Across the river and into the trees* -- at last! (Part 1)
(*Thank you, Mr. Hemingway, for use of the title of your short story in The Green Hills of Africa. The green hills of this tale aren’t African hills, to be sure, but they are fine green hills nonetheless, and they’re in my neighbourhood. But because they aren’t African hills, my wee story of course includes no kudu – instead, I wrote about what I could do.)
The day before the summer solstice—seems a long time ago now—I made a long-awaited ride across the Ottawa River and into the Gatineau hills. Over the first few weeks of June, I’d become quite secure with my stops and starts at intersections, and my brain finally agreed that, yes, I really could put my body weight down on my left foot when I stop the bike. In the weeks since that first ride, I’ve made several more trips into the Gatineau. My story about that ride has morphed into a collection of impressions and reactions from several rides in terrain that is at once very familiar, but until recently, unreachable.
Canajan small talk begins with remarks about the weather, and my modest tale of cycling follows that habit. Serious “weather events” have limited cycling for many people in Ottawa in the past few months – an ice storm in late spring was followed by daytime temps well into the 30s, and in early June, smoke from wildfires in northwestern Québec engulfed the city. At its worst, the smoke turned the air orange, and pushed our Air Quality Index beyond its maximum of 10. (Normal daily figures are usually 1 or 2.) Readers will have seen the apocalyptic photos of Manhattan. Happily, things cleared enough in mid-June to let me make my first ride across the Ottawa River towards the Gatineau Hills a few days later. BUT.
My ride on the eve of the solstice proved to be a false dawn (as it were, with apologies for the mixed metaphor): later that same week, more smoke engulfed the city and surrounds for another three weeks. I had planned to make another ride into the hills a few days later. “A few days” turned out to be nearly three full weeks later. On July 1, Canada Day, the weather gods relented ( = the winds shifted to southerlies and southwesterlies) and sent us hot humid air from the States, goosing it with torrential rain and winds fierce enough to prompt a tornado warning and displace our homegrown smoke overnight. A bargain of sorts, I guess, although we had little choice in striking it. And although few would suggest that a humidex in the mid-30s is comfortable, still’n’all a cyclist in it—esp one d’un certain âge—can at least breathe deeply enough to climb a hill. All that said, a humidex in the low 40s is another proposition altogether, and we’ve had a few of those, too. And, to keep us on our toes, the early tornado warning was followed by the real thing a few weeks later. It missed us, thankfully – we had nothing more than torrential rain and a garden full of hailstones the size of golf balls.
So my tale now draws on ten rides. The earliest were no more than 20 kms in length, each comprising about 90 minutes of cycling from my house up to the southern gate of Gatineau Park. Not yet into the park “proper”, mind. Following our son’s professional advice, these were moderately stressful, though they were s’posed to have been repeated, not separated by weeks of high-risk air quality. But, one does what one can.
And then, venturing regularly onto the streets and bikepaths that take me across the river, I’m reminded that despite what the poets and tourism-wallahs say we have just two seasons here in Ottawa: winter and construction, and this year, the latter seems especially intense. So, my rides into the green hills across the river have become local variations on the old Britrail joke about going to Carlisle. But, one does what one can.
And now, of course, I realize that between winter and hip operations, I’ve led a sheltered life over the last eight months or so, shielded from the threat that motor traffic holds for a cyclist. I’ve heard tell that drivers of SUVs and Ford 150 pickups are people too, but my recent anecdotal evidence casts grave doubt on that, so I reckon the jury is still out. Each ride has included one or more examples of oafish/selfish/dangerous behaviour by motorists, most of them in autobese suburban pickups or SUVs, augmented by an unhealthy dose of high-end German cars.
But, when I finally do make it across the long bridge to the Québec side (under construction, of course, but at least there are protected bike lanes most of the way), then it really is worth the effort, just as I remember it. In late June, the river was still high, and the canopy offered a cyclist dense midsummer shade – see photos 1 & 2 below.
(Part 2 follows)
