E-biking around the Stanley Park

What a beautiful Saturday afternoon! Sitting in bed, with a book in my left hand and a high lighter in my right hand, I looked out of the window. Blue sky, no cloud. Looked like it's Spring time for Vancouver!

“Let's go for biking now!” Stephanie was impatient. “OK! Let me finish my tea first.” “How long?” “About an hour.”

We finally got ready in two hours. As usual, we fought over the right to use the e-bike. And as usual, She got the right to use the non e-bike for better exercise results.

It was very cold outside. No Spring time yet. We rode across the Cambie Street Bridge first. Then biked along the False Creek water front towards the English Bay. It was truly relaxing. People walked, biked and rolled by. No worries on their faces. Everybody was having a good time. After a while, we arrived at the Sunset Beach, the entrance to the Stanley Park. There were always some huge cargo ships anchored not very far away. Being a fanatic naval war gamer, I frequently imagined naval gun shells falling around them with huge water splashes. Not very nice of me, indeed.

Affected by the good mood around us, we felt energetic and decided to ride around the Stanley Park. In the past few weeks, the Stanley Park was repeatedly hit by big wind storms. Thousands of big trees were uprooted and fell. It was not a good sight! We rode and rode, passing these uprooted trees one by one. Quite a lot of people were stopping their cars along the road, taking out their cameras to catch this rare moment of destruction. Shoot! We forgot to bring the camera with us! Well, maybe no big deal. Maybe all these were part of the Global Warming. If so, bigger and bigger storms are ahead in the years to come. We will still have chances to shoot some good pictures when the next bigger storm comes.

Gradually I fell into deep thinking. I began to think about the future. It reminded me of an old communist propaganda slogan, “The human race will surely conquer the nature.” Based on what I saw today, I was not so sure about it.

We were pedaling uphill towards the Prospect Point. Stephanie was exhausted. Since I was in a deep thinking mode, I forgot to pedal sometimes. I just pushed the engine switch down and the e-motor pulled the bike and me effortlessly uphill. Some people had noticed this, and they began to ask. “Does your bike have a motor?” “Oh? Yes. It has a motor installed.” “Is there a power switch? How do you control the motor?” The cheating was uncovered, I should have tried to pretend pedaling as well while people around me were soaked in sweat biking uphill:-)