That Time of Year

It's gotten to be that time of year... the time when we dig all the bikes out of the garage and see which bikes still fit which kids and if we need to get any new bikes for either of them...



Yeah... too small... someone needs a new mountain bike.



She tried out Amanda's Scalpel and.... it doesn't fit too bad. Considering how the both of them are growing like weeds, I'm sure she'll be totally needing some sort of Adult small mountain bike by mid summer.



She did also throw her leg over Finnegan's mountain bike and that's an option...



I totally thought this would fit him for a few more years, but this is with the seat cranked as high as it will go, and at the bottom of the pedal stroke he has pretty bent knees!? Darn these kids!!?

 

So I actually had him try the Surly 1x1 I set up a couple years back... and it kid of fits him. I could probably put a shorter stem on there to dial it in a bit better for him. I don't think he ever really uses gears anyway....



AS mentioned in the previous post, we figured it was time to get Finnegan a new city-riding bike... while we were digging things out of the garage, I pulled this one out of the rafters for him to try out. It's an old Bike-E that my mom had picked up to try out and hasn't been ridden for years...



It was a completely different sort of ride than anything he'd tried before, but it's definitely an option...



I also had The Girl try out Amanda's old Soma cross bike - which I'd set up for Finnegan to use for gravel riding last year. Seems like she might be moving up to this - because the old Jake 24 was tiny last year and not even ridable this year...



Might get a slightly shorter stem for this one as well... but otherwise not looking too bad...



This is what Finnegan's looking like on the Soma...

Of course if The Girl take over the Soma for dirt road adventure rides, What will Finnegan ride...?



I had him throw a leg over my old Surly Cross Check (which is in need of some repair!) but that's looking like a definite option for him as well... Might have to find a new rear wheel and throw a derailleur and shifter on there for him... Or... Not... He's one of those kids that likes to just put a chain into one gear and then just ride in that one gear ALWAYS... so... maybe a single speed might work out for him....?

New Bridges

Two new bridges opened in Saskatoon today, so Finnegan and I went out for a ride to check them out.  Well, ONE is completely new bridge, the other is a new bridge replacing an older bridge that was demolished a few years ago.



Our first bit of excitement was just as we rode through downtown - we could actually ride UNDER the traffic bridge - for the first time in over six years. This section of pathway on our most used route to get to most places - including Amanda's usual route to and from work - has been closed all that time from when the bridge was condemned, through the demolition, until just today! No longer do we have to deke up to Spadina and dodge cars and construction vehicles! Wooo!



The river was very clam this morning as we were heading north.



Lots of leaves on the pathways.



The new Chief Mistawasis Bridge.



Looks like lots of people came out for the opening - there were loads of busses parked along the road near the bridge.



Crossing the new bridge.

 

Finnegan had to get up and have a look too...

 

Looks like they're planning some pathway under the bridge on the west side... but haven't finished that just yet.

 

Ran into our Mayor - Charlie Clark!

 

 On the other side there was a path that turned off to loop under the bridge - with a sign with a bike in a green circle...? Does that mean it's only for cyclists...? Or cyclists MUST go that way...?



Apparently it means it's a trail just for cyclists...



We followed it under. There were lots of pedestrians on it. Technically, the entire bridge was a pedestrian bridge for today... But I imagine there will always be pedestrians using it to go down around and under the bridge, I mean, how are they going to even enforce it? they're not, so why bother...?



Crossing to the north side of the bridge it seems that side will be fore cyclists only...? Again seems weird. I'm willing to bet there will be pedestrians that will go ahead and use this side anyway...




heading back east from the bridge on the north side there seems to be no cycle track or multiuse trail...?

 

We decided to head east and follow the new multiuse trail. I had no idea this was being built and am pretty pleased that it was... I wondered if it was complete and would actually connect in with the neighbourhoods on the North East edge of the city (that the road connects to)

 

Still Heading east, at one point the trail split into separate cyclist and pedestrian pathways.

 

The odd thing is all the signage is placed as though it assumes you are eastbound. Perhaps they were thinking that there'd be other trails on the other side of the road for westbound cyclist and pedestrian traffic...? There seems to be no indication that they are doing that, however...

 

And then it went back to being a single multiuser trail.

 

WE stopped when we got to Central Avenue. It looks as though the trail follows the road all the way along. We'll have to explore that at a later date, I wanted to get back downtown for the official opening of the new Traffic Bridge.



So we turned south and headed along the new multiuse trail alongside the new section of Central Avenue.



At Fedoruk Avenue the trail once again split into separate cyclist and pedestrian pathways. This is all new to me, as I haven't ridden up this way in a long time. I was very excited to see that it went all the way to Attridge Drive.



Strava doesn't seem to recognize that there are even roads there yet - let along bike pathways!



Nor does Google Maps...



We got back downtown just in time for the official first crossing of the new Traffic Bridge!

 

There was quite a few people out for the event! It was nice that it had stopped snowing...



