Tour La Nuit

The start of the Montreal cycle fest weekend is the Tour La Nuit. 17,000 cyclists turn up to do a 25km ride around the streets of Montreal. OK, 25km is not a significant training ride, but this evening is blog worthy just because it is fun!

We first did the night ride two years ago and Stuart had decorated my bike with flowers, telling me that all bikes would be dressed up! They weren’t but we did meet two people from Boston (Nathaniel and Ann), who had covered their bikes and outfits with lights! We were impressed and Stuart said he would out-light Nathaniel the following year. It was during this year that Stuart was diagnosed with cancer and underwent all his treatments, but he never forgot the challenge. It was one of the events that he looked forward to and often mentioned his plans for lighting up his bicycle. So for last year’s night ride when Stuart was through his treatments he dressed up our bikes with EL wire. However, this wasn’t enough, Nathaniel had added even more lights and we declared him the winner of the challenge.

Now it’s 2013 and the challenge was on again! We turn up at the start of the ride to find Nathaniel has added wings to the outfits!!




Stuart and I were also suitably over the top, and we find that we make it to CBC news!!!

CBC News

Interviews at 6 mins 55 sec and me leading out the start of the ride at 7 mins 55 sec. (I did speak to camera too, but I try and promote the Ride to Conquer Cancer, probably very badly and I get cut!)

Stuart had spent a huge amount of time, not only adding the flowers to my bicycle, but also weaving into the flowers, many stems of small LED flowers that he found in Dollarama for $3/box. He spent a day going round the Dollarama stores clearing out their stocks of these flowers!




Montreal is such a great friendly city that the streets are always lined with people cheering the bikes on, but this year my bike has such a wow factor that there were many occasions the crowd broke spontaneously into applause!

see my bike


At the end of the challenge, Stuart wants to award the trophy to Nathaniel, and Nathaniel wants to award the trophy to Stuart, but I think that we were all winners because the evening was such great fun!


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