Like many kids of my generation, I grew up riding my bike. Our parents didn’t drive us everywhere. Life was safer then and we had a lot more freedom than kids of today. Also, typical of my generation, once I was of driving age, the bike was left behind and I would drive whenever I could convince my mom to let me borrow the family car. If I couldn’t get the car, then some other friend would drive. We most certainly wouldn’t be caught riding our bikes. It quickly became something that only little kids did.
Contemplating Life’s Mysteries
I will often head out on my bike alone for a training ride. Leaving from Assiniboine Park, following Roblin Blvd, I can be riding across the Canadian prairies, in the middle of farm country in just six kilometers. This is my favorite route when I am alone as the shoulder is wide and safe and I can ride out along the Assiniboine Trail to the lovely small farm community of St. François Xavier and back in just over two hours.
When riding alone, a bike is a perfect vehicle for contemplating life’s greatest mysteries. For instance…….
Happy Mother’s Day
Today was a special Mother’s Day for me, the first since my mom passed away this winter at 91. This post is dedicated to my memories of her.
Riding Naples to Fort Myers Beach
The best way to tour southwest coastal Florida is definitely by bike. Check out the alternative!
Endless Traffic Jams
Florida Sunshine – It’s good for more than just growing oranges!
I live in Winnipeg, not lovingly, dubbed “Winterpeg”. The first snowfall usually hits by Halloween and doesn’t leave until the beginning of April. The winter days are short on daylight. The working world is often marked by going to work in the dark and returning home at the end of the day in the dark. The winds howl. The weather forecast is often punctuated with “the windchill factor.” We think in terms of how long it takes for our nose and ears to freeze when exposed to the elements.
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Au Revoir
For those of you who know me, I expect that you think I am pretty organized and like to get things done. But really, I harbor the soul of a procrastinator. I am great at making to do lists but those undesirable or difficult tasks can sit on the list for months on end before I finally chastise myself and do them. Since we have been home from France, I have intended to write one last post where I considered the trip as a whole, rather than each day or each place as a separate theme. We have been home for two months now, and as the New Year approaches, I finally have the time and more importantly, the inspiration to sit down and write.
The most common comment I hear from people who have read my blog on our France trip is that they can’t imagine how much work it was to write the blog at the end of a long cycling day. While that was true, I am more amazed at how impossible it has been, since I got home, to write some concluding remarks.
When we were in France, some days it was so easy to write a post. I was brimming with enthusiasm about the day and the words flowed effortlessly. Other days, it took some time for an idea to crystallize before I knew what I wanted to write. It’s amazing how, on returning from a holiday, daily life rushes back in and consumes one’s time. Depending on our lives, we become consumed with children or aging parents, or both, our jobs, or social commitments. Time wanders on and before we know it, our holidays, even the best of them, become less vivid in our memory.
So after two months of procrastination, here I go…….
The Bikes Get Boxed
Yesterday and today, we relaxed in Avignon, acting like “regular” tourists. We arrived yesterday, riding from Gordes, 50 or so kilometres, getting a little lost coming into town. Avignon is the biggest city that we rode into and finding the old town was a little complicated. (Bordeaux, which we visited a few weeks ago, is larger, but we arrived there by train.)
We toured the key sites in Avignon: the Papal Palace and the Pont d’Avignon.
The Highs and the Lows of the Luberon
When Peter Mayle wrote the 1989 best seller A Year In Provence, it was set in the area we were riding today. Called The Luberon, it consists of three mountain ranges – Le Petit Luberon, Le Grand Luberon, Le Luberon Oriental, (I’ll let you translate those!) and the valley surrounding them. A Year in Provence tells the story of Mayle and his wife renovating a two-hundred-year-old farm house outside Ménerbes, which is one of the Luberon towns we visited today. It opened the eyes of many English-speaking people to the joys of life in Provence.
Serendipity
Serendipity: The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue – The Venice of France
Amid all the beauty of France, it is hard to be taken by surprise. L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is such a place. A small town 25 kilometres east of Avignon, it’s special beauty is the Sorgue River that runs through and around it.
Well Spoke'n 