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| Champlain Lookout first time around...cloudy, but no rain. |
But it wasn't to last for long.
Soon we tagged on to the back end of a group of 5 cyclists riding out to the park too. We had met one or two of them at our local bike shop before (The Cyclery...where I'm sure we spend our body weight on bike stuff), and so we just rode out on their back wheel until we got to the park, and then they went on their way, and we waited a moment to see if any of our friends were going to brave the reports of inclement weather.
They weren't.
So we rolled into the park to do our two loops - 90kms - to beat the rain. I'll be honest, with last week's epic two-loop ride coinciding with Ryder Hesjedal's historic win in the Giro d'Italia, last week I felt like I was on top of the world. Last Sunday, my legs were strong; my breathing was easy; my body was powerful; I was woman, hear me roar! (Cue Helen Reddy's 1970s classic over and over again in your head).
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| Let's just hope this little black bear doesn't have any friends in there with him! |
Instead, my legs were weak; I felt like I just couldn't pedal fast enough; and I had no roar in my heart or my lungs.
But it wasn't my own feeble roar that was more of a whimper that I should have been worried about.
Because while our friends may not have opted to ride with us, we certainly weren't alone out there. No we weren't.
As we climbed up the steep part of Fortune Lake, I rode up to The Man and looked beyond his shoulder to the side of the road to see a black bear just lingering in the greenery. We stopped and watched him, but that bear just wasn't going anywhere. He was looking at us with curiosity, and we were looking at him with a bit of worry.
Suddenly it wasn't a women's lib anthem ringing between my ears, but the creepy lyrics of the teddy bears' picnic:
If you go out in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go out in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.
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| Just hang in' out there watching us watch him... |
So The Man went first, bursting past the bear at 40km/hr, and then I went, slowing only so that I could look over my shoulder and make sure that the other woman who stopped with us also made it safely past the bear.
We did.
She did.
Maybe their teddy bears' picnic was more of a vegetarian kind than a cyclist kind.
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| At the apex of loop #2! |
The Man decided to do one more loop of the park, but I just rode home in the increasingly cold and wet morning, collecting some serious hardcore points on the way.
By the time I got home, I clocked just over 90kms on the bike, 3 1/2 hours of riding, with an average speed of 25km/hr. Of course, that would have been a faster average had I not been afraid for my life going down the descents in the pouring rain.
But I want to live to see another day, another bear. And so I rode conservatively.
And then it was time for my picnic.
Trust me, I'm no vegetarian.
Over and out,
Joy
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