Bicycle Odyssey
If you figure in dollar-years, I’m getting good value out of my $89 London Drugs mountain bike. I bought it in December 2004 at the drug store 11-blocks south of the saffron-office. 20-inch steel frame, second or third rate components - but I figure that if I’m not doing high performance, single-track mountain biking, do I really need a high performance bike? After my $600 Norco Bigfoot mountain bike was stolen years ago I began to ask myself that question.
A year and a half (so far) of cycling for $89? $59 per year, and falling.
Hannah’s Norco was stolen a few weeks ago so we hit all the west Edmonton bike stores shopping for a replacement. She decided upon a Dahon utility bike - the kind that folds for taking aboard commuter buses and trains, or stowing in the trunk of a car - from Revolution Cycle.
While the Dahon was going through a final sale inspection, I saw a poster on the shop wall featuring women wearing towels and bikinis and advertising a model of bike saddle. The poster warned that erectile dysfunction could occur with bike seats with a high center-line that press on the pudendal artery and nerve bundle.
Sex sells, they say. And not long after reading that poster, I bought a $28 low center-line saddle for the $89 London Drugs mountain bike, increasing its total value by a dramatic 31%.
On the evening of Wednesday, August 23, Hannah made us an appointment to meet with another potential builder at her show home in Sherwood Park.
We were just pulling up to the $1.3 million show home on a 2-acre lot when I remembered that I’d left my bike locked up on the street outside the saffron-office. It was starting to rain.
“Oh, there won’t be any thieves out in weather like this,” I said.
Damned thieves. Thievin' thieves. There is a storm of thievery going on. I hate being beset upon by thieves.
The next morning, my plush leather, low center-line bike saddle was gone.
Shortly thereafter I did what I probably should’ve done in the first place: got a hammer and pried the boards off our shed at the hole (boarded up to keep the likes of Boyd from maintaining a residence) to scavenge a seat and post from junked bikes we have stored there.
Reaffixed with a molded foam (but still more ergonomic than the one it came with) bike seat, I rode to the Kinsmen Pitch and Putt golf course Saturday afternoon to meet Hannah for 9-holes.
I don’t actually care for golf, but a quick round of par 3’s is a lot of fun. Hannah has been watching master’s golf on t.v. and was motivated to try the sport.
The secluded Pitch and Putt was busy. Hannah and I were between a trio of duffer women in their late-forties/early-fifties; and a trio of men - a 75 year-old man with his grown son and nephew. The nephew was in Edmonton from California to celebrate his uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was an unfortunate order of golfers - worst to best - and meant that the three men got to watch Hannah and me play the entire round. They were really nice though, advising Hannah on her grip, stance, and swing. And cheering from the tee-box when I sunk my one good putt of the day - from the rough off the pin and in the cup.
Today Hannah and I went on a Bicycle Odyssey.
I don’t know what possessed us to undertake to ride from Eleanor’s condominium to the Callingwood Market and West Edmonton Mall, but we coasted down the long-grade at Victoria Hill to Hawrelak Park by the river, and rode to the footbridge that connects it to Laurier Park.
There are views of Edmonton’s river valley where the city of almost a million people disappears. Looking south off the footbridge, the North Saskatchewan River flows shallow and lazy beneath you, and aspen parkland forest covers the embankments.
Laurier Park is an off-leash area and on sunny Sundays like today, the park is thick with dogs. From the bridge I could see more than a dozen splashing together in the river. Seeing so many together reminded me that dogs aren’t just pets, they’re animals, descended from wild animals that gathered in packs just like that. Wild beasts.
Laurier Park is lightly forested. And as an off-leash area, dogs can run loose, but cyclists are restrained - permitted to ride only on the ‘upgraded, granular trails’. Hannah and I rode on an upgraded, granular trail until it connected to the steepest asphalt paved multi-use pathway I’ve ever seen, winding up from the river valley to the escarpment on Laurier Drive. The multi-use path has a switch-back, but is so steep that an alternative stairway + ramp is also available.
I pedaled up the switch-back in first gear while Hannah pushed her Dahon up the path. As I rounded the last switch-back at the top, I saw ahead, by the stairway top, a blonde siren in a green tank-top and black spandex pants with breasts like missile - domes. She was drinking from a water bottle and a lens-flare flashed off her mirrored sunglasses.
