Day 1 - Niagara-on-the-Lake to Hamilton

It was a picture-perfect day, pleasantly sunny with a slight breeze off the lake, and an excellent start for the 170 riders on the first day of the first-ever Great Waterfront Trail Adventure. It bodes well for the bold vision of Marlaine Koehler, executive director at the Waterfront Regeneration Trust, who is behind this eight-day ride around the Canadian shores of Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence River to the Quebec border.
The inspiration comes from Iowa, where from small beginnings grew RAGBRAI, a 7-day cycling tour through a corn-dominated countryside that - no offence - can't compare to our Great Lakes. Now the Iowa event attracts thousands who vye to be one of the tour's 8,500 riders. In future years the GWTA may rival RAGBRAI which, in case you need to know, stands for the (DesMoines) Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.
For some, the pleasure of the first day on the trail was somewhat marred by mechanical failure aggravated by the fact that the riders had taken the precaution of having their bikes tuned up before they left.
Robert Thomson, who will be celebrating his 12th birthday on the trail on Sunday, had his bike tuned up by a bicycle store in Ajax. "It cost $200," said his mother Karen Vose. The cost included rebuilding the front wheel, which then gave out. Fortunately Adam Luffman of Liberty Bicycles of St. Catharines was running a free emergency clinic at Charles Daly Park in Lincoln, where the tour stopped for lunch. The tire on the "rebuilt" wheel wasn't new, he told Vose, in fact it was so worn that it needed to be replaced.
Karen Vose wasn't impressed. "They knew that I'm a newbie," she said of the store staff. When they told her of the extra work that had to be done, her attitude was "whatever they say." Luffman offered to drive back to St. Catharines to get a new tire but then it turned out that tour director Ian Lobb, had a couple of spare tires with him and Robert was able to get back in the saddle without delay.
I always take my bike for a tune-up before a long ride because it's an old clunker I got from K-Mart for $200 in 1995 and I don't trust my own skill in this regard. But I often suspect that the work that's been done hasn't made much difference - the brakes still squeak and the gears don't seem any smoother. My friend Anna Biro shelled out hard cash to make sure her bike was up to snuff and her front brake cable failed two hours out of Niagara on the Lake. Luffman was able to do a temporary fix. I asked him if he'd encountered any other people with botched tune-ups - turns out it was a familiar refrain. "Pretty much all day, that's the gist of it," he said.
As cycling grows in popularity, so do the numbers of people trying to take advantage. If you know of a good bicycle mechanic, spread the word. These are the people that need our support.
We got a great send-off from Niagara on the Lake, with assorted dignitaries, including Margarett Best, Ontario Minister of Health Promotion, who very pluckily got on a bike to ride a few kilometres despite not having done it for years. Ajax Mayor Steve Parrish, a keen cyclist, reminded us of the tragic deaths last week of two cyclists on the Manitoba stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway, where the lack of paved shoulders has been the source of complaints for years. Events like the GWTA can help us reclaim our roads from the automobile.
That said, Niagara Region could use more off-road trail. Although there has been improvement in the amount of paved shoulders, the Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail still has wearying stretches where there's no space set aside for cyclists and the lake is a distant notion. The amount of residential development that is taking place is dizzying. One longs for things to settle down a little in this beautiful part of the province. There's a need for more restful spaces, like the woods in Port Weller west of the Welland Canal, or Victoria Terrace in Grimsby Beach.