Our plan was to rent a couple bikes and ride up the Rideau Canal and back and around the city a bit.
We didn’t find the rental place where we expected it to be. And we didn’t find it down the block or up. And we didn’t find it on the next street. Finally, we asked a woman in a haunted tours booth, and she pointed us up the street, down some stairs to a place under a bridge where there were racks and racks of bikes just waiting to be rented.
In no time, we were off...
We rode away from Parliament Hill. On the bike trail. Beside the canal. Under bridges.
Past joggers and walkers and boats coming thru some upstream locks while the wardens cranked the doors shut.
We crossed the canal at the locks and rested on the other side in the shade. Then we continued thru the Experimental Farm, where we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a traffic jam. But when we got back on the trail, we found a farmers’ market where we bought some raspberries and a tavern with an outdoor patio where we ate the berries and waited for pizza and a sandwich.
The day got away from us, and in the end it was a sprint back along the Ottawa River and into downtown to return to the rental place under the bridge before they closed. In fact, we were in such a rush that we ended up carrying our bikes up the stairs of a bridge and down the other side in order to get back on the right side of the canal. We were (or at least I was) huffing and puffing at the end.
When we rolled back into the rental place, all the bikes had been put away, and the box of helmets was nowhere to be seen. They were getting ready to leave. We were just in time.