Around the city in 1 day — by bike
When Paul Galipeau set out to cycle the entire length of Ottawa's 304-kilometre perimeter last weekend, he anticipated the ride would take him between 36 and 48 hours. Instead, Galipeau rolled up to his Hintonburg home around 1 p.m. Saturday, barely 24 hours after setting off.
Galipeau, 37, told CBC's Ottawa Morning he realized early on that he was making good time on his counter-clockwise journey around the sprawling municipality.
A stop in Ashton — not to mention a couple cups of coffee there — gave him the energy he needed to keep going. He'd originally planned to climb into his sleeping bag near Burritts Rapids at Ottawa's southern-most tip, but kept going a bit farther before stopping for a well-earned rest.
"I had more energy to burn, so I kept biking and made it basically close to Kemptville before I stopped," Galipeau said.
A new appreciation
Galipeau said as he approached Cumberland in Ottawa's rural east end, he knew he could make it back home. A few hours later he did, with an impressive cycling time of 14 hours and 33 minutes, according to route-mapping app Strava.
"I had [the route] chunked out in my mind in five kind of sections, and I knew, 'OK, I just need to make it here, I just need to make it here,'" Galipeau said.
He said he expected to see deer or even coyotes along the way, but instead encountered a lot of wild turkeys.
"Every single part of Ottawa, I saw groups of wild turkeys."
Galipeau, who works for international anti-poverty non-profit The ONE Campaign, grew up in Ottawa and has spent most of his adult life in the core of the city. He said his biggest takeaway from his cycling adventure was the city's sheer size.
"The scale of it is something that can be appreciated in a new way," he said. "I've been on many of these roads in a car, but to kind of experience them in a single line by bicycle really gave me a sense of the scale and the kind of diversity that exists in the City of Ottawa."
