Salty War

There were three reasons for me not to chose this route. The first was that I was convinced that it was longer, though not very much so. The second was the wind, from which I would have no shelter. The route, for the most part, is flanked on either side by open fields - corn, grass, and various short green plants that if I wasn't such an urbanite I might have a clue what they are. Finally, rather than spending most of my time on either a bike path or in a bike lane, I'd be rubbing shoulders with cars, which I find a little intimidating.

Trying to skirt around the Kanata subdivision, I took Terry Fox as far south as it would go. The road is blocked off at a certain point, but continues, paved, past that point. It turned out that it ends abruptly about half a kilometer from another road. There were two dirt paths I could follow, one led directly towards the road I wanted, one angled away. I chose the direct one, which worked out well until I got near the road and saw that I was in a farmer's field, and that a ditch was barring my way. It turns out the other path led to the road I wanted, about 100m up the road. Oh well. I rode through the ditch, got on the road, and got to it.

Fairly quickly, I was on Eagleson, headed south, away from Kanata. The nice part about this stretch was that it was long and straight, giving me a longer uninterrupted ride than I usually get on my city route. (I mean "nice" as in a "good workout" kind of way, not in a "hurray" kind of way.) Of course, the wind was in my face. The same was true when I turned east onto Fallowfield. Then, of course, I encountered the hill.

The hill wasn't huge, but it was longer than anything I face in the city. I had to use a lower gear than I'm used to, though the wind probably didn't help. Up, up, up the hill went, with cars and motorcycles whizzing my be. I could feel the strength being sucked out of me, but I refused to give up. Eventually, I hit the top, and a blessed red light for some free rest. From there, I realized that it was all downhill into my subdivision.

I got one more good long stretch of uninterrupted riding in, before I started cutting through side streets to my house. I really need to find somewhere where I can ride nonstop for half an hour or more at some point, with no traffic lights or stop signs. Anyways, I pulled into my driveway, and checked the time. The ride took me around one hour.

...which was, of course, wrong. Strong headwind, longer route, and PB on my commute? I didn't feel super strong. Something wasn't computing.

I plugged my two routes into the GMap Pedometer, and discovered that the new route was ~1.5 miles shorter than my old one. Wow. Well, that explained the time difference. I wonder if I'll change routes, or stick with my safer, less scary, less windy city route.