November 11 - Around The Basin

After a morning paying respects to those who have served this country on the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War I decided to go for a bike ride. The lack of traffic on the Rememberance Day holiday is nice and enables one to reflect more upon the day than on the threat posed by traffic.

I headed out the Bedford highway to the Rockey Lake road and onwards to Waverley. The winds had come up and were blustery and cool, alternating from head,tail and cross winds. It ended up being a tougher ride than I planned or anticipated and the 6C temps were cooler considering the wind chill.

Heading into Dartmouth I had solid cross winds which hurt the legs and pushed me around quite substantially so the lack of traffic was definitely a boon. That said the sound of my tires swooshing upon the pavement combined with the swirling maple leaves in my path made for quite the Canadian "cycling moment".

The winds had become increasingly chaotic - one moment I`m struggling against a head wind and the next I`m cruising along with a tail wind. Most of the time it was wicked cross winds making holding a line hard work. Crossing the MacDonald bridge across the harbour was nasty and the climb through North end Halifax to Clayton Park quite miserable. I was definitely hurting by the 40 kilometre mark and the final climb to home via Glenforest Drive and the steady headwind that was Willett Street. I think the pic(above)speaks volumes on how I was feeling once home on the step.Whew!

There`s nothing like a token amount of personal suffering on November 11th to put in perspective the sacrifices made by so many protecting the values and freedoms we all cherish. To all the veterans I say Thank You!