A Beginning

They say one of the key things to becoming a pro, at anything, is to practice it every day. I’m not saying I want to be a pro, but I do want to be in decent shape. I want to be able to ride fast and ride far. I want to make it to my destination, and not have my legs feel like rubber, or feel burn in my muscles. These are things that I want.

I wouldn’t call myself an experienced cyclist. Yes, I’ve biked for years, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about cycling beyond the basics. In some areas, like basic maintenance, I know less than the basics. There are a lot of areas that I need to improve if I’m going to be able to consider myself a good cyclist. This site will showcase my learning, and my exercise routine as I work toward that goal.

As this is my first entry, I guess I’ll use it to provide a little bit of background on my cycling experience. I will, in the future, occasionally include stories from my earlier years of cycling, especially if I can get a map or photographs to go with it. Heck, I’m hoping to have some sort of photo with every post, just to keep track of how things are going.

Like most of us, I got my first bicycle as a kid. I couldn’t tell you the make or model. I couldn’t tell you if it was a mountain bike or road bike. But I can tell you that I was only allowed to bike on my block, a pair of streets called Delia Crescent and Martin Avenue in Timmins, ON. A rule that I promptly broke the very first day I was allowed to bike unsupervised. I think I broke that rule every day that I hopped on my bicycle.

As a kid, the bicycle was the ultimate tool for freedom. For the first time, I could go anywhere I wanted, and didn’t need to beg my parents for a lift. Sure, the extent of my “freedom” was my friends’ homes or the corner store, only four or five blocks away. Eventually though, I got older, more experienced, and my folks decided to lift their rule (because they probably realized I ignored it anyways), and I started to take my bicycle up the hill to school during the early fall and late spring. The snow always came early where I grew up. We would be bundled up in snowsuits before Halloween, and we wouldn’t be out of them until late April, sometimes even May.

As I grew older, my bicycle was replaced a couple of times. I remember by late high-school, I had a silver 12-speed mountain bike. I don’t remember the brand. I personally installed a bike computer, a metal rack on the back, and a pair of saddlebags. We had moved to a small town on the outskirts of Timmins called Porcupine. There was a small mall down the street, and I would ride to that mall, pick up some stuff, and ride home. I had a couple of friends in the neighbouring town of South Porcupine that I would occasionally visit on my bike. During my summers back home from college, I had a job in a different section of South Porcupine that I would ride to on most days. On a couple of occasions I would actually ride all the way into Timmins to the “big” mall. I also remember taking a ride most of the way to Iroquios Falls to a little place called Uncle Fester’s for the best damn poutine I’ve ever had. The saddlebags weren’t installed properly and were eventually destroyed. I ended up replacing them with a hard locking case that I picked up at Zellers on clearance.

The silver bike made its way to Ottawa, Ontario during my final couple of years in the city. I lived in an apartment building on Prince of Wales, worked at the Best Buy on Merivale, and went to Carleton University. I didn’t really explore much of Ottawa on my bike. I once went all the way to a place called Pho Thu Do on Somerset, but that was about it. Other than my rides to work or school, I didn’t really use my bike. I ended up picking up a front & back light because of the night cycling that I would have to do to get home from closing shifts at work.

The silver bike’s front fork’s bent up and threw me head over handlebars on my way home from work one day. Thankfully, there was a sports shop a short distance away (the same place I had just picked up new brake pads from only a week or two before). I went in, and bought a new bike. It was, and is, a blue 18-speed Carerra Algonquin with click-shifters. I transferred my equipment from my old silver bike to the new one, grabbed the brake pads, and left my silver bike for the shop to recycle as they saw fit.

Cycled Map of North Bay

The new bike seemed faster than the old one, and I loved it. I moved up to North Bay, Ontario for yet more university. It became my primary mode of transportation that year. I lived out on Whitney St and would use the bike to go anywhere. I travelled to either mall, my work on McKeown Ave, and even up to the university. Eventually I came to the decision that it was far too exhausting to take it up to the university every day and would park it at my workplace and take the bus up the hill from there. My North Bay cycling map is to the left. The red lines indicate where I biked.

When school was finished, I moved back up to Timmins, Ontario. Found myself a small place near my “temporary” work. I biked to work every day while the weather permitted; walked when it didn’t. Occasionally I would make a trip downtown just to see some different scenery. But the bike became a tool for transportation from home to work, and that was about it. The winter was long and brutal, and I eventually ended up moving back in with my folks in Porcupine, shelving the bicycle for the year.

