First ride of 2026 
Today, five-plus months since my last ride along the Ottawa River, I made my first ride of 2026. (Errands for groceries on my city bike don’t really count.) This was a brief mid-day aller-retour, just 45 minutes north to the river, west along the bikepath to Deschênes Lookout, then assemble in reverse order But, it was a chance to see what’s going on with the big river, and to check a couple of adjustments made over the winter months.
We’ve had an Olde Tyme Winter, with above-average snowfall (about 260 cms), and lots of cold days and nights. (The Rideau Canal, our 14-km skating rink through the middle of town, was open for 56 days – two seasons ago, it was closed for lack of good ice.) But today, we had mixed sun and cloud, and the late-morning temp was 10º. So I carried Freddie up from my basement workshop, covered myself with mild-weather gear, and set off for the river. There was a brisk westerly a-blowing, the 60-kph gusts a foretaste of a serious spring snowstorm further north. 8th gear was the best I could do on my outbound leg, but I sailed along in 11th and 12th on the return journey.
The snow cover is almost all gone, but the soil and vegetation now appearing are all brown and yellow, with the evergreens—firs and cedars—offering the only greenery. The colours are muted, sky, water and earth. But there were signs of the spring to come: a couple of plump Canada geese in the water (they must have wintered in Ottawa – the migrants are usually a bit scrawny); and then, when I reached home, the unmistakable and magical sound overhead of a wing of geese honking as they headed towards the river.
Freddie was relaxed, comfortable and unfussed as ever, and drew a glance or two from pedestrians when I paused for photos beside the river. (#s 1 & 2 below.) A small stream joins the big river beside the lookout, the small inlet bordered by bare trees and still harbouring a few ice floes. (#s 3 & 4 below.)
Reaching home, I made a couple of micro-adjustments to improve the tweaks made during the winter: easing the rear of the saddle down a couple of mm, and tilting the nose up a similar amount; and rotating the bars upward a couple of mm, so that the flats are now fractionally “uphill”. A test ride told me that the micro-adjustments did the necessary. It's always remarkable how such those small changes improve a rider's comfort -- in this case, of my bottom, and my wrists, hands, and forearms.
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