The Spoked Traveller | 2015 April
Trails and advice cycling around the world as solo female cyclist and adventurer
mountain bike, adventure travel, cycling travel, bike tours, outdoor, solo travel, female mountain biking, badass female cycling, female travellers, women travel, adventurous
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April 2015

This seems to be a theme with me. What is home? Frig, I dunno. It certainly isn't a place with four walls. But it was odd returning to London this weekend, a place that should be home if you consider time a prerequisite for home: I lived here from 1993 until 2014. Certainly the longest I have ever lived anywhere. But, I have to qualify this. I went away every summer. This weekend I drove back to London from my current home in Toronto. As I drove to my mom's after my trail run through one of my favourite parks, Komoka, which hugs the Thames River and then shoots up the valley, I got back in the car and then as I'm blindly driving, since I know every street, store, corner and tree so well, I missed the turn off.

So, I bought a road bike, which as a mountain biker, means a huge cultural, emotional and physical shift for me. To fully immerse myself in this change, I joined a bike group and last weekend I went on my first road bike trip: 75 kilometres from my apartment in downtown Toronto to the burbs of Oakville. Meeting at a coffee shop at 8:30am, I wasn't surprised by the other riders: all the men were wearing  team jerseys, talking about bike components and their pitiful sluggish shape, this being the first group ride of the summer.