Thu, May 6 2010 - Thursday Night Skate: Inline Skating on the Humber River Trail (View Original Event Details)
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This Thursday evening turned out to be the perfect day to be inline skating: the day before, there had been crazy thunderstorms and sudden downpours of rain which would have made this event impossible if it had been scheduled earlier in the week. Happily, Thursday dawned bright and sunny, and all of the wetness from the day before disappeared right on time for our skating event.
We gathered at Old Mill subway station, walked the short distance to the start of the bike path, laced up our skates and began our journey by the river!
The Humber River Trail is not completely flat: it has several gentle hills, so we took our time getting up the slopes, and picked up speed on our skates going down. Many of us remarked that this was a very quiet trail; not nearly as busy as the Martin Goodman trail by the lake. Yet, this multi-use pathway was really quite beautiful.
Our main challenge was crossing a wooden bridge across the river in inline skates, but we managed it with no problems.
Throughout the journey, Fred was a very helpful guide for one person in our group; he helped her up and down the hills. At a few points when we stopped, it was also fun to see both Fred and Andy do a few little tricks on their skates.
In terms of distance, after having started near Bloor Street, and heading north, partway through the skate, we made a collective decision to try to go as far as the paved trail ends -- just south of Weston Road. We weren't sure how energy levels would be, but still made it our goal. We did skate north of Eglinton, but after hitting a few more hills, tiredness started setting in, so we decided to turn back and skate south before hitting Weston Road. We laughed, and said that after a few more skating events, that we would definitely be able to make it extra distance no problems! (A note that after consulting the map, it would have been another 3 kilometres round-trip to get Weston Road; a definitely do-able goal in a few weeks after a few more skates.)
In total, we went about 12 kilometres.
About 2 hours after we started, we ended up back at Old Mill station, having had some good exercise. This Thursday night skate is now one in a series, so please look for other inline skating events on various multi-use pathways in (and out!) of the city in the summer months.
Finally, we were delighted to welcome three new TOC members to their first event: to Barb, Fred, and Lori Ann -- a warm welcome to the Toronto Outdoor Club!
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.