It’s days like today that I love my job and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I mean, seriously, what other job lets you bomb around on your bike all afternoon – and actually calls it work?
For the past two years, Slow Food Vancouver has hosted a Slow Food Cycle Tour in Chilliwack, and I figured, seeing as how it’s fast approaching, I’d do an advancer story to let people know all about it. But rather than just call the organizers up on the phone (what fun could there possibly be in doing that?) I figured I’d ride around for a first-hand experience. But who wants to ride alone, right? Not me. Nope. No way. And seeing as how today just so happened to be Mario’s day off, it was kismet he join me 😀
Slow Food Vancouver, which puts on these events all throughout B.C., is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life. And the purpose of the Slow Food Cycle Tours is to foster a connection between local producers and urban consumers, and to reignite an interest into the food we eat, and where it comes from, how it tastes, etc., etc.. Last year, in its first year, Chilliwack attracted more than 1,000 cyclists to the event, many of whom came all the way out from the city. Impressive indeed.
I didn’t exactly have a proper route to follow, as the organizers are a bit stingy in providing a map for those who don’t pay for registration, so I figured out a route of my own based on all the stops. Thank you mapmyride.com. The tour has 15 stops in total, but because it wasn’t the actual tour, and because many of the farms on the tour are private farms, not all of them were open for viewing. But that didn’t hinder my experience, oh no.
Cycling in farm country, with or without food, is an experience in itself.
One minute you’re mooing at the moo cows, or gushing over the billy goats, or in awe with the heron hovering over the corn fields, and the next you’re battling with road-hogging feed trucks or grannies with caved in bumpers who can barely see over their steering wheels, or the smell. Ohhh that smell. It’s a funny smell, kind of smells like poo. But ask anyone who lives out there and it’s like their smell sense is turned off when it comes to the poo. What are you talking about? It doesn’t smell like poo. Hate to break it to y’all, but yes it does. Majorly!
And hey, I did score some foody bits: I got me some fresh ripe tomatoes right off the vine (yum!) and a refill of the natural blackberry honey I do so love (double yum!). However, when we arrived at the Home of the Black Angus and I saw the fields full of oh-so-cute moo cows my heart sunk a little knowing that one day those big, burly beasts, who were so interested in grabbing our attention, and had all herded over to the fence just to see what we were doing, would someday be someone’s dinner. 🙁
TODAY’S RIDE:
- 2 p.m. BG before: 5.6 (nectarine, no bolus)
- Temp basal -50 per cent
- Distance: 38.76 km
- Average pace: 20.6 (Hey! It was a slow tour ;))
- Time: 1:50:58
- 3 p.m. BG: 4.6 (4 Dex tablets)
- 4 p.m. BG: 7.1 (1/2 larabar + tomato)
- 5:30 p.m. BG after: 11.1 (1.50 BG correction)
Where do you most like to ride? In the city? the country? the middle of nowhere?