Another Brush with Cycling Fame (and I didn't blow it this time)

   During our first full day in Montreal, I set off in the morning on (what was intended to be) a 22-mile loop southwest from our apartment in Laval, along the Prairies River. Because the bike paths seemed easily connectable, my plan was simply to count the bridges as I pedaled along. There were seven involved, so I would pass two, cross over to the other side via the span of the Boulevard Laurentien onto the Island of Montreal (quiet honestly, I didn’t know it was an island until this trip). I would then head northeast, passing five bridges and cross on the last of the seven bridges, this one being along Route 25. Finally, I’d turn southwest and head back to Laval.
   I was having a blast navigating the network of trails and small roads with “sharrows” painted on them. Most of the green-painted paths on the larger roads were separated by barriers or at least rows of reflective posts. Soon after crossing onto Île de Montréal, I came upon two cyclists wearing the distinctive jerseys of the Belgian national team, stopped at the side of the path, fiddling with their bike displays. Now, riding anywhere else, I may have immediately thought they might be posers, but the current location/situation, plus their expensive team-issue Trek and Cervélo bikes, convinced me they were the real thing.

   As I drew nearer, I recognized Thibault Nys (photo above), the 23-year-old member of the Lidl-Trek team, whose father Sven was a cyclocross legend. I am a regular viewer of ‘cross events during the autumn and winter, and Thibault has won a bunch of World Cup races, as well as last year’s European Championship. He was ‘cross World Champion in both the junior and under-23 classes, but his road career has been spotty, with highlights being a couple of stage wins at the Tours of Switzerland and Romandie.
   The other rider turned out to be Matisse van Kerckhove, a 20-year-old on the Visma-Lease a Bike development team, who was competing on the Worlds under-23 squad. Unfortunately, his brother Seff was hit by a car just a couple days previously while out for a training spin and was forced to miss the junior Worlds time trial event.
   Back in 2015, while attending the World Championships, I had a chance to talk to Vincenzo Nibali. In my blog entry, I mentioned how the Italian legend, fresh off a victory at the Tour de France, had come to a stop at the barrier right in front of me. Despite the fact that I know a bit of the language, I was completely starstruck and froze - I came up with absolutely nothing to say!
   Well, I wasn’t going to repeat that mistake, and since I was aware that many Belgians know a bit of French, I waved and said, “Bonne chance!” They looked up with smiles and replied, “Thank you!” Quite pleased with myself, I was brought a bit back to earth by how quickly they caught and passed me a minute or two later. Yeah, I might have been riding my heavier “all-road” bike with wider, knobbier tires, and maybe on one of my road bikes I could have hanged on a bit, but the ease at which they were flying along at 25 mph or so was quite intimidating!
   I was becoming quite familiar with the new words I was seeing on the road signs that I passed during my ride: arête (the red hexagon sign shape was a simple clue), trottier (sidewalk or path), and rue barrée (road closed). I was pleased to be able to translate the sign reading, “cyclable en quatre saisons” and realize that the bike lane was maintained for year-round use.
   I don’t if I had lost track of the bridge count, or if I had just lost myself in thought, as I certainly didn’t have to worry about the threat of cars very much, but I somehow missed the connection to the Route 25 bridge. In my defense, at least one of the other spans didn’t have any connection to the local roads. When I finally reached what I thought was the correct bridge and found out it was actually Route 40 (with no bike path), I realized I had gone WAY too far. I was nearly at the far northern tip of the island!
   Intersecting Rue Sherbrooke, which I recognized from our drive into Laval, I looped back on that until it crossed another familiar road name. I then took the first major intersection back over to the riverside trail. I shook my head in frustration when I reached Route 25 then crossed the bridge over to the bike lane heading southwest along Boulevard Levesque. There were some on-road bike lanes along the way back to Laval, but other than one nasty little uphill, the return from there was rather uneventful.
   When I finally made it back to the apartment, I found that Sue was a bit worried that I had been gone so long. I am not used to cell phone use, and I should have remembered that I had an emergency flip phone in my pocket. I really should have let her know about my delay. She was also understandably angry that my 42-mile ride messed up the plans she had laid out for the day!

My route for the day - our apartment is indicated by the red circle under "Laval"
(click to enlarge)

   I quickly changed and washed up, so that Sue and I could be on our way to the nearby Cartier Metro Station. As the trip continued, we became more and more impressed by the Montreal transit system, but the speed and smoothness of these trains, which ride on tires instead of the usual metal-wheeled railroad trucks. The cars are clean and modern, and allow free movement between sections, as they have open connections with a flexible vestibule separating individual cars. There are clear displays of train progress between stations, a clear voice announcement of station names and boards showing which station the train is approaching. Fantastique!

   We first stopped by the Canadian Center for Architecture’s Sculpture Garden, which I thought sounding really intriguing, but honestly, turned out really lame. It wasn’t because the displays themselves weren’t interesting, it was that the site was obviously neglected. There weren’t any plaques to detail the works or give credit to their designers, and the one sign on the Boulevard Rene Levesque that described the site was thoroughly scorched by the sun and completely unreadable!

 

   Onto Poutineville! Some people scoffed that we were going to one of the chain restaurants, but they were one of the few that mentioned a gluten-free, dedicated fryer. Well, at least that was what they advertised, and the Rue Bishop location was attractive enough, just blocks from the Fine Arts Museum, our next stop. We were so disappointed when the waiter informed us that their location couldn’t guarantee cross-contamination with the fryer.

   Seeing the look on our faces, he said to wait a second so that he could check with his chef. He returned to explain that one of the fryers had been cleaned/empty, and the chef would heat that one up for me. Hooray – I had the “Poutineville Special” with fries, cheese curds, braised beef, mozzarella and red wine sauce and Sue had the “Classic”, which had fries, curds and a savory brown gravy. It definitely wasn’t a heart healthy menu, but we were very hungry and went away happy!

 

   Sue had read that the Museum had Wednesday evening sessions at half price, and ALWAYS being ones for a bargain, we sauntered over to the entrance (top photo on right) on Rue Sherbrooke - yes, the same street on which I had ridden earlier that afternoon. The modern atrium (photo top right) fooled me a bit, as I wondered how much art could fit into such a small building, but I soon realized by looking at the map that most of the art was housed in the surrounding structures of mixed styles of architecture, such as the one next door (to the right in the top photo) and another across the street (photo right bottom), which was connected by an underground passage, also full of exhibitions along the way.
   The typical paintings by Dutch, Flemish and Italian masters were there, as were more modern work by Picasso, Dali and Miró. We were a little surprised to see a mobile sculpture by Philadelphia hero, Alexander Calder. There was a section displaying local Quebecois artists, and another contained a permanent exhibition dedicated to Inuit art. A very interesting wing of the museum featured design innovation in furniture, appliances and electronics. My favorite pieces were a large cutaway model of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as the Florence Cathedral or Il Duomo and Dale Chihuly’s The Sun, a ball of blown glass and steel that was 14.5 feet in diameter:

   We grabbed a bus and rode along Rue Sherbrook (I think I ended up covering that whole 20-mile street end to end!) back to its namesake Metro station. The Cartier stop was only a half mile from our apartment, but with all the walking we would do during our stay in Montreal, we learned to value the 3-day pass and the short bus ride we could take right back to our street with no added cost!