There was a ‘hi - how’s it going” welling up from my throat as I pedaled towards her, but then this bi-clops with shoulders like a silver-back and thick, lumpy arms pushed his bike off the stairway ramp. He looked at me as I approached and I felt the sudden need to be silent and contemplative - thinking how interesting it is that women with exaggerated female features wind up with men with exaggerated male features.
Just before Laurier Drive, the asphalt paved multi-use path has a final, shallower set of switch-backs with treated lumber retaining walls on the uphill sides. A young waxwing was fluttering against the retaining wall. I tried to pick him up, but he kept trying to bite me and hopping out my hand. A few yards further up was a second bird thumping itself against the wall. This one was much less spirited and stepped onto my hand when I pressed it before his legs.
The second, gentler waxwing was perched on my finger when Hannah caught up to me and I passed the young bird to her, got off my bike, went back and caught the first one. Both birds looked anxiously up hill, so we figured that’s where they wanted to go.
We set them down in the grass near the top of the escarpment and watched them hop around. As we rode towards the next foot bridge crossing the Whitemud drive, I worried that we moved them too far from where we found them.
Hannah said she forgot her sunglasses back where we left the birds. When she returned from retrieving them, she said the mother bird was there and they were all fine.
Across the Whitemud footbridge took us into the Wolfwillow Community League, a residential neighborhood with big houses and a community league hall they call the Wolfwillow Country Club Community League Hall. We rode along Wolfwillow Road until we got to a ravine trail-head with cyclists riding up out of it.
“Does this trail take us to Callingwood?” I asked a friendly looking brunette sucking on her Camel-bak hydration tube. She said it would, and warned us that the steep path down into the Patricia Ravine had a slow-walking couple with their dog at the bottom of it.
The Patricia Ravine feels like a whole different ecosystem from Laurier Park. Tall pine trees with lush mossy undergrowth on its steep embankments.
“It even smells different,” Hannah said. “I feel like I’m in B.C.” As we rode along the path she pointed to bushes identifying dogwood and rosehips.
The trail out of Patricia Ravine put us in the residential neighborhood of Patricia Heights and we rode past homes and the Patricia Heights Playground.
“There should be recycled tires in that playground,” I told Hannah just before the Tire Recycling Management Association sign came into view.
It was a straight line along 78th avenue out of Patricia Heights into Callingwood and to the Callingwood Market. Hannah bought some organic apples, cucumbers and carrots, then we rode 11 blocks north to the fourth largest shopping mall on Earth.
It was past lunch-time so we tried a new pho-joint in West Edmonton Mall’s Chinatown. Hannah thought her grilled prawns on vermicelli were so-so. The broth in my pho was greasy.
After lunch Hannah wanted to shop for a new day-pack at Coast Moutain Sports.
“Can I go see if the craps table is open while you’re at Coast Mountain?” I asked. WEM’s Palace Casino was upstairs not far from the sporting goods store.
The craps table didn’t open until 3 o’clock, so I parked myself at a half-full blackjack table. I lost hand after hand. I drew a 7 on hard 14 and still lost because the dealer capped his face card with an ace.
“It’s a bad game when you can’t win with twenty-one,” I told the white guy at the anchor position. An old Chinese lady sat down between me and the Anchor Guy. I hit and busted a hard 16 and she said something to me in Chinese. Then the old Chinese guy on the other side of me began making moist gumming sounds. That and the fact that I’d lost half of my $100 buy-in were signs that I had to switch tables.
I was down to $25 when Hannah found me. I had $10 in my betting box.
“Let me play this bet though and then we’ll go,” I told her, which meant I was going to let it ride until it was gone. I was dealt 8/3 and on the double down had a winning 19. This made my riding bet $40 which next won on a 20. Max bet was $50 which won on 19 again. Suddenly, I had $175 in chips in front of me and $50 in the betting box.
Next the dealer gave me a pair of aces. He was showing 8.
“Always split aces and 8’s,” the rule goes, so I slid another $50 in the box.
A + 3 = 14
A + 6 = 17
Dealer had 18.
“Did you just lose all those chips?” Hannah asked me.
“I’m up $25,” I said, feebly.
“But you would’ve had all those chips too if you had stopped…” I did flush $100 on those split aces.
“Yea,” I admitted. “You should’ve said, ‘isn’t there something for $50 that you need to buy?’, then I would’ve remembered that I could’ve bought Season 1 of The Wire.” But I am up $25.