Cycled Map of Sudbury

I was promoted at my “temporary” job and transferred to Sudbury, Ontario. I found myself an apartment, and used my bike to get to the New Sudbury Shopping Centre, and on occasion all the way to my workplace up at the New Millennium Shopping Centre. I hated my new position, so I stepped down and moved to a different location. At first I took the bus there. Eventually, I couldn’t afford the bus and the weather was nice, so I started to bike there, as suicidal as trying to bike on the streets of Sudbury was. My Sudbury cycling map is to the left, with red lines indicating where I’ve biked.

Before I left Sudbury, I had managed to get myself biking regularly. A good help to that was that I needed to travel the 10 km to work and back five times a week. The construction that started blocking off my main cycling route ended up forcing me to explore different areas. I kept track of the time it took me to get to work on the bike. It started at 1-hour, showing a horrible biking speed. By the end of my first week of regular biking, I was down to 45-minutes. By the time I moved out of Sudbury, I was managing my trip in 25-minutes. It always took me between 5-10 minutes less to get home because it was almost all downhill home from work. My writing group began to joke that I was training to become the next Lance Armstrong.

Now I’m back in Ottawa, Ontario. I still have my blue Carerra Algonquin, though it’s starting to show its age (6-years without proper maintenance). The bike computer is destroyed, the lock on my carry-all is broken, the chain is beginning to look pretty rusted, the gears don’t shift properly, the grips on the handlebars are nearly destroyed, the pedals are pretty beat up, the crankshaft may or may not be bent and I’m pretty sure there’s a leak in the back tire. The front light is still the original from when I moved to Ottawa the first time, and it’s starting to dim, despite fresh batteries. The back light is new from just before I left Sudbury, a gift from one of my favourite customers.

I’ve been back in Ottawa for almost a month now. I can count the number of days I’ve spent less than an hour on my bike, on one hand. Less than two hours requires a couple extra fingers. I’ve re-covered almost all the areas that I biked when I lived down here before, and added a lot of new streets to my repertoire.

I have two routes (and their reverse routes) that I hit up regularly: home to Algonquin College, and home to St. Laurent Shopping Centre. Often, on my way back from the college, I’ll swoop down and visit South Keys Shopping Centre. There’s a Chapters there that I like to hang out in. The trip to Algonquin College is roughly 14 km, and I’ve been managing it in about 35 minutes (40-45 minutes to return home). Unfortunately, I’m exhausted when I arrive.

That brings us to now. The school year is only another week away, and I plan to be biking to the school. I need to make 3 trips there every week, on Monday, Thursday and Friday. The other days I have other places to bike: grocery store, Chapters, “work”, etc. Find below my Ottawa cycling map, red lines indicating where I’ve taken my bike. This is up to date as of today.

Cycled Map of Ottawa

This site will have one entry per week. The format will be as follows:

• Open with a story, biking regulations, or biking tips. This will vary from one week to the next and will probably contain the most interesting parts of this site.
• List the days of the week, beside each mark cycling route, distances, and times.
• Calculation of average speed and average daily distance for the week.
• Calculation of average weekly distance & cumulative speed

So, if we count the above as the story, the post would end:

Sunday: No cycling due to rain. 0 km. 0 km/hr

Monday: Travelled from Alta Vista/Industrial, along Alta Vista to Heron, Heron to Woodroffe, Woodroffe to Navaho, Navaho to Algonquin College. Time 35 minutes. Travelled from Algonquin College to Navaho, Navaho to Baseline, Baseline to Bank, Bank to South Keys Mall. Time XX minutes. Travelled from South Keys Mall to Bank, Bank to Alta Vista, Alta Vista to Alta Vista/Industrial. Time XX minutes. 32 km. XX km/hr.

Tuesday: Alta Vista/Industrial to Alta Vista/Bank. Alta Vista/Bank to Alta Vista/Industrial. 11 km. XX km/hr.

Wednesday: Alta Vista/Industrial along Alta Vista to Heron, Heron to Navaho, Navaho to Algonquin College. Time 35 minutes. Algonquin College to Navaho, Navaho to Baseline, Baseline to Alta Vista, Alta Vista to Alta Vista/Industrial. Time 40 minutes. 26 km. 20 km/hr.

Thursday: Alta Vista/Industrial to Terminal, Terminal to Train Yards Mall. Time 4 minutes. Train Yards Mall to Terminal, Terminal to Belfast, Belfast to Coventry, Coventry to St. Laurent Mall. Time XX minutes. St. Laurent Mall to St. Laurent, St. Laurent to Belfast, Belfast to Terminal, Terminal to Alta Vista, Alta Vista to Alta Vista/Industrial. Time XX minutes. 7.8 km. XX km/hr.

Friday: Felt lazy, stayed home. 0 km. 0 km/hr.

Saturday: Buried under paperwork, stayed home. 0 km. 0 km/hr.

Average Daily Distance: 11 km

Average Speed: XX km/hr

Average Weekly Distance: 76.8 km

Average Cumulative Speed: XX km/hr