Hamilton- Day 3

Shortly after I finished writing the blog last night, Ralph came out for a little visit, and let me pet him again, but then disappeared into one of his hiding spots. Michael said that Ralph was chatty and stomping about the place overnight, but I didn’t hear it.

My planned ride for today was on the mountain to collect tiles. I decided to drive to the start of the ride since Patti and I will be taking the same route up the mountain tomorrow.

The streets on the mountain are over built with even residential streets like this one having four lanes of traffic and no cycling infrastructure. There’s a stark difference between the lower city and the mountain in terms of cycling infrastructure, independent businesses, and art. It feels like a suburb, not an urban area like downtown.

It was another cool and sunny day, but windy. The first half of my ride I struggled against the headwind, but looked forward to a tailwind on my return.

I was on the Escarpment Rail Trail for a couple kilometres. The surface in some places is screenings, and in other places very old pavement. The parts that are old pavement are extremely jarring.

The trail does not have gates at the road crossings. In some places they have put in crossrides, but not at this particular crossing.

There’s a problem with the navigation cues on Ride with GPS when the route crosses itself. It always seems to choose the later cue and I don’t always catch it. In this case, I was actually taking a phone call and ended up following the wrong cue for a kilometer. I need to put in a support ticket to see if they can fix it. They’ve been quite responsive to other requests I’ve made.

There is starting to be a bit of autumn color, but it is still mostly green.

This lengthy Active Transportation bridge crosses Lincoln Alexander Expressway.

Part of my ride today was following the Greenbelt route.

Highland Road West has recently been repaved, and, I think, narrowed from two lanes in each direction, to one lane in each direction with bike lanes

Finally, I’ve made it to the country.

I wasn’t expecting to find anywhere to buy food so I brought a chocolate milk and a bag of pistachios with me. But when I spotted this country market, I pulled in and bought a prepared salad. They had picnic tables outside, so it was a good place to stop.

Just as I was leaving I received call with no caller ID. I never answer calls like this. But there is a new very useful feature in iOS 17. When somebody leaves a message you get a real time transcription on your screen, and if it’s someone you want to talk to, you are able to pick up the call, just like screening on old-fashioned answering machines. In this case, it was the furnace technician who was at my house, and I was glad I picked up the call, because I was able to approve doing some work that he was recommending he do today, rather than wait until a potential failure this winter.

The landscape was as flat as a table once I got off the rail trail.

I missed the cue for a road I was going to turn down for a few hundred metres before doing a U-turn to pick up a tile, and when I realized it I had gone 2 km too far. I had finally gotten a tailwind after more than 20 km of headwind, but turned and headed back into the wind to pick up the tile as I don’t know when I’ll be back in this area. Unfortunately, when I got to the point where I was expecting to have a nice tailwind, the wind had shifted and I had a crosswind all the way back. It was one of those rides that was a struggle most of the way, and I was glad to have it done when I finished.

It isn’t one of the prettier rural rides I’ve done, and there weren’t a lot of interesting things to look at. I did see this interesting church, and nice farmhouse.

When I saw this ice cream cone sign, I got excited and pulled in, but the business is only open at the end of the week.

My route took me past this Road Closed sign. I stopped briefly to consider if I should follow the detour, but I was very tired, wanted the tile ahead, and didn’t want to add extra distance, so I decided to take a chance. One side of the road was open here and controlled by a light, alternating the traffic direction using the lane.

However, 100 m after that the road really was closed if you were a motor vehicle, and there was no getting around it. However, being on my bike, I just dismounted, and walked across the lawn on the left-hand side of this picture.

This is the view from the Active Transportation bridge over Lincoln Alexander Expressway on my way back. The bridge goes over both directions of the highway plus the ramp. It’s one of the longest highway bridges for Active Transportation I have encountered, I think.

I’m back on Escarpment Rail Trail.

Here’s a close-up of how bad the surfaces are on one section of the trail.

55 km, and 26 new tiles later, I loaded the bike into the car and drove to Incline Coffee company on Concession Street. I speculate that it is so named because at this spot there used to be an incline railway from the lower city to the top of the mountain. The barista was very friendly, made an excellent latte, and explained a deal they have that a latte purchased with a baked good after 2 PM, was $2.50 off. So I ordered a giant chocolate chip cookies, which turned out to be two giant chocolate chip cookies , and a latte for $6.22. Quite the bargain these days. Concession Street is quite a thriving neighborhood.

I then went to Fortinos’s to pick up a steak and some prepared salads, which cost a lot less than going out for dinner, and was just as good, if not better.

Then I walked Michael to the car so that I could get the parking pass for Patti and came back to write the blog.

I walked back through Hess Village, which was very pretty at twilight.

And then I passed the Scottish Rite. It was completed in 1896 for George, Elias Tuckett, founder of Tuckett Tobacco, and the 27th mayor of Hamilton. It is now the meeting place of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It is also often used for movie and television shoots, and weddings and other gatherings.

Ralph came out while I was out walking, and ate a bit of his food. As I’ve been writing the blog, he came over and rolled around on the floor near me, and then climbed up on the couch and started rubbing his head on mine. Then he nipped me on the cheek. According to Megan, this is a good sign and he was telling me to stay still so he could continue grooming me. I didn’t stay still after the nip and he left. But he’s clearly warming up to me.

Patti comes tomorrow morning and we are going to do a 40 km route to explore Hamilton, as she has never biked here before, but it’s a route I have done, and taken other people on who have enjoyed it greatly.