2007.07.21
Posted in Photography, Sports at 10:08 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
I’ve discovered a new favorite route for cycling when I have a few hours to spend: downtown to Bowness Park and back.
The round trip takes me about 2.5 hours at a relaxed pace. The route is also a really nice ride. The vast majority of it is along bike paths that wind along side the Bow river, through a myriad of inter-connected parks. The final destination, Bowness park, lies mostly west of 85th street West, making it 84 blocks West of my home downtown (and somewhat North of here as well).
It’s also nice to spend some time relaxing in Bowness park watching the waterfowl, as well as the people padding around the lagoon in canoes.
I’ve made the trip 3 times so far, and will likely keep doing it throughout the summer since it’s a nice varied ride and I don’t spend a lot of time fighting with traffic on the streets like I do going to North Glemore Park.
It’s also kind of fun to ride down Bow Crescent and look at all the houses tucked into the trees along the river, built in an era before the city sprawled as much as it does now.
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2007.04.15
Posted in Sports at 5:56 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
Today I took my bicycle out for the first time this season. This wasn’t a pleasure ride, though. I had things to do. Or rather, I had things that I needed to do with the bike.
First stop was the gas station to put air in the tires. After sitting for the winter, they certainly needed it.
Next stop was the car wash. A winter of being locked up in the underground parking of my condo building caused a rather thick layer of dust / dirt / crud to accumulate on every exposed surface of the bike. It’s dusty enough down there in the winter that I have to wash the car every few weeks even if I don’t drive it anywhere, and the bike has been sitting for about 5 months, so you can imagine how disgusting it was.
Cleaning the bike cost me exactly $1.00 at Penguin car wash, a great little pressure-wand style car wash just outside of downtown. I’ve never much liked the automatic car washes where I pay exorbitant prices for the ‘convenience’ of not having to get my fat lazy ass out of the car to wash it, and for washing my bike, it’s obviously not an option anyway. I can usually wash my car for $5.00 at Penguin, which is cheaper than any automatic car wash I’ve seen in the city.
After spraying the bike with my $1.00 worth of water, I discovered that it’s green, not brown. Who knew?
Anyways, now that my bike was clean and I was no longer embarrassed to be seen riding it, it was off to Sport Swap to have the bike tuned-up. It’s booked in on Tuesday, but I decided to drop it off today so I don’t have to head there Monday after work. I get the bike back on Wednesday, and then I’ll be cycling to work most days instead of walking.
On a related note, I hereby declare it to be spring in Calgary, which means the next snowfall won’t happen until October. Mother nature, are you listening?
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2007.02.12
Posted in Sports at 7:53 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
And the verdict is: it’s over. The regulars have reclaimed the gym as the iPod-toting fashionplate new year’s resolution crowd have officially given up on their workouts after a scant six weeks.
I’ve been avoiding the gym during my usual workout hours (peak hours) since the beginning of January since it’s been much more crowded than usual. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed a definite change in the crowd – it’s a lot smaller now. I suppose it could be weather-related to some extent, but I suspect it has more to do with people losing their resolve (in a very literal way).
It’s a little bit sad in a way since I think people don’t get enough exercize on the whole, but at the same time, it is kinda nice to not have to wait for equipment. Now I have ten and a half more months until the cycle begins once again…
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2006.05.13
Posted in Sports at 9:18 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
I sprung my bike out of jail got my bike back from the shop on Thursday. The brakes were acting up a bit, and it was due for a tune-up anyways, so I decided to get it into the shop. Now, the bike is working very smoothly, and the brakes are fixed, which makes me happy.
To celebrate, I’ve already taken the bike out twice. I cycled to and from work on Friday (something I’ll now be doing every day if the weather is amenable), and I went for a two-hour jaunt around the city with Chris this evening. Our route took us from downtown through the west end of the Beltline, then up the hills through Bankview and Marda Loop on 20th street. From there, we stayed on 20th all the way to Glenmore, then jumped on the bike paths to get to North Glenmore Park.
Ordinarily, I would have continued all the way around the reservior, but this was Chris’ first time out on a bicycle in a while, so instead we opted for a shorter trip, and we turned around and headed back towards downtown, this time along the Elbow river.
It was a good trip, and I’m looking forward to a lot more cycling in the coming months.
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