Icy saturday

Jon, Craig, Craig, Kate, Graham, Ceasar, Shawn and I met at Cadence for some winter adventure.  This week the warm temperatures really helped ice everything up, right from the single track in Bowness and throughout the day.

I felt perhaps my yin and yang was in balance in '12 and put it to the test with the 40m long skinny in Tuscany.  Fun!

From there we battled headwinds until making it to Big Hill Springs, then figured conditions were good enough to ride through the valley to Cochrane.  They were firm - ice cobbles.  Definitely the group dispersed a bit based on who's ridden slick stuff a lot before.  Since I was weak all morning, I was happy to be there to offset lack of Watts with a little extra technical.  The single track provided lots of adventure with dry loamy turns or hero snow turns urging you to speed up, followed by glaze ice turns.

The comedic highlight of the day was at a cafe I didn't previously know about - Guys' Cafe and Bakery. Delicious stuff, definitely a wide selection.  Could be my new favourite stop there.  Jon didn't know what to get, and they were ready for him... see bottom of menu.

So as it turns out, this sandwich contains every meat and every cheese and every veggie.  Upon ordering it, the cashier upped the ante.  If you eat that sandwich and a bowl of soup, everyone at your table gets a free pastry.  Jon is the perfect guy for this!  It's large.  Jon did some warmup stretches.

Of course Jon is a success story in many rights.  This was no different.  We shared the spoils!

From there, we headed up the hill, but at a sub tempo pace.  We hit the new trails along the river, which ridiculously end about 5km before Bowness with a bunch of no trespassing signs when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere.  Ridiculous.  It's like having the Trans Canada highway end at Scott Lake Hill with a sign just saying it's reserve land from thereon and tough luck if you want to get to the mountains.

We made our way on a side path for a bit, then it was slow going.  Faster route?  Ride the perfectly slick, glaze black ice of the reservoir by Bearspaw.  The warmth this week made it mirror like.  Trick is to get going, go fast, and don't turn or brake.  There's a few mini bumps from melting snowmobile tracks that are tricky, but rest is easy.  Fast is best, that way if you fall it's a glancing blow rather than straight down.  So fun. 

Talk about a multi skill day overall...  6h of ride time for me.