2022 Rides - Week Seven

 This was supposed to be Winter Bike to Work week here in Saskatoon. Coudn't have been a worse week for it. After melting and raining and turning everything into slush - which people walked and rode through... and then it all froze solid - leaving a nightmare of wildly uneven and CrAzY slippery pathways everywhere. Also there has been so much snow that, the city can't keep up with removing it from roads and just piles it on the side - so there really isn't any shoulder anywhere to ride out of the main flow of traffic... yeah... 

Monday I was out doing some errands...

Hard to tell... but it is frozen SOLID, wildly uneven, and super slippery!? 

More of the same. 

Where they have done some clearing on the road... they do stupid stuff like this - blocking access to pathways!? 

Tuesday I just did a short ride around the loop to the south bridges. 

I haven't been able to look out for birds this past week and my eyes are generally locked on the pathway a few metres in front of me to try and discern which of the frozen lumps and bumps and channels and trenches are going to kick my tire this way or that... but I did spot this Common Goldeneye from the pedestrian/cycling bridge UNDER the road bridge (so there is rarely any snow accumulation there!) 

Grand Trunk Bridge

As part of the Winter Bike to Work week, there is a scavenger hunt... and, unbelievable, THIS is one of the items - it's a shopping cart taken from... one of the larger retail stores... likely be one of the homeless people that had been living along the riverbank to transport their meagre worldly goods around. For sometime it was wired to one of these poles, presumably to dissuade a casual passerby from taking off with it. It remained in place once it started snowing and the snow crews just cleared a path around it and now it's frozen in the snow and ice... 

It snowed Monday night.. not enough to fill in and level out the uneven surface of the paths... just enough to HIDE the surface and make it harder to read!? 

In the evening I went out for a walk to meet Amanda, who was walking home from one of the yoga classes she teaches. I spotted three snowshoe hares in the park! Can you see them!? 

Wednesday I didn't ride anywhere. it was cold and awful. Stragely the forecast suggested it was going to be warmer on Thursday and Saturday it was going to be above 0°C!? 

I stayed home and did some reorganizing and created a new Art Space in our living room. 

I did walk a bit - to go meet Keiran - who was walking home late from school in the dark (having stayed for a game and Pom performance) 

On the less busy streets it's often easier to walk in the roadway than on the awful sidewalks... 

Also CRAZY FULL MOON! 

By Thursday most of the pathways had enough new snow that riding wasn't terrible. It was a little bit warmer... 

Still took singletrack where I could, though... 

Spotted a coyote and a bajillion magpies in the field north of the university. 

Maybe not a bajillion... But a LOT of magpies. 

No, really, there were a LOT of them all over!? 

Some alleyways were a bit treacherous! 

I gave riding a miss on Friday. It never reached the forecast -18.... I think the warmest it got was -20°C with the -32 windchill... and got colder again in the evening.... but STILL they were forecasting +4 for the next day!? 

Saturday I was out and about again. It DID acutally warm up to above freezing. Nearly a 40° change in temperature!? How does that even work!? Regardless... I went for a longer ride and it was quite enjoyable. 

Saw a HUGE flock of birds - likely Bohemian Waxwings. 

So many of them! 

Corvids having a picnic lunch on the tiver. Wasn't entirely sure if they were Crows or Ravens... They did look BIG!?

Also spotted someone out on the river in a canoe!? 

Didn't go out Sunday. It was cold again. And that was the week... 

Looking cold the fist few days this coming week... I may just hibernate the next couple days.. 

2022 Rides - Week Six

Where did last week go!? 

I find the WHOOOOSHing noise these weeks make as they go flying by a little unsettling!

I didn't get out for a ride until late in the day and as it was about the time Amanda was leaving work, I rode out to meet her. 

Tuesday I didn't end up riding anywhere, but I did go for a few walks - to the pharmacy and out to meet Amanda when she was walking home from teaching yoga classes. 

Wednesday I also didn't get out until later and again, met Amanda as she was finishing work and coming home... but I went out early enough that I rode up to the Circle Drive Bridge first! 

From Circle Drive looking downtown. 

Waiting for Amanda. on the right is the Arts Tower, on the left is Place Riel Theatre - long closed (as a public theatre - I think the university still uses the facilities to show movies for classes or special events or just as a public lecture hall for speakers) - I spent many a Friday evening/Saturday morning in my younger years there for Midnight Movies... 

Riding home with Amanda

More riding home. 

More Amanda. 

Wednesday night it rained and the paths were absolutely treacherous.  Amanda took her bike to work, but walked most of the way there and home again. She also took these cleats to wear on her boots. There were many traffic collisions all over the province. It also got warm enough for a lot of the packed snow to melt and then it rained some more. 

And then it got cold again and all froze solid. No one left the house on Friday. (Except Keiran who walked to school). 

When I finally went out again on Saturday, this is what the trails were like. uneven frozen solid mess that was super slippery. It was a little like walking on scree in the mountains - totally uneven surface and occasionally throws you off balance when it starts to slide. This was totally uneven and you can slide... but instead of the scree moving, it was you just slipping on the ice... and scree is at least a BIT predictable, so you generally slid downhill... here you could slide it totally unpredictable, random directions!? 

Keeps you on your toes! 

And made for pretty slow-going, tense riding. 

