Last weekend was the Montreal World Cup, one of very few UCI bicycling events held in North America.  It was crazy: for me, cycling is something that takes place far away in Europe or maybe in California or Georgia in the spring; at any rate, it’s something vaguely European that happens far away and that you watch on TV, which takes the sport even further away from its decidedly more proletarian roots.  (It is, I imagine, kind of like being a WASPy soccer fan in middle America; no matter how genuine your love of the sport, there’s always going to be something that seems a bit self-consciously affected about the Manchester United scarf draped around your shoulders.)  So, it was pretty bizarre that suddenly, on Saturday, there was an honest-to-God race with actual world-class riders taking place a quarter of a mile away from my apartment.  Complete with video camera-toting motorcyclists, team cars, and the dude who rides in the passenger seat on one of the offical motorcycles and writes the current times on a tiny chalkboard which he then holds up for the riders to see.  Crazy, I say.

The race route goes up and down the mountain via Camilien-Houde, a road I’ve only been stupid enough to bike up once.  The easy route to the top of Mont Royal is to take the wide gravel pedestrian path, which loops lazily back and forth on its way up at a gentle gradient.  I attempted to take the actual road up the mountain, Camilien-Houde, only once at the end of the season last year, figuring that I was in as good of shape as I’d ever be.  I made it very nearly to the top before the unusual sensation of my heart and lungs both trying to escape my chest cavity made me pause, drape myself limply over the handlebars for a few minutes, and make an elegant and humble descent.  Camilen-Houde is the route that the World Cup takes, except the athletes competing go up, down, and around it eleven times.  Also, please note that this year’s winner, Emma Pooley, is also working on her PhD. Again: humbled.

Montreal’s Bixi bike-sharing program has made an extremely visible debut during the past few weeks, too.  I swear I pass an almost-empty station every couple of blocks, which… looking at the map, is about right.  My own bike was in the shop this week, so the fact that Bixi’s getting so much buzz, plus the fact that it’s finally gorgeous and warm outside, made me miss it even more.  But I will continue to reiterate the importance of a tune-up for even the most casual cyclists, particularly since I went in to get my front shifter replaced and ended up getting a new shifter plus a new chain, rear cassette, and cables.  (I might know how to true a wheel, but that’s about as far as it goes).  Anyway, I went to go pick it up this morning, and it is all shiny and new and rides like absolute buttah.  Without thinking too much about it, I went out to the bike path and ended up at the north end of the island, at Rivière des Prairies.  It is quite nice — apparently no longer a dumping ground for the city’s untreated sewage, which is always good — but the sight of the narrow river separating me from the ‘burbs of Laval was enough to make me add another entry to my imaginary list of places to go: “Ocean.”

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