miracle mile

Imagine my great delight to discover this:

The pathway home - paralleling the local expressway and bypassing a particularly nasty piece of commuter roadway.

Thank you to the local farmer who allows the Trans Canada Trail to dip onto his (her?) lane for a few hundred meters.

I was sitting at the lunch table at work the other morning talking about my ride into town from the city. Currently, part of my work assignment sees me in a small town about 1km from the edge of Waterloo. I noted that the road into town, while nice and short and straight with no real hills on it, was not so friendly for a bicycle in rush hour.

Do you not know about the trail? One of my co-workers asked.

No...

But, now I do. This is it. A short, straight piece of limestone trail which goes exactly where I want it to go and drops me in Waterloo by a MUP which takes me right to the subdivision I live in.

How wonderful is that?

I do know how wonderful this is.

St Jacobs Farmer's Market

Railway in the mist

I simply love cycling in the fog. Everything is muted. Everything is saturated. It is gorgeous. To me, it is almost as beautiful as cycling in heavy snow. But that is something special.

 However, the night offers its own charms.

Construction Crane

four legged fury

Ever try and haul your behind out of bed when you know you should and you just don't want to?

That was me this morning.

Temperatures dropped last night to below freezing and the hope I had was for clear blue skies and frost fog. Unfortunately for that plan, it did not get cold enough to produce frost - instead, everything was dripping and damp under an overcast sky, making the landscape appear muted and quiet.

View over the field opposite our house

The sun, vainly trying to poke through the clouds

One thing worthy of note. Someone, I don't know who, but I am guessing people from the University of Waterloo or perhaps the Grand River Conservation Authority, removed a beaver dam on the creek feeding into Columbia Lake right before the winter freeze up. The dam was a new one, and was causing the creek to back up. It was not preventing water from reaching this unnatural human made "lake" but did create a new pond and deeper water which the local duck population used and would have created a spot for larger fish to flourish (Columbia "Lake" is very shallow - a water filled mud pan in fact). Somewhat ironically, all the beavers had the nerve to do was create a new pond in much the same way that people created a "lake" at Columbia Lake. Hrmmmmm.  For whatever reason, it was removed very close to freeze up which may cause the beavers some difficulties since they live on the branches they submerge in their ponds through the winter.

Here is where the dam was. Out of the picture on the right up on the creek bank was a mound of sticks and branches caked in mud that had made up the dam's structure. This is what makes me believe that the dam was removed rather than damaged naturally and washed away.

There was not much bird life today at the Lake, only a few mallards and some gulls. I was very frustrated with my camera - there was little contrast, and the focusing system refused to lock 90% of the time on moving targets. It was a tough task I was asking the camera to do actually as the gulls were almost the same colour and tone as the sky. I usually use gulls as target practice for birds in flight. I had a sum total of one keeper, and as you can see, it was not that good.

My one and only "keeper" while photographing gulls.

Finally, on the way home (finally, and naturally) the sun poked out. At the same time, I linked up with my neighbour who was walking his dog.

Here he is.

Nose to nose with a much larger dog

Meet the four legged fury.

out wandering again

I am not a huge train fan, unlike some of my friends, but I do enjoy the infrastructure that rail service - be it freight or passenger - brings to a city.

Today was a day for wandering around on the bike with friends. The Santa Claus parade was this morning, bringing in officially the start of too many decorations and the over playing of seasonal music. Coffee was, as usual, had at our favourite coffee shop in Uptown Waterloo. Errands were run. A picture taken. North of 40km was put on the bike. I realized I am not going to beat last year's mileage total of 8345 km sadly. I will be on target though to have at least 16 000km on my bikes and legs during the time spanning the 23 months prior to this coming up Christmas, which is a lot I suppose. So I will come near to matching it. There are 7100km, give or take a couple, on the legs thus far this year, but I suspect that time won't allow me to get another 1300 by New Year's.

It is my plan to leave early in the morning with camera in tow and take some pictures of some fog. We are due for some below zero temperatures with fog and clear skies above. Often, those conditions provide some simply gorgeous skies and wonderful light.

festivus is upon us

Workers in the Uptown today were putting up a Festivus bush. I know, they should be using a pole, but this is Canada, we still have trees, and if you squint hard, it might look like a pole with twigs, so I called it a bush... or something.

Either way, no matter how you look at it, it is way too early for such things.

In other news, it was one of the most beautiful days we have had in a while for just wandering about. So I did some. Wandering that is.

Later, on the way home from work, I was reminded why I always keep a camera close.

That is a lot of Toyota Corollas - and the train kept going for almost five more minutes after I snapped that one out the driver's side window.

find yourself?

Should a body ever find themselves traveling down Highway 401 in Ontario, in either direction, it would be worth their while to take a pause in Cambridge.

Most people who do so usually exit the highway and end up on Highway 24, which is surely one of the most wretched pieces of road ever conceived by demented city planners. It is nothing but a seemingly endless strip of big box stores, strip malls, and car dealerships. I would not bike it if you paid me to. I even refuse to drive it.

However, should our hypothetical traveller get through that mess, they will arrive in Galt. Galt is one of the three cities that was forcefully amalgamated to form Cambridge in the 1970s. The other two were Preston (south of the 401 but not as far south as Galt, and Hespeler, north of the 401).

Galt is worth a trip.

These were from a 15 minute walk around the downtown. Like stone buildings? Like back alleys? Like busy sidewalk scapes? Old churches? Bridges? Rivers?

