July Rides

Another photo dump of pics I took while riding this past month... 

Canada Day ride - rolled out south of town. 

Spotted a rather larger hole where a critter had made it's den. Badger, maybe? 

Did an extra loop of the trails through downtown - there was a rather large gathering in Kinsmen Park for Cancel Canada Day

In the days and weeks before 1 July, there had been a number of discoveries of unmarked/undocumented mass graves at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools. 

Not a lot of people were feeling particularly proud of being Canadian that week... 

Lily bloomed in my yard. 

Roadwork going on out our front door all month long. 

It all started in May, but this past month they REALLY started digging up the streets - making it challenging to get around. 

On the plus side, it's been rather dry all month, so nothing was slowing down construction... but still... it feels like it's been moving forward at a snails pace... 

On a trip downtown we spotted all the young geese, that are almost full-grown! 

On one of my rides Southwest of town I actually spotted a herd of cows. Typically not an uncommon sight in Saskatchewan. But I feel like I've seen less and less animals on the farms near town! 

Tandem ride with Amanda! 

Hawk we spotted on our tandem ride - with a Richadson Ground Squirrel it had caught for breakfast... but hadn't killed yet... it had injured the Ground squirrel - that was rolling around on the ground and trying to crawl away, but was having rouble doing so.

With the lifting of Covid restrictions, the kids finally got to see my folks new place - that they moved into last fall!  

Fire and Protective Services doing something around the Sid Buckwold Bridge. Never did find out what they were up to. I don't think it was a training exercise - given the police presence and ambulances and such along the shoreline and bridges when we rolled by the first time. 

Ride in the Countryside. 

Low water levels and many, many people wading out to chill on the sandbar/beaches in the middle of the river. 

Doing UPS and Canada Post's job for them. One of the most frustrating part of all the roadwork, is the unwillingness of SOME couriers to walk 10m extra from the corner to deliver a parcel - so I have to ride out to distant post offices and pick-up locations. We tried calling and complaining - but after sitting on hold for hours only to be told that for sure the driver made a delivery attempt but no one was home - when all four of us were at home, working quietly on our own things... It's especially frustrating as SOME  courier companies DO actually make the extra effort to driver around the block and walk in to our place from the corner... Really...we're ONE IN from the corner...

That's a dude out in the middle of the river. The water level is so low you could probably wade right across in places. I remember reading about the water level in Saskatoon being that low in books by Farley Mowat... but that was when he was growing up in Saskatoon in the 20s or 30s... before the weir or Gardiner Dam was built. I've never seen the water level so low. I'm surprised the paddle boat is actually able to operate! It must have a really shallow draft. 

Giant trench in front of our house - running the length of the block. 

trench at the end of the block. 

new water lines. 

More trenching. 

Out for a tandem ride with Keiran

Hawk spotted on said ride. 

Another ride with Amanda. 

for about a week in July it was SUPER smokey in town. 

This was probably the worse day. 

The smoke was blown in by a North wind. 

The smoke was from wild fires in the forests up North. Fires are not an uncommon thing in the North - but this summer has been particularly hot and dry. On this day, I think I read there were about 150 separate fires in the north and 27 were listed as "uncontained"!

Library run after an appointment downtown with Amanda and Keiran

Heading home.

Starting to fill in the trench. 

Sloooooooooowly.... 

Cool new thing going on under the Sid Buckwold Bridge... so excited to see how this turns out!

Kids heading to my folks again. 

Cormorants. 

I was doing so good during most of May and June and the first few weeks of July... 200Km/week... things kind of fell off the last couple weeks of July. Hopefully I'll get out riding more through August! 

That's all for now. 

June Rides

I did get a fair bit of riding through June... I tried to keep up 200Km/week I'd worked up to May and pretty much managed to do just that by going out for a 30Km ride most days.  I'm not fast. It takes about two hours. I enjoy the scenery. 

Here are some pictures I took while out for some of those rides... 

All the Baby Geese going for swimming lessons

Lot of hot, dry, cloudless days this month. 

And then there was that one day that it rained. 

Boy, did if EVER rain. 

