Pit Stops: Lady Embalmer Park

In the heart of what we in Crestwood call “The Church District,” a two-block residential area with five churches (Catholic, United, Apostolic, Seventh-Day Adventist, Christian Reformed), sits a tiny parklet that I call Lady Embalmer Park.

It’s on 148 Street, just south of 99 Avenue, tucked into a large green space. There’s a cairn and two benches. A plaque on a cairn explains that Isabelle Connelly (1879-1963) was a pioneer teacher, community worker, and the first licenced lady embalmer in Alberta. LEP is directly across the street from St. John’s Catholic, which is not surprising, given that, as the plaque informs us, Connelly was awarded an honour by none other than Pope Pius XII (apparently a big fan of embalming, in general, and lady embalmers, in particular).

Pit Stops: Golden Spike Hall

Golden Spike Hall, west of Edmonton, is typical of rural community halls in Alberta. It’s a utilitarian structure in the middle of nowhere on a large piece of land with a few outdoor amenities, including a derelict baseball field. Such halls are, in theory, places for country folks to gather and celebrate special occasions, though, in my experience, they almost always look sadly abandoned, like no one has had fun, or even gotten drunk, there in decades.

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. 

Pit Stops: World's Best Climbing Tree

Trees can be a cyclist’s best buds, in so many ways. They provide shade along the roadway, they tell you which way the wind is blowing and how much, and they can even block a nasty headwind. Just the other day, in fact, battling a stiff southeast clipper on the way back from Alberta Beach, we lucked into some roadside groves of aspen trees that provided the perfect wind guard. The effect was remarkable, if short-lived.

(For mountain bikers, the cyclist-tree relationship is a little more complicated, I think. Trees create many of the best trails and provide essential technical features but they can also hurt you and wreck your bike. For road cyclists, however, trees are almost always wholly a good thing.)

And that’s not even counting the aesthetic benefits of trees. They’re beautiful, at any time of year, constantly changing, sometimes smell great, and, I would argue, have a soothing, therapeutic effect on anyone in their immediate presence. If you’re in need of a pit stop on a bike ride, pulling off under a tree is always a splendid idea.

This particular tree in Edmonton’s west end is actually too close to my house to serve as mid-ride pit stop. But I ride past it almost every day, and even after thousands of passes, it can still take my breath away on a spring day, like today, when the blossoms are in full explosion. When my kids were little, my wife and I would walk them down to this pocket park and the boys would clamber all over the low branches. It’s a perfect starter tree—accessible, smooth-barked, with horizontal spots for hanging out. It came to be known as the World’s Best Climbing Tree. We don’t visit the WBCT as often as we once did, but a few weeks back we stopped by, and our teenage boys got right up into the branches, just as they did in those long ago days.

Some trees have a certain magic about them, an old power that fosters relaxation, reflection, imagination, and even regeneration. The WBCT is one of those trees, and as I sit here under its branches writing this, I can feel its ancient energy reminding me that everything grows, blossoms, and eventually sheds its leaves. 

With that counsel from a good friend, I hop back on my bike and continue riding.

Pit Stops: Pee-Horse Corner

Somewhere out Villeneuve way, there’s a little pull-out beside a fenced field populated by a couple of horses. In our little cycling community, this pit stop has come to be known as Pee-Horse Corner. We almost always stop at the pullout to say hello to the noble beasts and take a quick break. And to pee.

The correlation between this corner, horses, and peeing is not something we ever planned. It just kind of happened. The corner is a convenient halfway point on our usual northern loop, so it makes sense to stop thereabouts.  But over time, somehow, I’ve become conditioned to associating horses at the corner with the act of urination—my own.

Pit Stops: Meewasin United Church

The outhouse at Meewasin United Church is a little miracle.

I discovered it one day while out riding along Highway 627 west of Edmonton near Keephills. The church steeple drew me in for a look-see. Nothing out of the ordinary, at first glance—the usual graveyard, spruce trees, small bell tower. Then I saw it: the shimmering white aura of the most beautiful outhouse in the world.

Pit Stops: Johnny's Store

Whenever I roll up to Johnny’s Store in Namao, AB, one of my favorite pit stops on north Edmonton loops, I feel like I should tie—not lock—my bike to one of the old posts out front, the way a cowboy might tie his horse to a shop-front rail in an old western. Johnny’s store is that kind of place. 

Walk in the front door, and whoosh, you’re in a different era. Smell the old wooden floor, notice the old-timey advertisements for motor oil and tires, the ancient wooden crates. I’m always reminded of childhood visits to Hargroves’ General Store, across the street from my grandmother’s house. My sister and I would buy Black Cat gum and poke around the toy section, the floorboards creaking underfoot, savoring the smell of sawdust and licorice.

Pit Stops: Alexander Circle

In a prairie city, where the streets are laid out in orderly grid fashion, a circle (not a cul-de-sac dead-end circle but a true, free-flowing traffic-circle circle) is something of a novelty. In Edmonton, though, most traffic circles are busy and dangerous spots if you’re on a bicycle. Most cyclists try to avoid them.

One lovely exception, however, is Alexander Circle, in the west end of the city, at the intersection of 133 Street and 103 Avenue. This elegant roundabout in leafy Glenora, tucked away between two busy commuting routes (102 Avenue and Stony Plain Road), is a peaceful gem of a spot and a swell place to take a break when on a bike ride.

Pit Stops: Fort Edmonton Footbridge

An old shot of the FEF, before the water came up.

It’s hard not to think about water here in Alberta this week, what with the crazy flooding in the southern part of the province. In Edmonton, where I live, we’ve been spared the worst, but the river is as high as I’ve ever seen it. The other day I went out for a spin through the river valley so I could get a good look at the brown torrent we call the North Saskatchewan, and I ended up at one of my favorite hangouts, the Fort Edmonton Footbridge (FEF).

Pit Stops: Edmonton Model Airplane Flying Field

Got caught out riding in a thunderstorm the other day. The online forecast had called for little chance of rain, so I foolishly ignored the dark clouds overhead and set out sans jacket. Fortunately for me, though, when the heavens opened I was close to one of my favorite pit stops in the farmland south of Edmonton. I took shelter at the Capital City Flyers’ model airplane flying field. It’s tucked kind of in the middle of nowhere: a small covered viewing area, complete with picnic table and bench and some metal platforms surrounded by carefully tended lawn—a perfect spot to escape the worst of the rain and take five. 

View of the Flying Field from the road. On a sunnier day.

Pit Stops: John Janzen Nature Centre CT

Let me tell you about my favorite public toilet.

Tucked away in a western cranny of Edmonton’s river valley, between Fort Edmonton Park and the John Janzen Nature Centre, stands a marvel of elegant, simple, sanitary-engineering  design. It’s a composting toilet (CT), made by Advanced Composting Systems of Whitefish, Montana, and it’s situated in a small raised structure next to a cycling path. The staff of the Nature Centre look after it, and they keep it remarkably clean and well stocked; I’ve used it many times and never been caught wanting for supplies. Sometimes there’s even actual Purell in the hand-cleaner dispenser.