Fish Creek bike

When I heard someone had ridden from fish creek, I was so impressed, it seemed like an enormous distance. But then later on, was looking at a map, and it didn't seem quite so bad. I'd done half-way round trip before, so full-way one-way (C-train home) would be the same. So I tried it myself.

Started off pretty normal, then as I crossed the zoo bridge going slow for pedestrians, a red-shirt passed me. He seemed pretty speedy, so I decided to set him as my pace car. After that, spent the next 30 minutes constantly going 100% to try to keep up. And keep up I did! No chance that I'd ever pass, but that's fine. Having someone there like that as motivation causes you to push yourself much more than being alone. I was even thinking, if he had stopped somewhere, I'd have stopped and said "Hey! What do you think you're doing?! You can't just stop." Anyways, along some gravel-road section near douglasdale, I somehow kicked up a stick and it jammed in my rear deraileur. As the dull grinding sound slowed me down, I tried to kick and back-pedal it out, but couldn't. Nooo.... red-shirt.... He quickly disappeared as I stopped for the quick fix. But even losing 30 seconds at 100% would require 5 minutes at 110% to recover (do the math) which of course would not be possible. I was actually quite sad to lose red-shirt, he'll never know how much he meant to me! As I started up, I discovered the situation was worse than I thought, as I changed gear and heard a terrible rattling! Stopped again to analyze things. A piece of metal had been bent, now pointing from the deraileur towards the wheel. If I stay in the gear farthest from the wheel (hardest), it's ok, but if I try to drop down, that metal goes into the spokes. With the rear stuck there, the front could only go to outside and middle, meaning my 21 speed bike had become a 2 speed bike: Hard and Maximum. Which I use most of the time anyways, except it made long steep hills extremely difficult. And stupid male ego prevented me from getting off and walking up, so I put super stress on my muscles and bike. Because of the first discovery of metal-into-spokes, my rear wheel was no longer true. But overall it wasn't too bad, still ridable. But with these setbacks, and the loss of red-shirt, I was pretty lazy the rest of the way. Also, without red-shirt, I got a little lost, had to bypass fences to go through a pathway closure, and eventually the pathway ended in a community and I had to backtrack to the previous turnoff. Still, it was only a little more than an hour from my place to 22X, I was impressed. Quite a while to get over to the train station, as I looked around. Was hungry but couldn't find any good food places. The train ride home seemed to take almost as long as the bike ride.

Quite glad to have done it, for sure will go again sometime, maybe someday make it round trip. Was a lovely day leading into a lovely evening (that I won't write about).