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It was another great summer weekend! I went on a camping and cycling trip with Jen and her parents to the Waterloo area. We stayed at Laurel Creek Conservation Area in Waterloo, and did a couple of day trips by bike from there.

I hadn't been to this part of Ontario in many years, and I think I forgot how beautiful the countryside is. Perfect weather (maybe a little too warm), good company, fantastic scenery, and bicycles...what more could you ask for?

Plenty more details about the weekend in the photo galleries:
Friday: Laurel Creek Conservation Area
Saturday: Laurel Creek, St. Jacob's Market, YWCA Camp, etc.
Sunday: Riding around St. Jacob's Elora, etc.

I went to Ottawa with Jen for the Canada Day long weekend. The nation's capital is, of course, the best place to celebrate Canada's birthday, while at the same time visiting family and the friends we both met during our many years living there.

We rode the Dirty Dog to Ottawa after work on Thursday night, and settled in to our friend Mark Rehder's place when we arrived after midnight. There was a note on the door from Richard to come meet him for some food when we arrived. What the heck, Richard is just a couple of blocks away from Mark, it's a weekend so it doesn't matter if we're out late, and there's plenty of good late-night eating in Chinatown. We ended up staying out until about 2:30 while we chatted over pho.

Saturday was a fun day! After sleeping in for a while, we went over to Jen's friends John and Anna's place for a bit of a Canada Day get-together. This was the first time we met John and Anna's newborn son, Dylan. John's brother Steve (who I met years ago through the Ottawa Perl Mongers), Kelly, Jody, and Henk were all there too.
For the evening, we headed back to Mark's place to meet up with some of the HPVOoO folks for food and crazy bike riding fun. Gathered up the bikes, lit them up, stuck Canada Geese on our heads, and went to entertain the crowds. More details in my Canada Day Photo Gallery, and in Richard's gallery.

On Sunday, Jen and I borrowed Richard's Greenspeed tandem recumbent trike for a ride around Ottawa. After touring around the city, we rode up to my brother Andrew's place to visit him, his wife Jurga and their daughter Agota. It was great to see them again for the first time since I moved out of their place in May. It's amazing how much a baby can change over two months. I took plenty of pictures of this day too.

On the last Friday of every month, cyclists in cities around the world get together for group bike rides. No organization, just cyclists having fun. This was my second Critical Mass ride in Toronto, and again it was very laid back, festive, and relaxing, all at the same time.

Although I really have to boot it to get to downtown from Missisauga, and the fact that it was 34 degrees outside when I left work, AND it was very smoggy today, I enjoyed every minute of it. I always arrive at Critical Mass in a heap of sweat. But today I changed into my Hawaiian shirt, attached my palm tree to the bike (for extra shade, of course), and cruised around the city. Fun fun fun.

The Toronto Critical Mass rides gather at the corner of Spadina and Bloor at about 6pm on the last Friday of every month.

Of course, there are plenty of pictures to see over here.

Jen called me up at work this afternoon with a great idea. "Let's have a picnic dinner in High Park!" Great idea, Jen! So when we both got home from work, we grabbed our bikes and headed out.

More pictures and commentary over here.

Jen and I rode to Hamilton for the weekend. She met up with me in Mississauga after work on Friday night, and we rode together from there. Saturday was spent touring around the city, and on Sunday we rode back to Toronto. Here are the links to the photo galleries with more details:

Friday - Riding to Hamilton
Saturday - Touring around the city
Sunday - Riding back to Toronto

This was the first real Critical Mass ride I've ever participated in, being the last Friday of my first month living in Toronto. This is basically a chance for cyclists to ride together in a large group around the city, taking back some road space for ourselves. This ride also happened to be near the start of Toronto's Bike Week, and was on the City's official bike week activity schedule. It was a very fun and festive ride, mostly, until the end when the police started to harrass some people for traffic violations.

History Television showed up to film the ride for a show they were producing. They wanted to lead/follow the ride with a car-mounted camera, but the cyclists wouldn't have any of that! A much better solution happened: bring them along in a rickshaw! The footage ended up on the Bicycle episode of "Things that Move".

The Toronto Critical Mass rides gather at the corner of Spadina and Bloor at about 6pm on the last Friday of every month.

Of course, there are plenty of pictures to see over here.