Ride Report from David Thompson:

There were five of us signed up for the Carthew Bay 200 km — me (Dave), Liz, Arthur, Fred and Stan.

We rode out at 8 a.m. and finished together at 6:26 p.m. In between we were mostly together except that I stopped briefly just before the Carthew Bay Control to add air to my front tire which had a very slow leak, and Arthur, who dropped back a couple of times between Controls to attend to telephone calls. I replaced that tube at Carthew Bay, never finding the source of the leak.

It was a beautiful day, albeit cool. Approaching Alliston early in the morning as I drove down, the temperature hovered just above 0C. It quickly warmed up once the sun came out but never got much above 10C, the wind making it seem colder. At Controls we shivered if we were in the wind, needing to be riding to generate some heat.

There was a very strong wind mostly from the North in the morning, with a little East mixed in and then NorthWest at the end of the day. The northbound section from Alliston was straight into the teeth of that wind, but we were fresh. West from Barrie to Carthew Bay and then East to Barrie again, the wind had a mostly neutral effect although we were did ride a little faster heading west. By the time we were heading East to Big Bay Point, however, we could tell that the wind had shifted, not boding well for the long ride West later in the day. South to Bradford with the wind at our backs, we sailed along. We regrouped at Bradford and headed out together, intending to do some drafting, but that proved to be quite difficult. With the quarter headwind we took up too much of the road.

The rollers coming back to Alliston were a welcome respite from the wind. We finished up tired and happy, another great day on the bike.

It really is a pretty ride through farmland, Barrie, small towns and views of Lake Simcoe. Judging from the stubble in the fields, crops are behind this year but that may be just my perception.

This ride was my very first brevet with Randonneurs Ontario, in 2009. I think that this was my third time. I’ll do it again.