Before heading back to the bikes and back to the condo, Hannah bought some pho noodles and mint at the T&T, and I bough a 30-pack of royal jelly and ginseng.
It was a Bicycle Odyssey.
A year and a half (so far) of cycling for $89? $59 per year, and falling.
Hannah’s Norco was stolen a few weeks ago so we hit all the west Edmonton bike stores shopping for a replacement. She decided upon a Dahon utility bike - the kind that folds for taking aboard commuter buses and trains, or stowing in the trunk of a car - from Revolution Cycle.
While the Dahon was going through a final sale inspection, I saw a poster on the shop wall featuring women wearing towels and bikinis and advertising a model of bike saddle. The poster warned that erectile dysfunction could occur with bike seats with a high center-line that press on the pudendal artery and nerve bundle.
Sex sells, they say. And not long after reading that poster, I bought a $28 low center-line saddle for the $89 London Drugs mountain bike, increasing its total value by a dramatic 31%.
On the evening of Wednesday, August 23, Hannah made us an appointment to meet with another potential builder at her show home in Sherwood Park.
We were just pulling up to the $1.3 million show home on a 2-acre lot when I remembered that I’d left my bike locked up on the street outside the saffron-office. It was starting to rain.
“Oh, there won’t be any thieves out in weather like this,” I said.
Damned thieves. Thievin' thieves. There is a storm of thievery going on. I hate being beset upon by thieves.
The next morning, my plush leather, low center-line bike saddle was gone.
Shortly thereafter I did what I probably should’ve done in the first place: got a hammer and pried the boards off our shed at the hole (boarded up to keep the likes of Boyd from maintaining a residence) to scavenge a seat and post from junked bikes we have stored there.
Reaffixed with a molded foam (but still more ergonomic than the one it came with) bike seat, I rode to the Kinsmen Pitch and Putt golf course Saturday afternoon to meet Hannah for 9-holes.
I don’t actually care for golf, but a quick round of par 3’s is a lot of fun. Hannah has been watching master’s golf on t.v. and was motivated to try the sport.
The secluded Pitch and Putt was busy. Hannah and I were between a trio of duffer women in their late-forties/early-fifties; and a trio of men - a 75 year-old man with his grown son and nephew. The nephew was in Edmonton from California to celebrate his uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was an unfortunate order of golfers - worst to best - and meant that the three men got to watch Hannah and me play the entire round. They were really nice though, advising Hannah on her grip, stance, and swing. And cheering from the tee-box when I sunk my one good putt of the day - from the rough off the pin and in the cup.
Today Hannah and I went on a Bicycle Odyssey.
I don’t know what possessed us to undertake to ride from Eleanor’s condominium to the Callingwood Market and West Edmonton Mall, but we coasted down the long-grade at Victoria Hill to Hawrelak Park by the river, and rode to the footbridge that connects it to Laurier Park.
There are views of Edmonton’s river valley where the city of almost a million people disappears. Looking south off the footbridge, the North Saskatchewan River flows shallow and lazy beneath you, and aspen parkland forest covers the embankments.
Laurier Park is an off-leash area and on sunny Sundays like today, the park is thick with dogs. From the bridge I could see more than a dozen splashing together in the river. Seeing so many together reminded me that dogs aren’t just pets, they’re animals, descended from wild animals that gathered in packs just like that. Wild beasts.
Laurier Park is lightly forested. And as an off-leash area, dogs can run loose, but cyclists are restrained - permitted to ride only on the ‘upgraded, granular trails’. Hannah and I rode on an upgraded, granular trail until it connected to the steepest asphalt paved multi-use pathway I’ve ever seen, winding up from the river valley to the escarpment on Laurier Drive. The multi-use path has a switch-back, but is so steep that an alternative stairway + ramp is also available.
I pedaled up the switch-back in first gear while Hannah pushed her Dahon up the path. As I rounded the last switch-back at the top, I saw ahead, by the stairway top, a blonde siren in a green tank-top and black spandex pants with breasts like missile - domes. She was drinking from a water bottle and a lens-flare flashed off her mirrored sunglasses.
There was a ‘hi - how’s it going” welling up from my throat as I pedaled towards her, but then this bi-clops with shoulders like a silver-back and thick, lumpy arms pushed his bike off the stairway ramp. He looked at me as I approached and I felt the sudden need to be silent and contemplative - thinking how interesting it is that women with exaggerated female features wind up with men with exaggerated male features.
