Suicidal Squirrel

Well, there I am on my ride to work this morning (Saturday), it was a nice cool morning, the sun was shining, lots of colorful leaves on the trees, and I'm cruising along nicely as there was a south wind.


As I'm coming around the corner to cross the bike/pedestrian bridge from Kingston Row to Jubilee (the one at BDI as pictured above), I spot him. Sitting on the curb near a garbage bin. Our eyes locked as I continued to approach him, I knew what he was thinking: "I can't make it another Winnipeg winter, so cold... so windy.... so..... cold.... I'm ending it now!" As I continued to approach, he got ready to jump, so I hit the brakes hoping to throw off his timing.

Time seemed to slow as I gazed down to watch this poor destitute squirrel attempt to take his own life by jumping into the slightly bladed spokes whirring in circles. It appears as though my efforts to throw off his timing have worked, he jumped late, I felt him hit my rear tire.

As I turned in time to watch him scurry away into the bushes, perhaps he hesitated as he realized it wasn't worth it. Sure, Winnipeg is cold and windy in the winter, but the summers are great for a squirrel. He looked "well fed" and I'm sure he's gorged himself on a few delicious treats from the nearby BDI Ice Cream Stand. What started as a delighted child's frozen treat after their soccer game, became the "crème d'asphalt", a delicassy for squirrels. Then again, these treats my have been what thwarted his attempted suicide this morning, his lack of agility due to the excess cream intake may have slowed him just enough to be off the mark. Hopefully this squirrel can find it in himself to tough out one more winter, because trust me the summers (and oh so creamy BDI soft serve ice cream) are worth it.

MS Tour Continued....

heh heh, well I got a bit distracted from finishing my post on the MS tour from a while ago,and I guess I've forgotten many of the details by now. So I'll just leave it at how it went,
shortly after lunch it started to pour buckets, I hadn't seen so much rain in a long time, then the hail hit. I was sitting in our car with Jess, watching the remaining riders finish up. Boy, was I glad I finished earlier, I had to put the wipers on full tilt to see them and we weren't even moving.

The evening went pretty well, I was feeling worse and worse though, and again, I didn't sleep well once we got to bed, then I woke up feeling terrible. I got ready to go meet a few guys for a warm up ride (it was ~4 degrees C), and to see how I was feeling for the day. I decided to go for it, but asked Jess to wait at the first rest stop for me in case I didn't feel like continuing. Well, soon after the ride started, so did the rain. I was powering up the hills, my legs felt great, but... my lungs just couldn't keep up. I had 2 options: 1 Ride slower (yeah right) or 2, pack it in.

I saw Jess, pulled off the road, put my bike on the rack, and drove home.

After speaking with other riders the next day, they said the weather just got worse, more rain, wind, and apparently the food at the end of the ride consisted of 3 chicken fingers and some other small snacks.

The ride itself was beautiful, I quite enjoyed it as it was the first time I actually encountered hills on a ride. We hope to go out there next year for some camping, hopefully the weather will be nicer.

here's a little graph showing the elevation changes of the first day.




Nothing spectacular, but I was wishing I had a couple more gears in that steep part. Oh, it's not the complete course, just where it started to go up, the whole ride was ~72km or so.