WE also did a quick loop of the new separated bike pathways along Victoria avenue....

Again, lots of people walking on the bike paths - when there is a separate pedestrian walkway RIGHT NEXT TO IT!?



Looking back at the bridge from Victoria.



The festivities are supposed to be going on all afternoon... but Finnegan and I decided to head home for lunch! So excited that it's open, it's been a LONG wait.

40K Day

After riding 30Km with Finnegan on Tuesday and not having any trouble, I thought I'd try and push him a little further and find a 40Km route we could ride on Wednesday. I tired to plot out a route on Google maps but had to kind of guesstimate as the route we would take was along some trails that google maps doesn't recognize. but I had a general idea of a destination and an option to go a bit farther if the route I planned turned out to be shorter than I'd estimated.

We started out by heading down Spadina and across the south bridge to hook up with the Meewasin Trail.



There's one steep little section of the trail that's a little hard to ride - and with the recent rains it's almost unridable (going up, at least) with all the deep cut channels the rain water carved through it. It's a very odd section of the path - most of the trail is almost wheelchair accessible - in that there are no terrible steep grades and it's all fairly well packed... and then there's this one short super steep section - when there's, what seems to be, a pretty clear route that they could have built the path that wouldn't have been so steep. It's almost like two teams were building the trail from opposite directions, completely oblivious to each other and when they met up the found they were 10m off with a short steep slope between them... so they just cut a trail straight down that slope to join the two trails - instead of saying "hey, let's bag this trail up 30m and run the other one up across this slope so it's not so steep....



Farmers have been out bailing hay.



We cut through Chief Whitecap park.



It's a nice ride and avoids a bit of pavement.



Nothing too technical on these trails. They're mostly used by dog walkers.



In many places it's double track.



At the South end of Chief Whitecap we stopped for our first break to check the boy's blood-sugar levels and get a snack in him.



Then we rolled past the Riverside Country Club and through Riverside Estates.



exiting the East end of Riverside Estates we joined Range Road 3055 and started heading South.



Dang, I think he's been growing... Time to raise that seat a bit...



We rolled past the Cranberry Flats Conservation Area.



At Township Road 354 the pavement ended and the gravel began.



At least there were fairly packed sections and it wasn't washboardy at all. At times I wondered if it had been pavement that had been gravelled over...?



And on it went.



Getting closer to our turn around point.



This dog came charging out howling at us. No barking - just a loud bellowing howl.



A little bend before we met the highway.



Highway 219. I used to ride this highway a lot - it had really nice wide smooth paved shoulders. Two cyclists could ride side by side and there was still lots of room between them and the traffic lane. A cou[le years ago the department of highways chip sealed it - covering the shoulders with gravel. I have no idea why - it's not like the shoulder was deteriorating or anything. Perhaps it was a poorman's  rumble strip to keep drunks driving home from the casino (for whom this highway was built) from careening off the road...? I don't know. It didn't look too bad. But we ran into another cyclists who said it's not great a bit further up - they hadn't done any near the intersection as the shoulder effectively disappeared to make turning lanes.

This was the 20Km turn around point. If it hadn't been quite 20Km, I had planned to ride up the highway just a bit to the Beaver Creek Conservation Area. I had thought we'd roll up there even if we were at 20Km at this point, but I didn't want to push the lad TOO far... so we had a quick second break and turned around.



and back we went.



I have to say it was a lovely day for it. Not to hot. I think it was about 17°C when we left and was only just getting to 20°C when we got home. We were heading into a headwind for the return trip - but it was fairly light (10Kph). Just enough to keep us cool.



As we neared Riverside Estates we decided to skip it and carry on up Range Road 3055/Stratchcona Avenue - which would also skip Chief Whitecap Park.



We watched some hawks swooping overhead for a moment.



We rolled through Furdale, which brought us to Cartwright street.



And just a little way down Cartwright Street we rejoined the Meewasin Trail we'd come out on.



There we had one last check of blood-sugar and a snack to get The Boy home.

I don't know if it's that we finally got the new insulin regime dialed or if the regular exercise from these bike rides has had anything to do with it, but the blood sugar levels have been totally in the green these last few days!

Because we'd cut off the route through Riverside Estates and Chief Whitecap park we didn't go straight back across the south bridge, but instead rolled through Diefenbaker and Gabriel Dumont Parks to cross at the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge (a little north of our place) to make up the Kms we skipped coming back.




The final count. 40.05 Km. It took us two hours and 36 minutes of riding (we actually left just before 10am and got home just after 1pm - so there was also about 20-30 minutes of breaks in there somewhere.

Today we are planning to go for a mountain bike ride - as soon as I get off this computer! Tomorrow we'd planned to push a little further and go for a 50Km ride (probably the same route I took last week up to Wanuskewin Park and Cathedral Bluffs) but the forecast is calling for rain, so we may hold off on that until the weekend or possibly next week...