In order to test our equipment and figure out what stuff we’ve forgotten, we went on a test bike trip this weekend. Our destination was Rideau Acres which is quite a nice campground, and is really close to here. Turns out it’s a good thing it wasn’t much further.

On Saturday afternoon, we packed up our bags and the trailer.

We headed out around 6PM, which was a bit later than we wanted to, but we weren’t going far. It was a beautiful sunny evening, and cruising through the city was quite nice until I almost got hit.

We were on a residential street with quite a big hill. I checked carefully to make sure that I wouldn’t be running any stop signs, then I coasted down the hill. I was probably going around 30kph when I passed through an intersection where a minivan driver had neglected to stop for his stop sign. I don’t know what my face looked like as I yelled at him, but on his face was a look of abject terror. I’m glad he reacted as quickly as he did, because I’m not sure I would have. He managed to accelerate around me, and we missed the collision by a reasonable margin.

It’s interesting that even though I wasn’t hugging the curb, I seem to have been completely invisible to him. He must have checked the road for cars… at least not doing so would seem to be suicidal. I guess I need to pay even more attention to intersections, even when I have the right of way. The problem with this intersection is that I don’t think I could have seen him very much earlier. Well, hopefully that one driver will be more careful at stop signs in the future.

So after I got over shaking, we continued on our way. Some of the roads weren’t much fun but the really fast ones had paved shoulders so that was ok. I don’t understand how people think that living in the country would be a good place for kids. There were no side roads that would get us where we were going, just these big, fast ones. I wasn’t particularly comfortable cycling on those roads, and I certainly wouldn’t be happy letting my kids bike there until they were at least 12.

We went down quite a big hill. I’d been following Trevyn so that I could warn him if stuff was falling of the trailer, or if something seemed to be wrong with it. After my run in with the van, I wasn’t so inclined to race down this hill, intersection or no intersection, so Trevyn pulled far ahead of me. The trailer began wavering wildly from side to side. I tried yelling at Trevyn to stop, but he was too far away to hear. When I caught up with him at the bottom of the hill I told him what had happened. The trailer still seemed ok though, so we kept going.

A few minutes later, I noticed that the trailer was listing to the side rather a lot, so we pulled into the parking lot at the Kingston Mills Lockstation. Mere seconds after we stopped, the trailer suddenly cracked and landed on the ground. After much laughing about how such things only happen in movies, we managed to tie it back together. It turns out that a couple joints should really have been glued. They let go, putting too much stress on the one glued joint, which then cracked.

The makeshift repairs worked well enough, so off into the sunset we went. Just a few minutes later we arrived at the camp ground. Sorry, we have no pictures of the evening, since it was dark by the time we got there. We managed to find a campsite without too much broken glass on the ground, and set up the tent. The stew we had for supper worked out very nicely. It was nice to actually be able to see the stars again. We eventually got to bed around midnight.

Turns out that we had underestimated how cold it would be. After putting on an extra t-shirt, my sweatshirt, and the extra blanket, I managed to get mostly warm enough. Next time we’ll bring a warmer sleeping bag and warmer pyjamas.

The next morning was beautiful.

I tried to sleep in to make up for the lost sleep, but it didn’t work very well. For breakfast we had oatmeal. We also discovered that Trevyn really doesn’t like oatmeal.

Enjoying the nice weather, we slowly packed up and headed out around 12:30.

We had lots of time, so we decided to stop at the Kingston Mills Lockstation.

We wandered around, ate some lunch, dipped our feet in the water, watched the trains go by, and looked at the locks.

On our way home, we rode through the ghetto. It was a zoo, as everyone was moving. I’m so glad we aren’t doing that this year.

All in all, it was a good test, and pretty fun. It’s nice to know that there’s a good campground that close to us. We’ll have to go back soon.

Posted in Cycling |

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