highly recommend this map for anyone riding from Kingston or Cornwall to Ottawa as it shows many different rural routes where you can enjoy the countryside with very little traffic. We didn’t use the map for the route home, and we regretted it.  The recommended route was much quieter and more relaxing.

Following along the canal, we took advantage of a policy that allows those arriving on bicycles to camp at the lock stations for minimal cost. We stopped and enjoyed dinner at the Burritt’s Rapids lock station, then continued on to Lower Nicholsons where we camped for the night, all for the princely sum of $4.90 per person.

We arrived an hour and a half before sunset, but as the sun was sinking the mosquitoes came out. Anyone working at the locks might not realize just how bad the mosquitoes can be, as the lock staff had all left before they came out to feast.  We quickly set up the tent and crawled in.  Once it got dark, the fireflies provided us with a show, lighting up in the field and trees in front of our tent. It was so nice to be camping out under the stars again!

Morning came early, as Scott had to be home by 1 pm for a meeting. Becky crawled out of the tent shortly after 6 a.m. and immediately became breakfast for the mosquitoes. The remnants of  mosquito coil we had bought in Malaysia, which did us well all last summer, seemed to have lost it’s potency. The mosquitoes were not all affected by it. Fortunately, Becky packed some DEET, so we were able to eat breakfast without getting too annoyed. By the time we packed up, all the mosquitoes had gone away – melted in the morning sun.

Our trip home turned out to be a physical challenge. Normally, 65 km would not have been a problem; however, that day Mother Nature decided to give us a 20km/hr headwind. We pushed ourselves and barely made it home in time. In the end Scott got to his meeting a little late, since a shower and a big lunch were necessary first.

Overall, it was a great trip and we’ll definitely do it again!

This year, we have decided to do the Ottawa Multiple Sclerosis Charity bike ride. The version we are doing is an overnight ride (80 km each way) from Ottawa to Kempville. We’ve done a couple of different short one-day ride events, but this will be our first overnight charity ride. We’ll be sure to let you know how it goes with a post or two about the ride.

Becky has an aunt with MS, and we both know people with the disease, so this is a cause close to our hearts. In addition to funding research, the MS Society of Canada provides support and services to help those living with this disease, their families and caregivers.

In order to participate, we both must raise a minimum of $250. We would greatly appreciate it if you could help with a donation.  Any amount helps. You can donate online by clicking our fundraising links below. An electronic tax receipt for your donation will be sent to you by e-mail.

• Donate to Scott’s ride
• Donate to Becky’s ride

If you are not comfortable donating online, get in touch with us, and we can arrange a donation by cash or cheque.

I had a little incident yesterday on my ride home from work, and upon reflection, it doesn’t matter that I was right. I just need to be more careful.

Most of my ride home involves side streets and bike paths, but there is a little stretch where I need to ride on a busy street. The more recently developed part of the street has a bike lane, but once you cross over to the older part you lose both the bike lane and the paved shoulder. Fortunately, I only need to ride about 300 meters on that stretch before I turn left onto a  side road.

So, I watch my mirror closely, waiting for a gap in the traffic both oncoming and from behind. I see my opportunity, as a car passes me, the next car has just made a right turn onto the street (about 250 meters back). I signal my left turn, then quickly pop into the left portion of the lane ready to make my left turn. I’m only in the lane for about 20 meters. There is no oncoming traffic, so I won’t be in the lane very long. I hear behind me screeching wheels and the car honks his horn. He never really got that close to me, and there was plenty of room on the right for him to pass me if he was approaching too quickly, but the whole thing rattle me (actually it didn’t rattle me, and I’m concerned that I should have been scared rather than angry). I’m guessing that he turned right and accelerated without seeing me, such that when he did see me he had to slow down quickly.

Either way, I realized that it doesn’t really matter if I was right. If he didn’t see me until the last minute and wasn’t able to slow down in time, I would have been in a very bad state. I can do everything correctly, but the driver will always “win” if an accident does occur.  Grumpy as that may make me feel, I will definitely be more careful making that left turn in the future.

If someone were to tell me that April 2nd would launch the first long weekend of the summer in Ottawa, I would think they were telling an April Fools joke. Normally, we would be thinking about skiing, not bringing the bikes up from the basement for the first rides of the year.

April Fools or not, it is 27 degrees out and sunny. I think its time for bike ride!

It’s been a mild winter in Ottawa this year. We barely have any snow on the ground, and yet the cross country ski conditions have been amazing.  I’ve been out skiing more this year than ever – and I’m skiing longer distances more comfortably than ever before.

Last Sunday was a huge accomplishment for me – I skate skied up to Pink Lake in Gatineau park, a 6 km trip one way with 100-meters elevation gain.

When I reached the top of the hill huffing and puffing, I was rewarded with an amazing view. This picture is my proof that I did it!