March Roads

The spring thaw has allowed longer rides finally. Two weeks ago I took an 80-miler to Merrickville and back, a small town in the country along the Rideau river canal-lock system that allowed the barges of old to travel from the st. Lawrence to reach Lake Ontario without brushing against the border where they would be easy prey for those pesky raiders from the southland. By the time the locks were built, US-Canada relations warmed and the canal was not needed. Now it is used by gaudy motor boats chuging up and down the lock-system all summer from Ottawa to the Thousand Island archipelago in Lake Ontario.




You pass through miles and miles of bumpy country roads along streams, barns, and corn fields as far as you can see.