Bike Ride with a View...Part Trois!

Joy here...After my dismal digestive disaster of yesterday's running fiasco, I was up bright and early for a bike ride in the local park.  I hadn't done the loop of the park in nearly a month, but a friend of mine who I lured out on this ride once before was game to do it once again, so I figured if I failed at running, maybe I'd be better on the bike.  And what I discovered was that the world had been painted with such colours as to make any painter's canvass pale in comparison and to make my running woes seem silly and superficial.

When the world is coloured in shades of green and yellow, bronze and gold, red and orange, beneath an ever-brightening morning sky, who can think about her failures as a runner?

Imagine:  Nature paints the most beautiful scenery before you, putting colours together in combinations that would seem garish and out of place in any other setting, but that literally stun you when juxtaposed against a crisp, clear, autumn lake creating a liquid double of your world.  And when that happens, how can you focus on beating yourself up for what amount to little failures?

I tell you, I began to feel better and better as I rode, and as every corner in the road revealed more natural beauty.

October is really the most beautiful time of the year in this part of the world, and I sure hope that I can convince Nomi, her Man, and her Kid to make the trek out here one of these Octobers.  Just imagine running in these kinds of settings, Nomi!

The pictures really can't do justice to the display of colours surrounding this azure lake:  the vibrancy of the leaves and the white of the clouds that began to blow away as our ride progressed.

My riding partner and I couldn't help ourselves.  We had to stop and take photos of the lovely autumn colours, and we weren't alone.  Usually this park is closed to vehicular traffic on Sunday mornings so that cyclists can use the roads until 11am without worrying about cars.  But at this time of the year, it's open to car traffic simply because everyone else wants to get into the park and start snapping shots of the lovely colours in the hopes of taking a little bit of Autumn home with them.

So we rode on, ignoring the burn in our muscles and ignoring the chill of the fall air, feeling invigorated by being out in nature while she was putting on one of her finest shows for us.  I mean, when a lady gets all dressed up like that, it's only polite to sit up and take notice, right?  It's only the proper thing to take photos of her in her finery and appreciate her beauty, right?  Well, we did just that.    And before we knew it, we had made it up to the top of the climb to the lookout to stare out over the valley where the St. Laurent flats meet the jut of rock that makes up one of the edges of the great shelf of granite known as the Canadian Shield.

Here are a few pictures from our view up at the top of the lookout from the same place that I've posted pictures at a few other times this year (part une and part deux):

And here are our matching bikes:

Yay Team Opus!!!

I hope you've enjoyed this little photo tour of my bike ride today.  And I hope that you've felt as uplifted by seeing the photos of the natural beauty as I happened to feel by seeing the real thing.  There are just no words to explain how a few hours out in natural beauty can make you feel that all is right with the world.

Today's moment of cheeziness brought to you by Canadiana in Autumn.

Over and out,

Joy