And it was like that just about everywhere on the paved trails. 

inclines were a bit hair-raising. 

strangely, the non-paved singletrack was better to ride on... It was bumpier than usual, as people had been out walking on it when it was melting and loose and left lots of deep footprints... which then froze SOLID... but forsome reason, still has way better traction that the bumpy ice on the paved trail. 

Lots of Mallards on the west side of the river. 

Part of the large flock that had been hiding over on the east side of the river near the university earlier in the winter. 

More uneven ice. 

Sunday was much the same - but less sunny. 

Mallards again. 

An alley way near my folks place. large trucks had driven through slush and made deep grooves which then froze solid. This LOOKS like maybe it's snow, and those balls could be crushed or kicked/bumped out of teh way, but that it not the case! all frozen SOLID and stuck in place. 

I'd originally planned to do errands, but at my first stop realized I'd totally forgotten to bring a mask!? Usually I have TWO in my jacket pocket, but they must have fallen out at home... so I just went for a longer ride and decided to do the errands on Monday. South Bridge, looking downtown. Shadow of me on walkway under the bridge. 

There were sections of the trail on the east side that were still in pretty good shape. 

More good trail and a moon. 

There were other sections that were awful... It's supposed to snow this week. I hope it snows enough that it covers up all the ice and can be packed down into a smooth, ridable surface!

2022 Rides - Week Five

Started off Week Five (and February) with a bit of excitement. 

It was warming up and a bit overcast Monday morning... but an hour or so before we had to head out to a mid-afternoon appointment it started to snow... and then the wind picked up. By the evening, just about EVERY highway in the province had. been closed because visibility had been reduced pretty much to ZERO with all the blowing snow in the blizzard. 

Didn't take any pictures along the way - because we were in a rush. After dropping Keiran off I went downtown to the library... 

Despite the blizzard, all the rick-star-bike-locking locations were full, so I had to lock up around the side of the building (can only just barely make out the fainted shadow of the old Hudson's Bay Company building in the distance! 

Around the corner blowing snow made it hard to see things just at the end of the block or across the street! 

Not a lot of cars parked downtown this afternoon! 

Hey THESE GUYS GET IT!? (In my previous post, in this exact same location, all the cars parked along this stretch were parked in the bike lane - nudged in between the barricades like they thought they denoted where the individual parking spaces were!? 

Did a little ride around just north of downtown while Keiran was in the appointment. 

Normally, here, you'd see the Bessborough Hotel and the Broadway Bridge. 

Took a picture (or...two...?) from this exact same spot last week... no bridge to be seen today!

Bit closet to the weir and Bridge it was visible. 

circling back to pick up Keiran I turned up the 33rd Street Campus Connector Corridor and WOW was there ever a lot of snow and wind whistling down that road! 

Streets in North Park. 

Lots of "Brown Sugar" or Snand" or whatever you call it... that vicious misture of snow and sand that never quite packs down and sits atop froxen packed down and polished ice/snow and squooshes out from unter your tired in random directions pitching you this way or that... unless you're a bike ninja... or riding a Fat Tire bike....  

Heading home. Amanda trailing behind us. 

I take a lot of pictures from this place and usually you can see the far river band and all the buildings and trees... today.... nuthin... 

Amanda out there in the wind. 

got her to take a quick pic of me and Keiran. This is how I've been hauling them around to most places - or at least the ones we ride to. Others we, or they, just walk to... 

snowface/icebeard. 

Tuesday I just didn't go out. The roads would be awful. Not sure if/when the trails would be cleared. AND it was getting colder. A LOT colder. 

By Wednesday...

We were back into the deepfreeze with EXTREME COLD WARNINGs and windchills in the -40s... 

It didn't let up until Saturday.

I've ridden in extreme cold. I did a LOT of riding in extreme cold just in December - trying to meet my goal for the year. But, at the moment,  I'm feeling like if I don't HAVE to go out in weather THAT cold... why would I!? I'm DONE with riding in that cold (if I don't have to) - at least for this winter! 

It wasn't exactly WARM on Saturday, it just wasn't as BRUTALLY cold. 

Roads were awful.

There were sections of the pathways weren't clear and had to be walked/scrambled over. 

I had planned, while Keiran was in dance class, to ride to an adjacent neighbourhood 

So I hung around parks in the neighbourhood which were pretty much devoid of birds... or any life.. 

back through the pedestrian underpass. 

Later in the afternoon I did a library run. 

I started heading back home, but then decided to go for a bit more of a ride and continued on to the south bridge. There were at least half a dozen crows flying around the Grand Trunk Rail Bridge. 

Heading back up the other side of the river - there is a section where the MVA trail disappears because there are houses that own land down to the rivers edge, and so to get back to the MVS trail you have to deke onto Sask Cres. Which, y'know, isn't the worst street to ride down.

I could have turned back at the Senator Buckwold Bridge or Traffic Bridge... but I decided to carry on to the University Bridge, as it was about the time that Amanda should be finishing up her first aid course and heading home. 

Hoped I might run into her crossing the University Bridge. As it turns out I missed her by about a minute... 

Sunday, despite much warmer weather, I was distracted by too many things (not the least of which was doing the latest Birbs of Saskatchetoon drawing: The White-Breasted Nuthatch) didn't end up going out for a ride... 

The weather looks a bit more promising this week. Hopefully, I'll get out for a few more rides!