Woodbend Postcard

Photo credit: Strava Jeff.

The fields may still be covered with snow and the air cold as crud, but the roads, they are clear. It’s April, even if it doesn’t look or feel like it. That means it’s time to bust out the road bikes with Strava Jeff and head out of town, away from the snow-and-ice-and-crap-cluttered shoulders of city streets and onto clear country pavement just west of Edmonton.

I was so excited that I could hardly sleep the night before my first road ride of the season. I realize that this is a ridiculous thing for a 51-year-old man to admit. But it’s true none the less. Getting back on the road bike is the true shifting of the seasons for me. The long, cold, dark winter is over—so insists the angle of the sun, regardless of what the thermometer says—and the warm days and green leaves of summer begin to feel like more than just a promise. 

I knew I’d be sore after my first ride, always am. Doesn’t matter how many spin classes or fat bike trail rides I’ve put in over the last five months, being on the road bike is a different kind of effort. And it brings a different kind of pleasure: getting to see things again, even if it’s just white fields and power lines, and returning to the old familiar rhythm of the road.