The Long Way Home

I won’t complain about the weather – that’s been done to death – but I will say that when water cooler conversations about the weather displace the Stanley Cup playoffs – Go, Canucks, Go, eh? – in Canada, it’s been pretty bad. So let’s just say I haven’t logged very many miles kilometres this year. In fact it’s been almost as bad as 2008. (link)

But tonight turned out to be a perfect night for a ride, with temperatures hovering around 24C (75F), a clear sky, and no wind. The missus was working, and the place where she works has a Starbuck’s, so after dinner I decided to go grab a coffee. Of course it’s about 70 kilometres from here, but who cares, I’m on two wheels! Soon enough I had my beverage of choice in hand and was perusing the Chapter’s bookshelves looking for anything interesting that wasn’t already on my own bookshelf back home. This time I came away empty-handed, but with a few more items to add to my growing list of must-reads. (I mean, how could one not want to read Here’s Looking at Euclid, or Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements?)

Now how often does it happen, while driving your car or truck, that you decide to go the long way home for a change? Not often I’d guess. I know it’s rare for me to not take the fastest, most direct route. But when you’re on two wheels that dynamic changes and it becomes all about the trip and not the destination. So I came the long way home, logging another 100 kilometres or so looping around through Stittsville, Carleton Place, Almonte, Pakenham (with the requisite stop at Scoops for a pralines and cream cone), Waba and finally White Lake  before the last few kilometres back to the garage.

By the time I got home I’d had about 3 hours of country riding, a nose full of spring smells including a dead skunk and freshly fertilised fields, an extended period of riding straight into a gorgeous sunset, and a bike, jacket, and riding glasses smeared with the corpses of thousands of mosquitoes. What a great ride!