Thought I might dodge these rain clouds... 

but wasn't so lucky - caught it for about 20 minutes near the end of my ride. the wide was so strong I was down to under 10Km/hr and my front was SOAKED, but my back was almost entirely dry!? 

Rainbow after the rain passed. 

still raining in the distance. 

Baby Geese getting bigger. 

this is about midway through the month. by the end of the month they were almost full sized and getting adult looking colours - but still hasn't developed wings to fly.

Sad scene - a cyclist was hit two blocks from our house one morning. This was many hours later when I happened to be walking by - van and bicycle still in the road waiting for traffic investigators. 

Happens EVERY time I ride down one of these separate pathways - ALWAYS people running or walking dogs in the bike track... 

More Baby Geese.

Crazy Clouds - totally thought I'd get rained on. 

Not sure it even ended up raining at all this day...?

Seriously, what is going on up there in the sky!? 

For a week or so, Amanda and i were getting out on the tandem, usually for a shorter ride, early in the morning. She was enjoying the rides.... 

First snake I saw this year, and it was dead. And a wee one at that, which made me ever sadder... 

More gravel rambling. 

Long, straight roads - but things looking considerably greener after the rain. 

More tandem riding. 

Another day of rain? 

Out for a ride with two of my favourite people. This morning I think we were heading over to a friends shoe store that was closing at the end of the month to stock up on some shoes! 

Friday trips to the library with Keira. 

They are always delighted to see the Baby Geese in the park downtown! 

So many of them! 

I'm not sure if they're Llamas or Alpacas... Not sure I even know the difference. Maybe I should look that up. 

Clouds. 

This last week it has been just CrAzY hot... daytime highs around 35°C... ugh... 

Cloudless skies, sweltering heat. 

It's been rough trying to keep up the riding the last few days. 

Friendly stranger took a good long look at me before bolting into the bush. 

Cows. 

Crazy clouds. 

More deer - but these were RIGHT DOWNTOWN at river landing - in the middle of the city. 

Last I saw them, they were running off towards the RBC Wealth Management office. Perhaps they were going to check on their investment portfolio... or maybe they were just going to poop at the front door. 

Pelicans flying by. Not as clear in the picture as when I saw them, but DAMN they are BIG BIRDS! 

those are all geese dotting the river in the foregraound. I wonder if that's all the goslings out for a swim? 

And Now for Something Completely Different

 24 years ago, after Amanda and i sold our first house, we bought kayaks! I think we'd paid $75000 for a small wartime house in the university area on a 40' lot. A year later we sold it for $85000 and thought we'd made out like bandits and treated ourselves to a pair of Necky kayaks. (Nevermind that that same house would probably be worth $750000 now... but... whatevs...). 

My parents, at the time, we living at a cottage at Blackstrap Lake and we'd moved to a small house in a small town that we were able to buy outright - the main reason was we weren't sure how we were ever going to take months off to ride bikes across Canada if we were having to keep up the mortgage payments on the house we'd sold. 

Never did ride across Canada... I digress.

We used the kayaks fairly regularly while they were at my folks and we were living out of town. When Amanda and I and my folks all moved back into town - about 20 years ago - they got used much less. part of the problem was being able to get them to the water without a car. 

A bout a month ago, I got to thinking; "hey, wouldn't it be fun to go kayaking" and ordered myself a Kayak Cart from Wike, and a week or so ago I rolled the kayak down to the river to go for a little paddle. 

Heading out up the river, into the wind... I legit could have walked faster than I was going...

Geese on the shore. 

Hey, Look! The bridge!

The Bridge(s)... but closer...

Other side of the bridges. Those waves seemed super bigger out on the water. The wind was 40kph - gusting to 60!

More bridge.

wending my way between sandbars under the bridge - got hung up when it got a little too shallow!

Heading back downtown.

Pelican. They are big beasties when you get up close. 

The WIKE cart to haul the Kayak down to the water. It worked SO MUCH BETTER than the stern-wheel-roller-thingies we had before. Amanda says we might have to buy a second one and start going out for paddles together!

I've ordered a new PDF, as the old one I had... well... I'm not the skinny 25-year-old I was half a lifetime ago.