My first bike ride of 2009 went fairly well. Being the optimistic and ambitious guy I am, I overestimated the mileage I could cover in one day, and underestimated the difficulty of the ride, but overall it was a good experience.
I used Gmaps-Pedometer, a website I only recently found out about, to plan my ride. You can click
here to see and navigate the route. Here is a birds-eye view of the route I planned:
My route up to Orangeville was quite good. Most of the roads I followed had low traffic, good pavement, and the hills were manageable. It was only in the last ten or so kilometres before arriving in Orangeville that I encountered the first section of dirt road, and a monster hill which forced me to walk.
I got into Orangeville ~1:30pm and said hello to Emillia, a good friend that runs an art store there. Picked up my lunch at the
Bluebird Café & Grill take-out (very generous portions, only ate about half), and ate it in the nice warm sun. Refilled my Platypus with 2 litres of Gatorade, and was on my way.
My route out of Orangeville was much more challenging; I had not driven in the area, and didn’t know the back roads at all. As far as I am aware, there are no online mapping tools (Google Maps, Gmaps-Pedometer) that allow you to:
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Create a straight line (the shortest line between two points) and find roads that deviate the least from that straight line
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Determine whether a road is paved, hard packed gravel, or dirt
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Determine if there are any major hills on a road, or how much traffic it gets
Because of the lack of information on the areas north of Orangeville, my route became a bit unraveled from my plan. The following table shows where I changed my route (sometimes to my benefit, other times to my chagrin):
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Original Plan
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What I did
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West on 9 out of Orangeville
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Same
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North on Third line up to Farmington
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Same
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West on 5th sideroad to Amaranth-East Luther TLine
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Continued north on Third line
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North on Amaranth-East Luther TLine to Hwy 89.
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West on Country Road 12
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East on Hwy 89 past Jessopville to Hwy 17.
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North on 5th line to Hwy 89.
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NE on Hwy 17 to 4th Line SW.
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East on Hwy 89 to Shelburne
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NW on 4th Line to Grey Rd. 9.
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North on Owen Sound St. to 3rd line.
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NE on Grey Rd. 9 changes into Hwy 9.
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North on 3rd line to 20th sideroad
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Hwy 9, go through Dundalk
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Zigzag south and west to 4th line NE, roughly on the same longitude as Dundalk
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NE on Hwy 9 to Grey Road 2
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NE on 4th line NE to Grey Road 2
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North on Grey Road 2 to Maxwell
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Same
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East on Hwy 4 about 2 kilometres to Grey Road 2
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Same
|
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North on Grey Road 2 through Feversham, Kolapore and ending at Ravenna
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Same, but ran out of sunlight
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There were some truly low volume country roads north of Shelburne, but at one point I cycled along very loose dirt for about 2 kilometres. It wasn’t fun, and I wouldn’t have taken that route if I had access to that information.
On the flip side, I saw lots of farms, some very nice smooth roads, and long distances where the hills vanished into the horizon. The only thing I could hear was the wind. I am now a true city slicker, so this was challenging for me at times.
At 8pm on Grey Road 2, about 2 km short of Ravenna, I ran out of sunlight (plus I was exhausted). I found some nice people (Adam, Jeremy and Bryn), and paid them to take me to my hotel, the
Heidelberg Inn. Having been in the same situation (exhausted after cycling and miles to go to their lodging), they extended their kind Canadian hospitality and drove me to my hotel. It struck a chord in me, them helping me, those acts and kind deeds distinguish us as a culture, and unfortunately we don’t see them as often as in yesteryear.
I slept extremely well Saturday night!
The weather turned foul in Collingwood overnight, and a particular area of my body prevented me from riding back to Toronto. The Ischial Tuberosity is shown here:
I packed my bike in a box, and took the Greyhound back to Toronto. Here are a couple of tables showing the numbers:
In the graph shown below, the blue line shows my speed (average approximately 20 km/h) and the green line shows the elevation which increases up to Orangeville, at which point it doesn’t increase much anymore:
Conclusions:
- Find a way around that monster hill into Orangeville
- Do a couple tamer/easier rides early in the season to get accustomed to sitting on a bike
- Progressively go on longer and harder rides as the season progresses
- Find some good maps that can show paved/dirt roads
- Find lodging in Thornbury next time!
Future trips will include:
- Lefroy Harbour (on lake Simcoe)
- London, Ontario (to see my birthplace)
- Niagara-on-the-Lake (maybe some wine consumed)
- Using “Map My Ride”, you can see the entirety of this ride on that website by clicking here.
Happy trails…
Richard