50km Recovery Ride: Watch your Dog!

Us with the Ottawa River behind us
and the blue skies above us.

Joy here...With yesterday's 108km ride in our legs, a few of us--my new friend Trish Turbo and her coach (now MY coach) Andrew, The Man, myself, and a fellow rider, ex pro-football player Jed (aka Handsome Jed)--decided that we'd head out for a nice, easy recovery ride this morning.

So we rode out from our Kanata hotel past the start line from yesterday's event, and towards the bike paths.  The sun was high; the grass was dry, and we were ready to fly.  Well, not really.  Even though all our legs felt peppy and ready to go, we reigned ourselves in (for the most part) and rode at a leisurely 30km/hr (even slower on the bike path sections), chatting with each other, and stopping for a few photo ops along the way.

And while there were many fun things about today's 50km ride, many laughs, many good conversations, and lots of friendships cemented, there were a couple of not-so-good moments that bear mentioning.

The Man, Andrew (my new coach), Turbo, and
me.

You see, in Ottawa there are these great multi-use recreational paths.  I usually just refer to them as the "bike paths" (as above), but in all honesty, they're shared by loads of people.  I've run along these paths more times than I can count and first blogged about them nearly two years ago.  People of all shapes and sizes, all ages, and doing all sports use these paths.  There are parents with kids in strollers; there are cyclists; there are recreational bike riders; there are runners; there are walkers; there are rollerbladers; there are skateboarders; and there are dog walkers.

Dog walkers.

That's where we're going today.

Two days ago, during Stage 18 of the Tour de France, former Belgian national champion Philippe Gilbert (who I saw in person last year at the Montreal Grand Prix), amongst others, was injured when a big dog ran out into the middle of the cyclists out there riding their hearts out for Tour de France glory.  Gilbert had to be held back as he gave those dog owners a piece of his mind (no doubt a profanity-filled piece at that).

Philippe Gilbert fearing his Olympic dreams may be
crushed because of irresponsible dog owners.
(Photo Courtesy of Velo News)

Now, I don't have anything against dogs.  I'm not a big dog hater or anything like that.  In fact, I have quite a soft spot in my heart for many of my friends' dogs.  However, I do have a pretty big hate on for irresponsible dog owners.  But while it may be rude or inconsiderate for dog owners to leave their dog's shit on the sidewalk, it's downright dangerous for dog owners to fail to keep their dogs on leashes in public contexts.

As our little group of 5 recovering cyclists headed out on our leisurely ride today, I was thinking of poor Gilbert and all the other cyclists who get taken out by careless owners who let their dogs randomly walk in front of a pro peloton...dangerous to both cyclists and dogs alike.  And as I was musing on the stupidity of some people out there who put the lives of cyclists and the life of their pet at risk by being irresponsible, what should we come upon?  You guessed it.  There was a lady just walking along the path...ON THE WRONG SIDE...carrying her coffee in one hand...with her dog trotting along three feet in front of her...WITH NO LEASH.  So not only was stupidhead walking on the left side of the path, forcing us to veer around her into the other lane, but she was just merrily letting her dog go unleashed on a public, multi-use path, not only putting cyclists at risk, but probably scaring the pants off any dog-fearing path user as well.

Here's a clip from the 2007 Tour de France.

I just shook my head and thought mean thoughts about her.

Then we turned around a bend in the road to come upon a guy on roller blades with his dog on the leash.  Sounds good so far, right?  Yeah, it would have been good if he either knew how to use roller blades, or had his dog under control.  Neither was the case.  The dog was pulling him left and right, and  he was wobbling around utterly unstably.  Then his dog jumped on another rollerblader as his owner rolled right into the ditch at the side of the path.  Seeing all this, I turned to the group behind me:  "go slow, dog ahead!" I shouted, as I took our speed right down to a crawl so that we could stop, veer, or react as necessary.  The guy merely looked at us sheepishly.

So now I take a moment for crazy-coffee-no-leash-lady and stupid-rollerblader-no-control-guy and any other dog owners out there wanting to take pets out into shared public spaces where there might be folks with wheels:  BE CAREFUL!  Unless you're at a leashes-off dog park, please keep your dog on a leash.  Please.

I will just enjoy my friends' dogs...all the fun, none of the responsibility!

Over and out,
Joy