I'm currently well into my first vacation week of the summer. With the deconfinement that was still in process when I had to decide and advise my employer of my vacation dates, I decided to only take one week, and keep the rest of my vacation days in reserve for later this summer. Since Canada Day (our national holiday on July 1st) happened during my vacation week, I get to report it to next Monday, so this stretches my vacation a bit. :-D

The forecast yesterday was for rain and highly probable thunderstorms in the afternoon, so my dad and I had planned a short bike ride in the morning when it was sunny. There was a lot more people than I would have expected for a week day on the bike trail, when I actually remembered it was Canada Day. As in many other countries, with the pandemic, public celebrations for the Fête de la Saint-Jean (the provincial holiday on June 24th) and Canada Day were understandably cancelled.

We rode about 20 km and turned back. We had lunch at his place then I came back home. The weather was still fine, sunny and hot, therefore I decided to try my luck and went for a second ride on my own.

I decided to go to the Vieux-Port de Québec by taking the bike trail that follows along the St. Charles River. This part of the ride is always nice, it's a city park all along the river, on each side.

Before arriving at the Vieux-Port, we ride past the Quebec marina.

And the obligatory Château Frontenac shot... (not very good I must admit)

And down on the street, I saw a car we don't often see in these parts (and old Rolls-Royce).

Past the Vieux-Port, I decided to continue along the St. Lawrence River on the Corridor du Littoral bike trail, right to its end underneath the Quebec Bridge.

On the way back I met this little guy. Since I don't have a big zoom lens (yet) for my camera, I had to approach it quite a lot to get the shot, but the duck (Mallard?) never moved. I wondered if it was injured but I didn't know how to find out, or what to do if it was.

I ended up riding about 40 km, so overall 60 km for the day. A very nice day indeed!

This post is day 6 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. I'm making an English and a French version of each post, and I decided to count each as a day. If you want to join in this challenge, visit the 100 Days website.

tags : #EN, #100DaysToOffload, #biking

Anyway! I kicked myself in the pants to get out of the house, and am I glad I did, the weather was lovely, even if there was a chill in the air. I took a route that I know quite well. North, to reach the Corridor des Cheminots bike trail (“Railroad workers' road”).

I always make a stop in the small Jean-Roger Durand city park to catch my breath (it's 140m uphill from my home with a steep hill toward the end, so quite a workout for me!) and to have a look at the Saint-Charles River that crosses it. The river was much shallower than the last time I visited back in May.

Then I headed North-West until the trail joins with the Jacques-Cartier/Portneuf bike trail. Up until then, it felt like a highway! Since the Cheminots' trail is paved with asphalt and still in Quebec City's suburbs, there were lots of cyclists, skaters and pedestrians who were out enjoying the sun while doing some exercise. But once you cross the wooden bridge over the Jacques-Cartier river, the trail is made of fine gravel/stone dust, so the traffic drastically diminished.

I usually turn around at the wooden bridge, but this time I made it a little farther, right to the station touristique Duchesnay. Since I had started getting some pain in my right knee, I decided to head back.

I ended up doing 66 km. I faced 20kph winds with 40kph wind gusts on my way back, but hey, I guess I shouldn't expect anything less, this is Quebec City after all (when I lived in Montréal, people who learned I was from QC would inevitably say “What a lovely city, but it sure is windy, eh?”). I'm pretty happy with my ride, but this nagging pain on the right knee has me concerned. I've had this pain since my second ride this year. It goes away pretty soon after a ride, so I wonder if it's caused by some bad adjustment of my clipped-on shoes? Oddly, I haven't changed my setup and I rode 2,500 km last year without getting any pain. Or maybe I should take it slower? Since doing spinning classes this past winter, I haven't been shy in using this newfound strength in my legs. I'll have to look into it if I'm going to make longer rides this summer...

This post is day 4 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. I'm making an English and a French version of each post, and I decided to count each as a day. If you want to join in this challenge, visit the 100 Days website.

tags : #EN, #100DaysToOffload, #biking