Every year, cycling is a great adventure. Even as I finished my 10th year with the Bow Cyclists and I’ve ridden tens of thousands of kilometres on the roads around here, there is always something new. Sometimes it’s new roads, and sometimes it’s new people to share it with. There are always new members in the club and I love it when we get back from a ride I’ve led, and someone says “I’d never ridden that bit of road before.”
2022 was new and exciting largely because of Ian. He’s been game to ride for years, but when his big growth spurt came in the second half of 2021, I knew that he’d crossed over from being “too small” to ride with the BCC to being ready. He didn’t feel ready, but that’s the same for everyone who is trying something for the first time. We got him a new bike, with the stipulation that he join the club this year to try it out. His old bike went to a good home. There was no time to hum and haw about it: the registration for the club opened and closed in a few days. We also signed him up for the Gran Fondo Badlands and the Tour de Victoria, but the distance was to be determined.
Even with plans made, it takes a while for winter to end around here. The tradition of new vinyl for the Roubaix reached its ultimate form this year, with the vinyl matching the handlebars. The first BCC rides of the year are now gravel rides, as the roads stay unswept for a while (dangerous on road bikes) and the mountain bike trails are a mess from melting snow. So Ian’s first BCC ride was actually a gravel ride on his mountain bike. The real kickoff for the season for the second year was the Ronde van Cowtown. I didn’t push Ian to try this one out: it’s a test of endurance, and this year the weather was marginal at times.
But finally the nicer weather arrived. Ian had his first of many club road rides, including a lesson in being careful of sand on the roads in the early season. He started roping Joey and Josh into riding their bikes on longer expeditions. It was going pretty well until Ian got another lesson, this time to remember to lock your bike. They were getting bubble tea when someone walked off with Joey’s bike. It was just luck of the draw that it wasn’t Ian’s.
It was pretty clear from the start that I was right about Ian’s sudden jump in abilities. Club rides over 50 km didn’t faze him, and then the “event” rides started. He was registered for the 75 km distance for the Badlands, but ended up doing the 100 km distance with our group from the BCC.
The next week, he got a lesson that you can’t just look at the distance when judging a ride. The 85 km ride to Water Valley with all its ups and downs made him bonk for the first time. The new high water marks kept coming: the ride to Lake Louise was his longest of the year at around 120 km, and the Tour de Victoria 100 km route was probably the most challenging. But it must not have scarred him too much, because we hopped back on the bikes for an adventure riding to the ferries and riding on Pender Island too.
There were new things for me this year, too. I got my Norco gravel bike sort of late in the season in 2021, and 2022 was my first full year of having it in the stable. I rode it on the Ronde van Cowtown, and somewhat regularly on gravel rides throughout the year. I rode deep into the fall with the gravel rides, necessitating having adequate lighting. The Sheep River ride was one I’d never done before, and it was pretty epic. It helped to fill out my See Every Street heat map for the year. For the first time since the Cycle of Life Tour in 2017, I used cycling as a tool for fundraising by signing up for and then riding in the Cancervive ride.
The summery weather stretched all the way to Halloween this year, giving us the joy of the BCC Ambassador wrap up party on Mark’s deck and the option to ride to the year-end social. But then winter hit with a vengeance. Ian had been riding his bike to Bowness High for a couple of months, and was suddenly on the bus every day. It only took a couple of weeks before he was asking me about ways that he could ride to school. A bit of research and money later, and now we’ve got some studded tires. He even went out for a 21 km ride this morning at -9 degrees just so he could get some pics of the sunrise. When we were having a serious conversation the other night, he told me that joining the club was the best thing that happened to him in 2022.
Tomorrow, when I post the full Retrospective, you can judge for yourself if that’s true. 😁
nice write up of you and Ian’s riding.He probably feels great riding with the “big Boys”