My 2nd major ride of 2009 went very well. Essentially flat and nice wide roads with nice weather and scenery, made this a very pleasant ride. Plus I was able to push myself physically and was averaging around 30 km/h on the way back. Some faster riders went past me, but they motivated me.
I have registered myself a paid membership at Map My Ride, so I will be using that website to plan and record future rides. You can view/navigate the route to Burlington here. The return ride is here. You can see a bird’s eye view of the ride here:
The wind was blowing east as I rode out of Toronto, slowing me down a bit.
It was quite an uneventful ride out to Burlington. I enjoyed riding through Port Credit and Oakville as brief diversions from burning up the asphalt. I saw several groups of cyclists riding along Lakeshore, and this must be a popular route as there are lots of bicycle stores.
I found the Black Bull pub at 1124 Guelph Line relatively easy because of my BlackBerry and Google Maps Mobile. Had a nice lunch on the patio there, did some stretching, and replaced almost 2 litres of e-load fluids I was carrying in my backpack.
I had a longer lunch (~1 hour), and enjoyed the sun. I find this sort of bicycling dampens my appetite, so I make a point of eating more than I usually do. I talked with a couple of staff at the Black Bull to see if going back on Dundas would be viable. They said they see cyclists there, but that the lakeshore route is more popular, and scenic, so I decided to take the same route back.
I knew that my GPS was low on battery energy, but I didn’t anticipate it running out of energy just past (east of) Port Perry. The following tables/graphs have numbers that are out of whack, but I figure I did 130 km riding for the day.
Here are the numbers:
Conclusions:
- I wouldn’t change anything about the route.
- It is entirely doable to ride out to Jordan Harbour on Saturday, stay the night at Inn on the Twenty, then cycle back on Sunday.
I’m not sure about the logistics (ie/overnight or not), but I’m planning to ride:
- Jordan Harbour (Welland county)
- Jackson’s Point (Southern end of Lake Simcoe)
Looking forward to seeing you on my next ride...
Richard