Doing the Dance!

With new tires on my bike, thanks to my awesome neighbour, I headed out early this morning to the dike for a short ride. With the advent of the May long weekend, everyone is heading out to campgrounds and various and sundry places.

As flood warnings are prevalent along the rivers from as far north as my daughter right down to where I live, many of the campsites are under water already, and if not, very close to it.

I noted the other morning that I'm able to use a higher gear to pedal and put that down to increasing muscle. Yay! So off I go to the dike, riding by newly mown hayfields, dotted with huge white plastic wrapped bales like giant marshmallows. It's overcast again today, but as with the previous couple of days, it's high clouds and will burn off. The sun is already peeking through areas, and it's one of those lovely spring mornings where it's warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt, but cool enough to be refreshing.

Not much wildlife, or for that matter, any signs of life along the dike. The river is slowly making it's way closer and closer, and an incline that I used to walk down to wander into the river bed, almost half way across the river, (about 2km) is now completely under water. As it's still quite a ways from the dike, I'm still comfortable riding it, so far.

I love taking my bike out and being able to spontaneously take a different path or road. This morning instead of following the road home, I took a sharp right to find out where the country road led. Surprisingly, it led to an old building with faded lettering of 'Scott's Meat' - an abattoir I'd presume. The paved road turned into a gravel road and curved back to the dike.

Riding towards the dike, a huge dairy barn was below the dike on my right, the cows still quiet in the early morning. On my left, an overfull slough was creeping through the grass and bush, it's green stillness reflecting the trees and overgrowth. A closed metal farm gate prevented me from going further, birds landing briefly on it before disappearing into the mass of wild bush. An American Goldfinch (wonder if he has a visa? lol) landed on the farm gate, and luckily I already had my camera out with the zoom lens on it.



Pedalling back the way I came, an abandoned shed sits right next to the train tracks, and I wonder what animals it used to house.



Back at home, I'm excited today, as I'm heading across the border to a wonderful area for photography and to check out a new bike. As the price here was rather exorbitant, I couldn't justify buying a new one. Until a good friend and accountant advised me that as my photography is a business, the bike is part of how I take photos and therefore a business expense. Yes!!

Man, I love that woman! lol. The bike will need to be ordered in, and take about a week, but I can wait. In the meantime, with transportation as our next assignment, I'm thinking I'll head down to North Bend on Tuesday and take photos of the ancient trains.



Enjoy the day! (Doing the happy dance at having my bike back)