Summer - Sunscreen, sweat, hot hot hot!

Perfect cycling weather, roads, and scenery


Don't forget protection from toxic solar rays


Green fields and sky-- we're likin' it!


Descent into the St-Come valley from Ste-Emilie de l'Energie


Riviere Noire- no swimming here!


The fantastic Lanaudiere hill ride, day one skipped the long-hill northern section.
Day two.. the long hill northern section

Saturday was the first HOT day of the summer season, nicely synchronized with the major event of the weekend: the Formula One Grand Prix race. Yes, it's the annual eurotrash invasion of Montreal, causing Montrealer's to make some effort to evade these well-tanned and foie-gras grazing high-value tourists.

CFM (and possible you too) put the good bike in the car and hit the hills. We went to do some hill riding in northern Lanaudiere, our favorite ride destination. Recent rain and general busyness meant that we had not ridden the racing bike in a couple of weeks. Uh-oh. Let's keep the comments short and sweet and say that the 30 degree C heat made everything 30% harder, the time away from the bike made it 20% harder, and the bibittes made it 10% harder. So it was a hard day.

We avoided the long and hard pair of St-Emilie-de-l'Energie hills (the northern loop of the ride) for a change, and essentially did the east, west, and southern sections of our favorite Lanaudiere ride.


It was great!

Summer is great!

Sweating is great!

Cramps are great! Not!

Actually we avoided any cramps until we were back home when a twitch sometimes turned into a aieeecrramp, but we'll pay that price any day for great summer temperatures and sunshine.

Was there one thing we had to relearn about summer on this ride? No, not to apply sunscreen, we did that very well. We had to relearn the car parking technique of parking in the shade. Luckily we did a stop back at the car in between the warmup part of the ride (eastern loop) and the long afternoon of the western/southern loop. THe car was in the sun, and it was as hot as the inside of the Sun in there.

Take care everybody and have a long and great summer!