Winter Corners

That’s been the mantra around our house the past few weeks as our family (me, my wife, and two teenage sons, all winter commuters) once again gets accustomed to riding in winter conditions. It’s been a good seven months since we negotiated icy roads, and it’s amazing how easy it is to forget just how cautious winter cyclists have to be when making turns—even with studded tires (which we all have).

In the days following the first ice, I heard three different friends’ stories of wipe-outs, all occurring on turns taken just a little too aggressively for the conditions.

I find it takes a conscious effort to shift from the mindless leaning into corners we do for three seasons of the year. Winter cornering generally means slow-mo, ever-so-gradual turning—not a single sweeping motion but rather a series of incremental micro turns and corrections as you attempt to keep the bike at a 90 degree angle to the road. I think of it as perpendicular cornering, an action both impossible and necessary. And it’s almost as good for the core as planking. 

Winter corners, winter corners. We say it to each other as we leave the house. I say it to myself as I approach the first turns of my commute, reminding myself to slow to a deliberate crawl as I attempt to change directions.

Winter corners, I recently learned, is also a scrapbooking term used for certain decorative touches in the corners of a page, usually some variation of snowflakes or holly. Since learning this term, I’ve found myself picturing my own scrapbook page, a variation of those “my-first-bike-ride” pages that parents create to commemorate that milestone. Except my imaginary “My-Winter-Cycling” page features a shot of me splayed out under my bike in a snow bank, having taken an unseasonal corner—complete, of course, with festive snowflakey curlicues and scrolls of holly along the edges of the page.

If you’re riding in winter conditions, be careful out there, my friends. Winter corners, everyone. Winter corners.  

One More Kilometre and We're in the Showers

Tim Hilton’s 2004 cycling memoir, One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers, is my kind of cycling book. It’s a charming account of Hilton’s cycling life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, and it covers both his fan’s perspective of continental pro racing as well as the history of Britain's unique club cycling and cycle-racing cultures. Hilton’s background as an art critic (biographer of Ruskin), together with his communist upbringing, gives him a unique perspective on this world. His delightful book is literary (full of poetry and descriptions of club magazines from the 1950s and 60s), nostalgic (celebrating the romance and mythology of English cycling’s past), visual (an image accompanying each short chapter), and chock full of stories that capture a time and place when cycling mattered in almost every town and village.

Halicz-Glidehurst

Most semi-serious Edmonton road cyclists know Halicz-Glidehurst—even if they don’t recognize the unwieldy name. It’s a 20-km zig-zag paved road that runs through a quiet rural area southwest of Devon, Alberta. The noteworthy feature of H-G (as I call it) is that it is the only paved back road in the area. It is surrounded by a grid of gravel. I’m not sure why H-G is paved; apart from being a back-door route to Devon, it doesn’t seem to connect anything to anything. But it’s an exquisite piece of asphalt for skinny-tired cycling, an unlikely but pleasant respite from truck-infested highways 19 and 60, and the kind of road you can ride down the middle of, most of its length, almost any time.

Onoway Getaway

It was back in May, during the Dusty 100, in fact, that Val, Penn, and I received an invitation to visit Bigfoot Ryan’s cabin near Onoway, northwest of Edmonton, and ride some gravel roads around Sandy Lake. Finally, a few weeks ago, we got our act together and ventured out there. It was a glorious, sunny, clear day—a rarity in recent weeks—and perfect for autumn riding. But the cycling was only part of the reason for going. I’d heard Ryan and his partner Gigi talk about their cabin at the lake for years and just wanted to check it out.

Liberal Fenders

The Alberta Liberal Party is a longtime political sadsack. Unlike its much more successful federal version, the centrist Alberta Liberals are perpetual underdogs, it seems, having never formed government in this province. For the longest time they could blame it on the genetic conservatism of Albertans; but that explanation no longer works, given that the leftist New Democratic Party under Rachel Notley leapfrogged over the Liberals in the 2015 election and took power.

Still, though, I have a soft spot for the Alberta Liberals (for the same reason that I’ve always loved the Leafs). That’s probably why I agreed to put a Liberal sign on my lawn when candidate Donna Wilson knocked on my door a month before the election. I liked her and had heard good things about her work. The Liberals went on to lose the election, of course, and in the end, I’m embarrassed to admit, I didn’t even vote for Donna Wilson. (Sorry, Donna, really! I got swept up in the orange wave like everyone else.) But it may be some consolation to Donna and her party that, while the campaign was a failure, her lawn sign lives on.

Worm Carnage

Rained all day here on Saturday, so even though the sun was shining yesterday, the roads were still damp, even bepuddled in places. Which means our Sunday road ride was worm carnage. 

I can't say that I noticed many worms on the asphalt as we pedalled, but when we finished and looked at our bikes, this is the gruesome spectacle we witnessed: tiny, noodly corpses attached to pretty much every surface of our bicycles. Tires, of course, rims, spokes, cables, down tube, brakes--even one affixed somehow to Val's headset. ("The horror!" I can almost hear Chris King whispering.)

Gravel Glossary: Fresh Powder

Encountering a grader at work on a rural road is something that occasionally happens to gravel riders, and for me, anyway, it’s usually a mixed blessing. True, graders can transform the nemesis of so many gravel cyclists—unholy washboard—into perfectly flat road surface, but in the process they tend to leave behind this soft, fresh powder, which, although pretty to look at, is no picnic to pedal through. As skiers know, fresh powder can be deceptive. It may look perfect, all soft and fluffy, like grey icing sugar, but it’s a quagmire in the ass to ride on. In a car? No big deal. But on a bike? It kinda bites.

Grand Beach Postcard

End of summer, one last hurrah, a few glorious days at Grand Beach, north of Winnipeg, visiting old friends. Classic cottage activities, catching frogs and playing cards, helped us not think about school bearing down. But this beautiful bike ride along a lovely stretch of the Trans-Canada Trail that runs parallel to the shore of Lake Winnipeg was the highlight. My favorite riding partner, Victoria Day, joined me on this one; here she is, among the birches, on our way back from the Ancient Beach Trail. I like how the trees are showing the beginnings of autumn, and I like how the trail looks like it goes on forever through the woods.

Pit Stop: Crepe and Shake

Bodacious Beaumont. The lovely little town on the hill southeast of Edmonton has got it goin’ on these days. Not only did Beaumont recently take over hosting the annual Tour d’Alberta bike event (and do a fine job of it); it’s also home to one of the hottest new restaurants in the west, Chartier. This once-sleepy French town is accumulating reasons to make it a destination. Edmonton cyclists have long appreciated Beaumont as a place to ride out to and back. And now there’s a terrific place to stop and take a load off, yet another Beaumont success story: Crepe and Shake on 50^th Avenue just west of 50^th Street.