If so, Galt is for you.

old revisited

Yesterday, a good friend of mine and I went out on the bikes for a wander around the city rather than go on a longer ride on the cyclocross bikes. I am still recovering from a bad cold that has settled into my lungs and longer rides are not happening yet. The weather was about perfect for it with temperatures hovering around 14 degrees Celsius with a fairly stiff wind. For November in Southern Ontario, that is almost idyllic.

We ended up on a trail which follows a creek in the south end of Kitchener that I have not ridden down in a very long time.

 Unlike many suburban trails, this one actually goes someplace and connects several different subdivisions together and links them, in a round about way I will grant you, to the city's major trail networks. It is very pretty, and with yesterday's wonderful weather, quite heavily used. I will have to make a point of returning again for another look around.

The trail ends at the remnants of an old settlement and still contains several buildings of note. The one pictured here is a car garage which used to be an old stable house.

Again, on my list to revisit, preferably when it is open, to see if they mind if I wander around the property and take a few pictures of the building.

whimsy

Whimsy - that thing without which we would be much less fun to be around.

Sometimes, I just love people.

transitions

"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Out - I need to burn some rust proofing off the front brake disk," I answered, slinging my small camera bag over my shoulder and climbing onto my bicycle.
"Are you visiting anyone?"
"No. Just going to rip around."

As I pedaled away, I thought to find at least a glimpse of the transitions which define this time of year and make it special.

I turned my dirty bicycle, front brake disk clean of oil, towards home, pedaling through the increasing dark.

remnants

Two times of year rate as having significant change.

We are in the midst of one of them.

Change always brings the leftovers, the holdouts, the things that must go in order to make way for the new.

Not always a bad thing this. Sometimes, beauty presents itself in that last gasp before succumbing to the inevitable.

ten minutes plus one

The other day I had a chance to tour around the city again on my bicycle and bring my camera out for an airing.

This past month has seen some incredibly wet weather. The region's weather patterns shifted from abnormally dry, almost drought like conditions through most of the summer to abnormally wet conditions - October received something in the order of 100mm more rain than normal and approximately five days when it did not actually rain. And not all of those days were sunny.

It was a joy to see blue sky and the sun again.

The center of the older part of Kitchener has as its crown jewel Victoria Park. It is a place of majestic trees, water, and older homes.

I spent approximately ten minutes on the island in the middle of the park taking pictures of fall colour in some of the most rapidly shifting light I have seen in a very long time.

 Plus one.

Those clouds hold a promise of what is to come for us regarding our weather. On the right is the old Uniroyal Rubber plant, and on the left some other buildings dating from the same time period. I am standing on the main rail line through the city. Those clouds? They are snow clouds.

Winter comes.

you can keep november

I am not a fan of the month of November.

Before I discovered the joys of winter riding a couple of years ago, November heralded the start of the end of the cycling year for me and began a several month hiatus from one of my absolute favourite things to do.

Usually, by March, I was a basket case.

This has not happened for a couple of years now. March is no longer a time for becoming a total loonie, and the riding hiatus does not happen.

However.

I still am not a fan of the month of November.

It is wet.
It is cold.
It is miserable outside.
It is dark.
It is damp.

Being rained on when it is a few degrees above freezing is worse than being snowed on many many degrees below freezing. Trust me.

Regarding November, you can keep it thanks.

60.5 in the rain

Normally, I don't bike in the rain.

This is not to say I leap off the bike and hide in the trees should rain start while I am out - in fact, I have ridden my cyclocross bike down a MUP in water so deep that the front wheel was setting up a pretty serious bow wave and have scared myself silly in a massive thunderstorm with hail that I got caught in while mtn biking - but I do not like leaving the house all warm and dry while it is raining out. Snow does not bother me, the more the better in fact, but the rain?

It seems somehow wrong.

Today was different.

Today, I went out and wandered about the city to the tune of 60.5km in the rain. It rained the whole time. At times, it was raining fairly heavily, and at times it was more of a gentle mist.

It was wonderful.

I did the same thing yesterday as well.

While out, I took some pictures.

This was the only storm damage I could find on my usual rounds on the bike. And I was looking. A massive willow tree lost about 1/5th of its trunk. Power was still out in some parts of the city yesterday, but mostly, things here were back to normal. We are quite far inland and did not get hit that hard.

We did get some seriously cool looking skies though as the tail end of the hurricane blew over. I wish I had had the time to spend just sitting and photographing the sky. It was amazing.

Water levels at Columbia Lake were very high. This is in part due to the storm, but mostly is due to the fact that it has been raining for almost three weeks now with only a few days off. Columbia Lake is not a real lake - it is part of the water management system created by the Grand River Conservation Authority and helps regulate the level of Laurel Creek which feeds into the river. Normally, the culvert these ducks are sitting on is about 3/4 to 4/5 exposed.

My usual path to my usual bird watching spot was under water. Again, while this has happened in the past, it usually does not happen in the autumn. Usually, it is like this after the spring melt.

If you know the lake, and most of you reading this won't, you know that this spot here is the spot where the creek feeds the lake. Normally, it is possible to easily wade across to the exposed clay bar picture left. Not right now though.  The creek is about four times as wide as normal, and at least two feet deeper with more current.

One big benefit of all the rain though has to be the beauty of the City's wood lots. This one is about 2km from our house, and is a very pretty spot. It makes a good shortcut on the way home depending on where I am coming from. Today, I found an excuse to go through it and pause to look around.

I am glad I did.