I seem to recall days like today when I was riding more regularly — character building days. Maybe not character building, but rather tolerance building in terms of my comfort level with rain, headwinds, etc. I was hoping today wouldn’t be this sort of ride, but oh well. In all honesty it wasn’t too bad, and in retrospect it was kind of fun rediscovering that I could roll around for almost three hours in the rain without being too uncomfortable.

Today’s route was a somewhat abbreviated loop of the Saanich Peninsula north of Victoria. The first 15 minutes were great (sunny and relatively warm), but the clouds to the north looked not so great. I was kind of hoping that the clouds were just hanging around, but no, they were dumping rain, and they continued to do so until about the last 15 or 20 minutes of the ride.

GPS Data: 78.3km – 2h50m – 27.7km/h – GPS Route

A road ride on the Saanich Peninsula near Victoria, BC. Click on the map to see detailed GPS data on the Garmin website.

I think maybe these are Coast Guard boats, but maybe they're government fisheries boats. Whatever the case, this is Patricia Bay on the west side of the Saanich Peninsula.

A First-Nations totem pole on the edge of Pat Bay.

Heading north on West Saanich Road with a bit of a view of Saltspring Island across the water.

A view of some fancy-shmancy house on Lands End Road with Portland Island off in the distance.

Looking south towards Victoria from the waterfront in Sidney, BC.

Meh, more wet roads on the way back to Victoria. They're not shown in the picture, but I saw some swans in the fields picking at worms or rotting pumpkins.

To quote a bumper sticker - I'd rather be... ummm, oh yeah, I'm doing what I'd rather be doing.