The Island Line Trail - Burlington, VT

So, it’s been a little while.

My mom was recently diagnosed with cancer and that required a pretty immediate surgery. Following her procedure, I myself became sick for 12 days. Suffice it to say, I’ve been a little pre-occupied these last few weeks. I have been going on rides and to bike events when I feel up for it and I plan to write about some of them soon but in the meantime, I’ll talk about my latest ride on Thanksgiving day, which was my first time back in the saddle since my return from Portland at the end of October.

I was very sick leading up to Thanksgiving but had already planned a trip with a friend to Burlington, VT for the holiday. We drove up there Wednesday as I was finally starting to feel a little bit better. I got out on my bike around 10 AM on Thursday morning and with the temperatures at freezing and even colder with wind, this was my first winter ride for the season.

I wanted to try out the Island Line Rail Trail, which is a 14 mile trail that starts at the waterfront on Lake Champlain, along the Burlington Greenway. After doing some research, I saw that a portion of this trail was gravel and since I wasn’t sure how my road bike would hold up, I had planned to take the trail North, to the first natural area and take an alternate route back South, through Burlington.

The start of the ride along the trail was very peaceful; it follows the shore of Lake Champlain and then cuts through some quiet, wooded, residential areas. Lots of families were out walking, given the holiday, and I had some music playing on a speaker as I rode. It was a really nice feeling to be back on my bike and I felt myself smiling for a lot of the ride.

Lake Champlain looked beautiful on this chilly morning and it was great that I got to spend a few minutes taking in this view (while adjusting my shoe and shoe covers, let’s be honest).

It was nice, as always, to be able to ride outside of the city on trails and quiet roads.

I eventually reached the nature area that was my original turnaround point but after seeing the packed gravel that began in this park, I felt my bike could handle the trail conditions. This excited me because the portion of the trail that I would have bypassed included a long causeway that stretches 3 miles into Lake Champlain. I continued along the Island Line Trail and got some really amazing views, with water on either side.

The gravel path was easy to ride along and the ride itself was not as difficult as I had expected, considering that I was basically just in the middle of the lake.

As I continued farther out on the causeway, I noticed a man on a bike ahead of me and a white bird between the two of us. At first, I thought it was a gull but quickly realized it was too large. Within seconds, a snowy owl swooped past me, only feet away. I used to work in wildlife rehabilitation and had the chance to rehab a variety of raptors but never a snowy owl! I chatted with the person who was not far behind the bird and found out that there were about 3 or so snowy owls in the area. It was such a treat to see this animal and I remember getting to the end of the causeway feeling so giddy.

Remember how surprised I was by the ease of the ride out on the causeway? Yeah, well, I forgot about this thing called headwind. I turned around at the end of the narrow strip of land in the middle of the lake, and the wind hit me. The ride back to land was tough because of the wind but it felt so good to be moving my body since I hadn’t in so long.

I took an alternate route back through town, which of course ended up being the most elevation gain of the entire ride (not that it was much at all but after being sick for so long, I was feeling pretty tired!). I wound up wishing I had followed the same trail back but it was nice to see different parts of the area.

I got back to the apartment we were staying at for the holiday and spent the rest of the day in front of the fireplace.

I want to keep up with my riding this winter (I was able to pretty well for most of last winter!) but after this ride, I think that I’ll need to invest in some layers to make the temperatures a little more bearable. My riding pants are not warm enough on their own and I found some of my base layers riding up and not keeping parts of my core warm. I also think I’ll need to invest in some toe warmers! But it was great to be back on my bike, which now needs a cleaning from the road salt that attacked it on our drive back to New York.