Do you want to go for a bike ride on Sunday, June 5 beginning at 12 p.m.?
I do. And I don’t mind if you tag along. In fact, I want a lot of people to join.
The Editor’s Ride will journey along the entirety of the Chinook Parkway. The nine kilometre ride will leave from the pathway which starts at the Windscape Kite Festival and will make its way to the pathway extension behind Regier Honda.
The ride is designed as a family-friendly outing, and participants are invited to join along at any point along the pathway so that people are riding a comfortable and achievable distance.
The opening two kilometres are primarily downhill, leaving from the Windscape Kite Festival grounds and down the cutbanks hill to the Chinook Golf Course. Cyclists would need a properly tuned up bike to safely complete this part of the ride.
The next section follows the Parkway for a kilometre to the Riverside Park parking lot, where we will take a brief break to meet up with cyclists riding from that point.
The longest section of the ride in the three kilometres from Riverside Park to the outdoor Elmwood Fit Park, where we will again stop to meet up with more participants.
We are then back on the path for a just over one kilometre ride from the outdoor fitness park to Riverdene Park.
The final leg of the ride takes us to the end of the pathway, with this 1.5 kilometre portion of the route a moderately challenging ride with some little hills.
On the way back (yes, we have to get back where we started), the ride will be a much more leisurely pace, as we will meet up with the City of Swift Current’s Parkway Connection which runs from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Parkway Connection event will explore different stops along the Chinook Parkway, with the city’s summer programs team setting up at Riverdene Park for a Bike Safety event, showing how to use the outdoor equipment at the Elmwood Fit Park, planting seedlings at the Janie and Helen Rempel Community Garden, and finishing up at the Disc Golf Course at Riverside Park. While the Editor’s Ride will travel along all these parkway connected stops, community members are also invited to walk, bike, scooter, rollerblade or even unicycle to the Parkway Connection stops.
I have been a recreational cycling enthusiast since 2015 when I began tracking my cycling distances on a convenient phone app. I have accumulated over 18,000 kilometres over the ensuing seven years, and I have added another over 400 kilometres so far this cool and wet spring.
A number of people have commented to me that they have seen me biking around the community and wish that they were able to get out to enjoy the outdoors as well.
There is no secret recipe for biking. All you need is some air in your tires, a reliable bicycle, and a little motivation to get outside and go for a ride.
