Alberta Road Riding

Today was a fantastic day to be a bike rider.  More accurately, to be an intrepid bike rider.  Wx.ca tells me what I already knew - the winds were strong and gusty (50-60km/h according to Wx), and it was fairly cool all day.  Softies need not leave the house.

Having said that, it's a Saturday, and why waste a Saturday when you've got a group of guys who are intrepid enough to blaze our own trail?

It took us about 3 hours to get to Cochrane for a coffee stop.  In those three hours we rode some primary roads, those that most people are familiar with.  We also plowed westward into the strong winds on some secondary roads, such as Airport road, that 95% of avid cyclists are familiar with.  We knew we had a good thing going, so we continued onto some tertiary roads, those without pavement and names, only known by their township or range numbers, that a small group of cyclocross/mountain bikers/dedicated winter cyclists are familiar with, say 5% of the riding population.  With so much fun and good exercise at hand, we descended into the world of roads beyond the tertiary system.  Those that are only faint grey lines on maps, or not even on maps at all.  They're used by ranchers, marked only by which ranches or wells they access, and have no fences on them between us and the local bull population.  They're beautiful, windy, remote and fill us with a sense of adventure.  It's likely no other group ride has ever sat down for a cup of coffee at Cochrane Coffee traders, having arrived by that route, other than 4 of us - Keith, Craig, Shawn and myself.

That's Alberta riding.  Most of our provinces roads aren't paved.  Most of our land is sparsely populated.  The terrain we rode through today is why film crews visit to make western films.  The panoramas that stuck with most are true wild rose country.

Maybe it's not that profound, but you can't tell good riding stories without stretching a few notches beyond "normal".