Long ride

By the time I was heading home, the wheels of my bike were creaking and wheezing in protest. My legs too felt tired, and I rode much slower than earlier. The sun was setting, casting that magnificent glow of gold, pink and serenity on the rest world that I love so much. The moon, a faint, white sliver, hung low and sharp.

I cycled and stopped, cycled and stopped. It seemed like the closer I was home, the longer I took to actually get home. Reluctance... or perhaps just admiring the sense of calm that surrounded me on the bank of the canal? The reflections of thin, thin clouds were somehow suddenly mesmerising.

Almost 70km and 5 hours after I left home, I was close to home again. It was a trip I had been planning to make for a short while now. To Charlemagne, QC, where I learned while browsing through the map one day that it was "ville natale de Celin Dion" ("birth town of Celion Dion). I like her music, her love songs the words of which speak to me... but am not such a fanatical fan that I'd pilgrimage to the very place where she was born. So the trip was more about the distance and challenging myself than seeing the remains of her birth home (now sold and much changed), and a monument in her honour, and a road named after the singer (though, they were interesting, to say the least...).

Like always, when I am on a bike I feel alive. I concentrate on the road, on the traffic and pedestrians, and occasionally notice sceneries and signs around me that are both odd or worthy of a "cycle-by-shooting" (with my camera). Yes, on the bike, when I am clutching the steer, when my feet are pedalling away at with great vigour and focus, I am in control of my own speed and direction. It's almost meditative, almost calming, despite the physically exhaustion that catches up when you stop, when feel your feet shake a little from the strain of pedalling.

At best, cycling is a great way to go to far away places, at your ease and your own will... and at minimum a distraction, a confirmation that I am alive.