No Cycling Today

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No Cycling Today

Thursday, 23 August 2007

Well, now my right hand is really sore. The pain woke me up during the night and made it difficult to get back to sleep, even with ibuprofen and a wrap around it. It was also amazingly difficult to brush my hair or my teeth this morning - it hurts the most when I bend my wrist. I sure hope nothing’s broken. Fortunately the swelling isn’t particularly bad, so I figure it’s just a bone bruise or something like that. And I’ve got PLENTY of elastic bandages, so wrapping it presents no problem.

But as a result of it cycling is pretty much out of the question, sigh. So I went with Bob and Panna to the walking path at Ramsey Lake, near Science North, a museum dedicated to presenting scientific information, particularly as it pertains to the area, in an entertaining format. It’s one of the major tourist attractions here in Sudbury. Anyway, we started at one end of the path, and at a certain point Bob and Panna returned back to the van, while I continued on with my “expedition on foot”.

Ramsey Lake is quite large for a lake in a city, and I was hoping I could find either a path (preferred) or a road which would keep the lake in view. And I did find one path which went through woods and over and around rocks at the edge of the lake. But the climbs began to get a bit steeper and I really didn’t want to injure any other parts of me, so I stopped, sat on a large rock and had some lunch, while trying to decide what to do. And then I saw this man, an older man, who stepped into a clearing along that path (I’d been through it minutes before), and prepared to go for a swim. I was afraid he was going to swim in his birthday suit, but fortunately he did have on a pair of trunks. He went in the lake, and swam around for quite a while, really seemed to enjoy himself. I was wishing he’d hurry up and come out, as I really didn’t need for him to know I’d been there, and I was hoping he’d finish and leave before I got too restless to sit and wait. Well, “restless” won out, and I started back along the path, just as he was getting out and drying himself off. He seemed quite surprised to see me, just as I realized there was another path a bit higher up that the one he was standing on, so I took that one and returned to the main road. Don’t really know if he was a homeless fellow or just someone who still likes to swim in a lake once in a while, but I also didn’t care or need to know. Just a little “excitement”.

I then returned to the point where Bob and Panna and myself had begun the walk and tried to locate a path or suitable road there, but again without success, at which point Bob appeared with Casper - he was a bit early for our planned meeting, but I took the ride and we tried to find another place for me to go, without my having to walk on the sidewalk - that’s really not my idea of an idyllic walk. To make a long story a bit shorter, we didn’t find any wooded paths close to where we were, so I did wind up walking back along the sidewalk. Funny, though, his GPS said it was only about 2 kilometres from where he dropped me to the hotel but when I walked it, it was about 5 kilometres. I was thinking “stupid machine”, but then he pointed out that there was in fact a shorter route than the one I took (which Miss Casperitis knew), but I hadn’t realized it. Oh well, I “needed” the exercise...

DAY 56: On foot 10.1 km

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