Date: April 20, 2007

Two years ago, Ol'ga and I and Norman Casagrande biked to St.Anne De Bellevue. None of us were in any kind of athletic shape and it poured rain. I had a backpack, terrible saddle pain, Ol'ga had a 50$ garage sale bike that got a flat tire 20 minutes out of S.Anne De B and it took us well into the night to get home, soggy and exhausted. Still, at least O and I remember the trip fondly as a great adventure that got our muscles moving, our brains relaxed, and made Norman a closer friend.

So this year, to kick off what we hope to be a series of great bike adventures and break in (both of) our new bikes, we plotted a course back to St.Anne's! This time however, it was just the two of us (because three of my friends from the lab choked at the last minute!).

We spent Saturday night (the 19'th) excitedly preparing "Mister X" and "Leo".
Mister X, Leo

Sunday morning O got up bright and early to leave at 9AM as planned. But not J, so we didn't really get rolling until 10:30.

Still pretty good I'd say!

First we rode north on Victoria, all the way up to the 40. Then we snuck across some big roads and continued North along Decarie. That's when we saw the pants.

North Decarie (Metro Cote-Vertu) is a quaint little village with lots of old folks and Chinese people, I think. We kept on going North past lots of Halaal and Tandoor shops, taking a few streets jogging back and forth until we finally got to Gouin. We stopped for a little rest, and grapes.

On our trip with Norman, we made an effort to stay on the official bike path. This time however, we just stayed on Gouin and biked West along the North shore of the island. First lots of manshions, soon parks, and then a sort of misc. immigrant-y place... I couldn't really figure out what was going on. We stopped and ate a quick snack of pitas. Peddling through this part of the trip was tough because the road was bumpy, uphill, sub-urb/strip-mall ugly, and into the wind.

I kinda blank out on what happened next, but somehow we kept going and got to a quaint village where a flea market was. O bought a little wooden Buddha from Japan for $6. Across from the flea market was a bit of prettiness portrayed in the following shots... I wish I had recorded the name of this church. It was either in Pierrefonds or Sainte-Genevieve.

Then there was this...

The trip was really beautiful around this part. Undeveloped, farmland with small cottages, several regional/provincial parks. As a little detour, we went to visit Park Cap Saint-Jacques. Ol'ga was initially attracted by the advertisement of a "ferme ecologique" which turned out to be pretty sweet: there were lots of animals (like a petting zoo dressed up as a farm) and there was a greenhouse. No pics of the farm, but trust us, it was there! There are fields all over the park that look like they contribute feed for the animals and for the restaurant on the farm (it is a provincial-park farm after all). Leaving, we passed lots of maple-syrop cans, which looked pretty surreal, dotting the woods like sprites. [Added April 29: At the farm, a friendly donkey sniffed at me and my bike and then closed his big friendly teeth around my bike's front tire and wheel. He wouldn't let go until after a gentle beating over the nose. Ol'ga loved this... no pics of course.]

Then we kindof got lost in the park, and found our way to a beach! People were sun-tanning next to snow-banks and a kid was even playing in the water, next to the shore ice! This was a very cool discovery, that people do this.

Here. That stuff you see in the water in the background of some of those pics is ice.

Next to the beach was the Vieux Chateau, which I wouldn't describe in exactly those terms, but was cute.

There was a house nearby, and Ol'ga exclaimed "A Petchka!"

We left the park and carried on to St.Anne de Bellevue without having a single flat tire this time (excellent!) and had a good time recognizing the scenes of various disasters from our last trip. We couldn't remember exactly how we'd got that drunken biker to show us the way to the downtown trail outfitter but we remembered a lot of other things. We had an early dinner at one of the Bar and Grill type places facing the water, and ate outside. It was windy, but we were not the only ones on the back patio. The place served enormous servings. They weren't very tasty, but they got us home with full stomachs. Didn't take any pictures of St.Anne's ironically--pretty weak photo-journalism I know.

Next picture is at some rest stop along Lakeshore / Bord-du-lac which carried us from St.Anne's down to Dorval. I'd guess we're in Beaconsfield here.

The south shore is not only beautiful and scenic (if somewhat tamer than the North) but it is also predominantly downhill and smooth. To boot, we had a good tailwind to carry us home. We only stopped one other time, here in South Lachine near the mouth of the Lachine Canal.

From then on it was pretty easy, we spun along the Lachine for a while, and then took a shortcut through NDG (St.Jacques, Sherbrooke, Monkland, Decarie) to get home. We got in the door at 8PM, and it was still pretty light outside too. In case you care, we found the Snowdon Bakery at Harley and Patricia. All in all a great trip, good weather, no disasters. Stay tuned for more, or better yet, keep an eye on my Facebook page to join in next time.

Until next time,

O, J