Ice-Up Shoreline Ramble

 For this year’s edition of the annual ice-up ride, I decided to explore a new (at least, to me)  section of the North Saskatchewan River valley, the area beneath the Henday bridge close to the neighbourhood of Cameron Heights. I’ve often cycled along the paved path under the bridge and noticed a patchwork of trails near the shore and through the woods. And with the river water so low lately, I’ve noticed that there’s enough dry shoreline that a person with, say, a fat bike could probably ride for quite a while right next to—and occasionally into—the water. So that’s what I did on a recent sunny Sunday morning just before the first big dump of snow.

Riding shoreline, I discovered, entails a very particular kind of rambling--super-slow, constantly navigating around big rocks and ice-blobs, stopping occasionally to carry the bike over big boulders or across little (frozen) streamlets emptying into the river. It’s more like a roll-and-stroll or hike-a-bike than an actual ride. I probably only went about a kilometer before turning back. But I loved it. The sun was shining, the ice was doing its lazy, mesmerizing dance, and I was completely alone. It felt like a different world down there, a secret one, a beautiful one, with its own surprising soundtrack.

The Land of Second Chances

One of the big stories of the 2015 Tour de France was the emergence of African cycling—and I’m not talking about overall winner Chris Froome. For the first time, an African-based team, MTN Qubeka (South Africa) participated in the Tour. Five of the nine riders on MTN Qubeka were Africans (three from South Africa, two from Eritrea). One of their riders, Daniel Teklehaimanot, wore the Polka Dot jersey for a few days (first black African to wear any prize jersey at a grand tour), and the team finished an impressive fifth overall in the team classification.

When I picked up Tim Lewis’s The Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda’s Cycling Team (Velo, 2013) back in July, the timing was perfect. Lewis’s book about an African cycling story and the evolution of professional cycling in that continent suddenly seemed prophetic. 

Freeballing

These are the tattered remains of my MEC Merino T1 wool boxers ($42). They look like they’ve been chewed on by moths for decades and chafed up by thousands of miles of activity. But, in reality, they are only a few months old. I bought them as part of an experiment in cycling attire. This past summer, I decided to give up conventional lycra cycling shorts in favor of wool boxers and regular shorts-shorts.

Miquelon Recon

Val and I had took a flyer out to Miquelon Lake Provincial Park with our fat bikes on the Thanksgiving Monday with two reconnaissance objectives in mind: One, we wanted to scope out the 20-km of cross-country ski trails there, which are open year-round to cyclists (one of the few skiing facilities in the Edmonton area that doesn’t expressly forbid fat bikes in the winter). And two, we were keen to check out the network of crooked gravel roads that run through and around the park. Plus Miquelon is less than an hour’s drive south-east of Edmonton and I hadn’t been there in 20 years. A visit was long overdue.

Tasting Notes: Mr. Brown's Canned Coffee

Western style was prevailing in Taiwanese society in the 1970s. Fashionable ladies dressed themselves with fluffy while the most popular among gentlemen was to hold a cup of mellow coffee to enjoy the elegance of the black beverage.   

Who is Mr. Brown? Why does his canned coffee taste so good in the middle of a bike ride? Why doesn’t he look more Chinese? Why is he so happy? These are the questions that run through my mind every time I see a tin of Mr. Brown’s “Ready to Drink” Iced Canned Coffee, one of my go-to cycling beverages. Fortunately, I recently discovered www.mrbrowncoffee.com, a mischievously translated source of all kinds of fascinating, if not entirely reliable, information about this apparently famous Taiwanese treat. 

Ascent of Mount Nebo

I feel the air getting thinner as I turn the final bend of the ascent.  Approaching the summit, I notice subtle changes in the vegetation: the dew on the grass glistens with a darker shade of green; the trees are just that tiny bit shorter. I feel a shortness of breath as I shift into my biggest ring on the back. I am pedalling up Mount Nebo, the 121^st highest mountain in Manitoba.

Dusty 100 Wrap

A small cadre of wheelmen emerged from the fog Sunday morning at Victoria Settlement game to embark on the first-ever Dusty 100 Gravel Challenge. The circuit turned out to be neither dusty (it's been a damp week around these parts) nor 100 (the route actually clocked in at 107 km), but it certainly was  gravelly and a challenge. It took 6.5 hours for our mud-and-bug-splattered butts to complete the course.

Alberta's Tour de Mud(dle)

All Photos: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.com

Last Sunday’s stage 5 of the 2015 Tour of Alberta was a curious combination of farce and epic. Some will see what happened that day as irrefutable proof that the event is doomed; others, me included, will see past a muddled ending to great promise.

For naysayers, those skeptical of the whole Tour of Alberta enterprise, the fiasco near the end of stage 5, when second wheel Sven Erik Bystrom took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and the peloton followed him until a marshall on motorbike informed them all that they had to turn around, will be the defining moment of this year’s race, evidence that Alberta’s attempt at pro cycling is bush league.

Dusty Lens: Buffalo Campground, Red Deer River