A Lasso Over the City

I remember, a few years ago, seeing someone on social media who used to cycle routes around Vancouver that would create images like dinosaurs and animals. The fellow would look at a map, devise a route around various pathways and city streets, and then carry out the route, which would show up through Strava or some other cycling app.

They were cool, and I told myself that I could never be that creative. Surely, I'd rather just cycle a route rather than take the time to make a drawing from it.

I do like to cycle circuits, rather than simple there-and-back routes. I use a Garmin watch with GPS, which tracks my route and shows it to me later. I like to see, on the map, later the overall area that I've covered, and not just a line that goes back and forth.

When I told DW that it had been a long time since I've been on my bike and that I wanted to cover a lot of ground, she wanted to come along. "I would like to get in about 50K," I told her.

I knew that she wouldn't be up to a ride that was that long, but she said she'd see how far she would get, and that we'd go our separate ways when she felt she was ready to go home. She did, though, suggest that we cycle toward downtown, possibly stopping at the Bridgehead coffee shop off Preston Street, near Somerset.

We headed straight from Barrhaven toward the Rideau River, following it north, along Prince of Wales Drive. Partway into the ride, DW suggested that we take the straightest route, that we'd do some sort of circuit after our Bridgehead stop.

I was fine with that. I hadn't had breakfast and it was about 15 kilometres or so just to cycle straight to the coffee shop.

While we ate our breakfast and sipped coffee, I suggested that we continue north, crossing the Ottawa River at the Chief William Commanda Bridge, cycling on the Quebec side to the Alexandra Bridge, and then making our way to the Rideau River and following the trails along it, all the way back to Hog's Back, where we would then relink with the route we took to Bridgehead to get us back home.

DW thought that might be too far for her but she did accompany me as far as the William Commanda Bridge. But instead of crossing it, we parted ways: she got on the Ottawa River Parkway and followed it to Lincoln Heights, before continuing south to Baseline Station and down Woodroofe to Barrhaven.

I continued my proposed line, getting home about a half an hour later than DW and about 14 kilometres further on my ride.

After our rides, we compared routes on our respective phones. DW used her Apple watch to track her ride, and it was a solid circuit. But when we looked at mine, it looked like I had thrown a lasso around the downtown core of our city.

"I've lassoed Ottawa," I told her.

Of course, I didn't set out to create an image when I thought up my route. If I had, it was certainly a fairly lazy plan.

But you see the lasso, don't you?

Happy Monday!