This past Saturday, I joined a new club ride with the Waterloo Cycling Club. This spring, Bill F. started an “Adventure Ride” each weekend. Usually, once the snow melts, most club cyclists are either out on road rides or on the mountain bike trails each weekend. Gravel grinders are postponed until the fall. In past years, I’ve done this – I typically put away my gravel grinder bike in April in favour of my road and mountain bikes.
On Friday night, I was looking at the weather forecast and they were calling for showers Saturday morning, so rather than committing to riding, I figured I’d wait and see how the morning looked. When I awoke the next day, I saw that the storms had passed and the sun was out. Having cleaned up my Kona cyclocross bike a few days earlier, I decided to join Bill’s RIde
The group started in St. Jacobs with five: Bill, Rene, Mike, Mark and Doug. I joined near RIM Park, and Kevin joined on the Grand River trail to make it seven. We continued at a relaxed pace through Bingeman’s, under the bridge at Victoria Street and down the trail to the Fairway bridge, where we crossed the Grand River and continued on the road towards King St., where we picked up the trail again.
The trail continues along some rock paths adjacent to a golf course until we hit Pioneer Park, where we crossed back over the river and through another golf course, where the staff welcomed us and let us fill our water bottles. From there we headed back up the opposite side of the river and wound our way through a network of trails, roads, bridges until we hit the Iron Horse trail and eventually made our way to the Berlin Bicycle Cafe in Belmont Village for a snack. This is a new location with a cycling theme and great coffee (they even have some vintage items for sale… that leather Brooks saddle was tempting…). After a rest, we went our own ways back home. I ended up with about 60 km at a relaxed pace of less than 20 km/h. Great company and scenery and a memorable ride. Thanks Bill and the rest of the gang!
Bill always has his camera out on these rides, and he has uploaded some of his pics from the ride on the club website:
http://waterloocyclingclub.ca/forums/topic/adventure-ride-for-saturday-11-jun-2016
Oh and one more plug: The Hydrocut now has a beer! That’s right… Together We’re Bitter, a local craft brewery, has made a batch of Hydrocut Session IPA. They’re donating to the trails with each sale so head down there and pick up a growler!
RideCycleSpin 