It's 10 am on a Saturday - where's my bike?
The 2021 summer cycling season is here - let's take our bikes places!
Did I say summer cycling season? It’s always cycling season! For almost a decade in Cape Breton, a place not known for a mild climate, I coordinated and participated in Velo Cape Breton’s 52 Week Bicycle Challenge. The “B52”, as we fondly called it, had few rules: ride your bicycle, outside, for at least 30 minutes once for all 52 weeks of the year. Riders signed up for the first of January of each year, and we took our bicycles places: to work, to class, to soccer games, to Cuba and Spain and all around Kentucky. Oh, yeah and all around Cape Breton, too. We had participants from all over North America and beyond. We shared photos, tips for winter cycling, for winter bike maintenance, and recovery from every type of injury including one year, the extensive rehabilitation of one of our riders who was hit by a car on her commute to work. I had to give up the B52 when I relocated away from Cape Breton and went back to school, but the inspiration of that wonderful group of cyclists and Velo Cape Breton still lives with me.
I want to share that inspiration with you, the riding reader. I haven’t cycled everywhere in Nova Scotia, but everywhere I’ve lived in Nova Scotia, I’ve cycled - starting in Pictou County where I learned to ride a bicycle to Cape Breton where I joined Velo Cape Breton and became a truly skilled cyclist and back home to the Annapolis Valley where I am revisiting all the places I cycled as a youth - when I had lots of energy and a 10 speed CCM racing bike I had no idea how to ride efficiently.
So if you bought a bicycle during Covid and don’t know where to go or how to go there, or you’ve been away from cycling for 30 years and want to get back in the saddle, or you’ve been cycling all along and want a new perspective on your rides, or you need to cross train for marathon running, or you’re new to NS and want ideas for fun rides - whatever. You’ve got a bicycle. Let’s take it places.