Just before Laurier Drive, the asphalt paved multi-use path has a final, shallower set of switch-backs with treated lumber retaining walls on the uphill sides. A young waxwing was fluttering against the retaining wall. I tried to pick him up, but he kept trying to bite me and hopping out my hand. A few yards further up was a second bird thumping itself against the wall. This one was much less spirited and stepped onto my hand when I pressed it before his legs.
The second, gentler waxwing was perched on my finger when Hannah caught up to me and I passed the young bird to her, got off my bike, went back and caught the first one. Both birds looked anxiously up hill, so we figured that’s where they wanted to go.
We set them down in the grass near the top of the escarpment and watched them hop around. As we rode towards the next foot bridge crossing the Whitemud drive, I worried that we moved them too far from where we found them.
Hannah said she forgot her sunglasses back where we left the birds. When she returned from retrieving them, she said the mother bird was there and they were all fine.
Across the Whitemud footbridge took us into the Wolfwillow Community League, a residential neighborhood with big houses and a community league hall they call the Wolfwillow Country Club Community League Hall. We rode along Wolfwillow Road until we got to a ravine trail-head with cyclists riding up out of it.
“Does this trail take us to Callingwood?” I asked a friendly looking brunette sucking on her Camel-bak hydration tube. She said it would, and warned us that the steep path down into the Patricia Ravine had a slow-walking couple with their dog at the bottom of it.
The Patricia Ravine feels like a whole different ecosystem from Laurier Park. Tall pine trees with lush mossy undergrowth on its steep embankments.
“It even smells different,” Hannah said. “I feel like I’m in B.C.” As we rode along the path she pointed to bushes identifying dogwood and rosehips.
The trail out of Patricia Ravine put us in the residential neighborhood of Patricia Heights and we rode past homes and the Patricia Heights Playground.
“There should be recycled tires in that playground,” I told Hannah just before the Tire Recycling Management Association sign came into view.
It was a straight line along 78th avenue out of Patricia Heights into Callingwood and to the Callingwood Market. Hannah bought some organic apples, cucumbers and carrots, then we rode 11 blocks north to the fourth largest shopping mall on Earth.
It was past lunch-time so we tried a new pho-joint in West Edmonton Mall’s Chinatown. Hannah thought her grilled prawns on vermicelli were so-so. The broth in my pho was greasy.
After lunch Hannah wanted to shop for a new day-pack at Coast Moutain Sports.
“Can I go see if the craps table is open while you’re at Coast Mountain?” I asked. WEM’s Palace Casino was upstairs not far from the sporting goods store.
The craps table didn’t open until 3 o’clock, so I parked myself at a half-full blackjack table. I lost hand after hand. I drew a 7 on hard 14 and still lost because the dealer capped his face card with an ace.
“It’s a bad game when you can’t win with twenty-one,” I told the white guy at the anchor position. An old Chinese lady sat down between me and the Anchor Guy. I hit and busted a hard 16 and she said something to me in Chinese. Then the old Chinese guy on the other side of me began making moist gumming sounds. That and the fact that I’d lost half of my $100 buy-in were signs that I had to switch tables.
I was down to $25 when Hannah found me. I had $10 in my betting box.
“Let me play this bet though and then we’ll go,” I told her, which meant I was going to let it ride until it was gone. I was dealt 8/3 and on the double down had a winning 19. This made my riding bet $40 which next won on a 20. Max bet was $50 which won on 19 again. Suddenly, I had $175 in chips in front of me and $50 in the betting box.
Next the dealer gave me a pair of aces. He was showing 8.
“Always split aces and 8’s,” the rule goes, so I slid another $50 in the box.
A + 3 = 14
A + 6 = 17
Dealer had 18.
“Did you just lose all those chips?” Hannah asked me.
“I’m up $25,” I said, feebly.
“But you would’ve had all those chips too if you had stopped…” I did flush $100 on those split aces.
“Yea,” I admitted. “You should’ve said, ‘isn’t there something for $50 that you need to buy?’, then I would’ve remembered that I could’ve bought Season 1 of The Wire.” But I am up $25.
Before heading back to the bikes and back to the condo, Hannah bought some pho noodles and mint at the T&T, and I bough a 30-pack of royal jelly and ginseng.
It was a Bicycle Odyssey.