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!