Sunday, August 7, 2011

Morning ride around Provincial Park which is larger than Rathtrevor. Extreme fire conditions has closed all of the trails so were limited to 11km circle road route which is where we encountered Manitoba's Grand Fondo 160 km cycling event. Tom had a tough time holding back Kubla as she really wanted to jump in on the race. Took secondary road south out to little town of Oakbank where we had the bestest ice cream ever. Evening circle ride took us north on secondary roads past sunflower farms and into another little cute country town, Lockport and back to site. We dodged a very dark thunderstorm all the way and were very lucky not to get absolutely drenche.d. As it was another smoking hot day we split our kms between am and pm which I really like...I seem to get quite dehydrated in the heat of the day which makes peddling a tad more difficult...82 km day....then we stopped and cleaned all the aliens off our spokes. We read that in 2008 Winnipeg city council mandated that during any road rehabilitation or reconstruction they would add an active transport element in the form of a bicycle path, multi-use trail, or at bare minimum a dedicated bike lane. Already they have quite a network of trails and routes. Now all they have to do is change the mentality of their drivers who you cannot trust at cross walks, red lights, or stop signs....you have no guarantee that they are going to yield to you or try and run you down....have encountered more discourteous drivers in three days than in the last 10 years on Vancouver Island. With that said, Winnipeg's "active city" philosophy should be adopted by all Canadian municipalities.

Breakin' the law...anybody got spare change?

Beauty nite ride