Only the hard-core hit the roads this past weekend. The rest of us hit the trainers, or the rollers (or the bar). Personally I went to the basement of my building, where my man-cave is, and set up the Habitrail:
Meanwhile, up in Toronto, Our pal Marty gathered up a bunch of riders and made for Kleinburg (even further north), as he has for the last ten years on a Sunday around this time of year. Ten years ago Marty did this ride with D.D. and Stuart Moore. The week before, Stu and D. had been riding through and over and across Cuba. Now, as they headed up the hill into Kleinburg, Stuart fell over. He never got up.
It turned out that, while most of us have 5 (or so) coronary arteries, Stuart had only one.
And so, Stuart from Red Deer, with the piercing eyes and the finely tuned bullshit detector, widely and well-loved, would no longer walk among us.
Every year since, Marty has led this memorial ride in Stuart’s honor, often enough in numbing cold. I’ve only made it to one, on which we were blessed with temps near freezing, and just a half hour or so of rain to keep everyone honest.Here’s what it looked like that year:
I was sorry not to be able to make the tenth year edition. I’m on travel lockdown in NYC this year, waiting for baby number 2 to make his appearance. I had told Marty I would lay some flowers for Stuart on River Road, probably around the time Marty was laying a bunch on the spot where Stuart came to rest. But even that didn’t work out. Too slushy.
It does seem that they had what, in Ontario, amounts to ideal January conditions. Marty summed it up later: “I was thinking during lunch why this day seems like a good way to remember Stuart. The components are camaraderie, being out of doors, having some food and maybe a beer, and the mild recklessness needed to assume that it is reasonable to plan this kind of activity for the depths of winter. It was a lot of fun.”
It still looks pretty frigid (Marty’s pix).
Long Live Stuart Moore!