Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Hitchhikers and Egg-layers

After busy times, hot weather, rainy weather, and bad backs, we finally got back out on the bikes yesterday and did about 50k of trail riding. This trail, as do many, traverses an old railway bed and has lots of long, gentle grades with a 20-25 metre differential between the top and bottom. Although these slopes are gentle, they are long and sufficiently demanding to cause us two oldies lots of sweat, tired muscles, and achy knees.



Dedicated to Swamp and Rurality who can probably both identify this sucker and tell us what time it got up that morning, just by looking at the moss on its back. (I jest, of course.)


We spotted this turtle laying eggs on both parts of our round-trip. She seemed to be on her third 'laying hole' on our return trip. Why she would choose 'to lay' on the hard, gravel bike path is beyond me.


On the whole, it's a good trail that, apparently, eventually connects into downtown Ottawa. It would be a heckuva trip, though. The trail is wide enough for us to ride two abreast and is kept in pretty fair (ie smooth) condition. But it's $%^# buggy, at least at this time of year. For much of the journey, I had numerous deer flies hitchhiking on my helmet, but it wasn't until we were almost home that I got a few bites on the arms. Perhaps it had something to do with my rather slow speed near the end of three hours of pedalling.


 

5 comments:

swamp4me said...

Great turtle shot -- looks like a snapper to me, but then I'm no expert on turtles of "foreign" countries :)

And I'm in a different time zone from you...better ask Rurality ;)

You make me want to get a bike.

Dale said...

The template layout looks fine to me, AV. I use Firefox.

Great turtle pic. Yup. It's a snapping turtle.

Jennifer Swanepoel said...

I certainly hope the baby turtles get to live! :)

Rurality said...

Ha! You overestimate my knowledge by huge amounts. :) But I think it's a snapping turtle too. Why does everybody see them laying eggs except me, though?

Valerie - Still Riding Forward said...

I love the pic! By the time I got turned around and the camera out last week the snapper I saw crossing the road, with a whole lawn growing on it's 16" back was camoflaged so well by the surrounding greenery that it was pointless to try for a photo.