Strawberry Jam

A gravel event in Alberta in mid-April? That’s a bold--and optimistic--proposition, but, hey, it worked. Last Saturday’s Strawberry Jam out Telfordville way, organized by gravel impresario Tim Bulger, was a hit. The weather was perfect, the roads in splendid early season shape, the traffic light, the dogs friendly, and the riders tickled to be out and at it pre-Easter.

Advice from The Modern Cyclist, 1923 (Wet Weather)

WET WEATHER RIDING

Sensible cyclists ride when it is not raining with nothing on their heads; there are very few days in our climate when direct sun-rays are hot enough to be injurious to even the hairless cyclist. (I have a bald-headed cycling relative whose scalp is like mahogany.) Many are also content to ride bare-headed in rain, and I do not blame them, though it involves fastening the cape rather tightly about the neck. But many of us who have to wear glasses like to keep the rain off them. I never had a great opinion of the cap, even in the long-ago days when it was sensibly made. But the modern cap is an atrocity. I do not want a Yorkshire tea-cake projecting over each ear and another in front of the peak. So I have bought no cap for many years and have divided my vote between those soft tweed hats (now lighter than caps) which can be worn any shape or no shape, and Barbours' "Haydon" oilskin hat, which goes in to my touring kit in view of possible all-day rain. It weighs 4 ozs. only; 6s. 6d.

Sooner or later it will happen that you finish a day's ride on tour with sodden shoes, which are still wet in the morning. There is not the slightest need to be afraid of them. Don't put them on again until just before leaving, but if the feet continue to feel cold, walk sharply up the first hill.

Li'l Dusty

Are you gravel-curious?

For the first time, The Dusty 100 Gravel Challenge (happening on June 2) is offering a shorter option, which we're calling the Li'l Dusty Half Hundred. It's a 50-km loop that still includes some of the scenic, historic, and lovely Victoria Trail featured in the longer route. 

Buena Vista Loops

Riding up and down Buena Vista Road is something I would never do in July. Or even May. Not a chance. But in March? I’ll take it.

The road is only 1.5 km long, running from the traffic circle at 142 Street and 87 Avenue down the hill to the tiny traffic circle by the Valley Zoo and the Laurier dog park. But it’s a pleasingly twisty hill and a ridiculously wide road--two lanes each way for a volume of traffic that would easily fit in one, essentially leaving the curb lane entirely for cyclists.

Advice from The Modern Cyclist, 1923 (Cycling for the Unsound)

CYCLING FOR THE UNSOUND.

"Cycling is quite a successful treatment for a much large number of ailments than is generally realised. It is, unfortunately, not often prescribed by doctors, most of whom are now motorists--partly by the necessity for time-saving, and partly for social "swank." If your bicycle is dear to you, and a doctor tells you that you must give it up, do not rest until you have found another who is also a keen cyclist."

Lands of Lost Borders

“Travelling by bicycle is a life of simple things taken seriously: hunger, thirst, friendship, the weather, the stutter of the world beneath you.”

                                                              --Kate Harris

Kate Harris’s Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road (2018) opens in medias res: the author and her friend Mel Yule, both recent university grads, are stealth-cycling in the dead of night as they attempt to sneak across the border between China and Tibet. Harris conjures up a magical scene with her poetic account of the stars “freshly soldered above the dark metal of the mountains.” The brilliant episode captures the mixture of fear, astonishment, confusion, and, most of all, the thrill of venturing under cover of darkness into forbidden territory.

It’s a terrific opener to what is a very fine travel book by this promising young writer who grew up in Ontario, studied at North Carolina, MIT, and Oxford, travelled extensively, published an impressive string of magazine pieces about her adventures, and now lives off-grid in remote Atlin, BC.

The book tells the story of two bicycle trips made by Harris and Yule, one in the summer of 2006 in China and Tibet, and then a longer one in 2011 from Istanbul across the old Silk Road route through Armenia, Azerbaijan, several ‘Stans, China, Nepal, and ending at the Siachen Glacier near the India-Pakistan border.

The Dusty V: 100 km Gravel Challenge

"There came a wind like a bugle . . . "

                                      -- Dickinson

Announcing

The 5th Edition of the Dusty 100

 Gravel Challenge

Alberta's Bugliest Gravel Event

Sunday, June 2     Bugle call 9 am 

Metis Crossing, Alberta

Ride the historic Victoria Trail!

                  Feast on gas station cuisine!

                                 Get profoundly dusty!

No registration fee. All are welcome.

                       Route and details to follow . . . 

The Day After New Year's Day

In New Zealand, January 2 is an official holiday known as Day After New Year’s Day. I know, it sounds like the title of a bad sequel to that climate-change disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow. But it’s a real thing, and, the more I think of it, a civilized concept. With hangovers and college bowl games out of the way, January 2 is the perfect time to go for the first bike ride of the year.

Wintry Lens: Happy Holidays

Image by Frank Patterson