A while ago, while we were planning our bike trip, Spencer’s mom asked us if we would consider doing some fundraising for one of their neighbours. The lady’s son was born with DiGeorge Syndrome, which caused a severe heart defect. Baby Wyatt is just over a year old, and he’s already had three open heart surgeries and countless other medical procedures.
We agreed to raise some money and get people to sponsor us for our ride to Montreal. I am hoping we can raise $1000, and all proceeds will go towards Wyatt’s family and the Cardiology Department at The Hospital for Sick Children, through the SickKids Foundation.
I think it’s a great cause, and it really makes the trip to Montreal a lot more meaningful. It also puts a lot more pressure on us to actually go the distance. A lot of people have been very generous, making donations and offering support, which is great. If you are interested in helping out, contact me and we’ll make arrangements.
A few months back, two friends and I decided we should go on a bicycle trip to Montreal. We did some searching around, and found a cool website by a guy who’s gone on a number of bike trips, including one from Toronto to Montreal. He has a great route mapped out that we are going to use as the basis for our trip. We figure it will take us 4-5 days, which will cover about 600km.
It will be a lot of hard work, and I’m sure there will be some challenges along the way, but I think it will be a great accomplishment and a lot of fun. We’re heading out on June 27th, hoping to make it into Montreal on Canada Day so we can celebrate and party for a couple of days before we head home.
I’ve been doing some training over the past months, but I’m going to really step it up in the coming weeks. I’m at a point where I know I can ride 50km in a day, but I haven’t pushed myself farther than that yet. We’re hoping to average close to 150km per day on the trip, so we’re going to start doing longer rides in preparation.
I haven’t done much riding this week, because of bad weather and my bike is currently in pieces. I’m doing a bit of a mini-overhaul and trying to make the mountain bike a bit more road-friendly, since most of our route will be roads and bike paths.
Where else in the world would they have an automated underground bike storage facility? This thing is amazing. I have no clue what the reporter is saying, but basically, you put your bike on this machine that sends it down an elevator and into a giant storage area that can hold up to 9,400 bikes!
Later on, when you come back to retrieve your bike, the machine finds it and just whisks it right back to you. In the video, it only takes 23 seconds for the bike to be returned, which is probably less time than it would take to unlock your bike.
Yesterday my brothers and a few friends and I went for a nice Sunday bike ride. The weather was great, the road and trail conditions were pretty good, and we all had a good time.
Once we got home, we hung out in front of my house for a bit and then went inside for dinner. During this time, Albert’s bike was left in front of my garage, behind my brother’s truck. We came back outside about an hour and a half later, to find the bike was gone. So sometime between 6pm and 7:30pm, the bike got tooked. In broad daylight, in a nice little subdivision in Whitby. It was very disappointing.
Albert was extremely mad, so we took a drive around the neighbourhood looking for any signs of the bike. We didn’t see anything, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. Unfortunately, the bike is probably gone forever, but we’re hoping we’ll spot it out and about somewhere near our house soon. If we do, some kid is gonna get the beat down of his life.
Back in April of last year I bought a new bike and started riding quite a bit. I had lofty goals of riding 1500km by the end of 2007, and I kept track of all the days I rode to work, as well as all the weekend rides I went on.
I checked my records the other day, and I rode a total of 1340km last year, falling a little short of my goal. I had a lot of fun, got some good exercise and I’m a lot better on a bike now than I’ve ever been. Since late fall, I haven’t really done any biking, but I’ve been seeing a lot of people riding even in the snow lately, so I’m thinking I might do a little winter biking soon.
