We have had a wretched late November and December in eastern Ontario this year. It’s been cold, or wet, or icy, or some combination of all three for as far back as I can remember. It is usually my favorite time of year to ride, but this year I hardly turned a wheel. And then, after the pre-Christmas chaos of the massive storm which blanketed much of the continent in snow, the weather changed dramatically, the temperature rose, it rained and washed the snow and salt from the roads. For the first time it was not punishingly cold on New Year’s Day. I could ride. So I did.

I’m sufficiently full of hubris that I get a kick out of riding when most people think it’s too cold, too wet, or are too worried that the residual salt would damage their bikes. I love the strange looks I get from passing cars and the occasional thumbs-up from drivers who get vicarious pleasure from seeing someone riding when most sane people think conditions are unsuitable. They may be thinking “daft bugger,” but they enjoy the sight anyway.

和我的沉重的冬天骑齿轮,我的车gloves I was padded out like the Michelin Man. I had no intentions of getting cold or going very far – just far enough to warm the oil thoroughly and take a few pictures with which to taunt my Facebook friends. I don’t really like short rides, but this was more of an airing, for the bike and myself, so the few miles down to the boat dock at Loughborough Lake would be good enough for now. A longer ride would have to wait until it was more than three degrees above zero and I had somewhere I wanted to go.

埃尔多拉多开始容易,很快就跑eautifully, reminding me just what a soul-satisfying machine it is. In far too short a time I had reached my destination, turned into the parking lot which was partially covered with sloppy ice and snow, and parked by the frozen lake. I was just in the process of taking a picture of the Guzzi against a snowy backdrop when, to my astonishment, another bike rolled to stop close by. It was Jim. Of course it was Jim.

Jim is hardcore. He rides all year round and is a big mileage guy. He was riding his Yamaha Super Tenere, his hands enclosed within ‘Hippo Hands’ covers over his heated grips. His electric vest was keeping his body toasty. He was dressed to stay warm all day because he was riding all day. The route he was returning from was at least 150 km long. Any sense that I was being hardcore just for getting out for a few miles, evaporated.

Back in 2012, I was riding along the long stretch of unpaved Trans-Labrador Highway between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Port Hope Simpson feeling rather pleased with myself. My old Moto Guzzi was soldiering along nicely, and I had settled into coping with the squirm and squiggle of the loose gravel beneath the wheels, allowing me plenty of opportunity to watch the vast landscape rolling by. It felt wild, I was “out there” and I was feeling heroic. About 200 km out of Happy Valley- Goose Bay I started to notice some strange, narrow tracks in the gravel. Where the terrain was flat, they led straight on. On the up-hills, they seemed to weave a little. I was mystified. Eventually I caught up with the source of those mysterious tracks. It was a middle-aged guy from Montreal on a bicycle. He’d ridden from Montreal to Baie Comeau, then up to Labrador City, camping wherever he could, and was now making his way across Labrador in one-hundred-plus-kilometre sized bites. Suddenly, my massive adventure didn’t seem quite so epic. I could feel my nether regions shrivelling as I handed him a beer and we chatted about our respective trips. I’d been on the road a handful of days – he’d been riding for weeks.

I have slowly begun to realize that no matter how challenging and adventurous a ride I have anticipated or undertaken, someone, somewhere will have eclipsed it. Planning a ride from London to Cape Town on your BMW GSA? Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron did it in 1934 on their 600cc Panther motorbike and sidecar, including crossing the Sahara desert. Around the world on your Africa Twin? Alexandra Fefopoulou and Stergios Gogos are doing it, two-up on a twenty-year-old Vespa. Across the USA on your new Harley? Each year antique bike afficionados race cross the continent on hundred year old motorbikes. Cross Canada on a fifty-year-old Moto Guzzi? Ed March and Rachel Lasham did it on Honda C90s, in winter.

You may think you’re hardcore and adventurous but you’re always going to stumble across someone who’s just that little bit more extreme. But here’s the thing as I’ve come to understand it – it’s how we value what we do that’s important. There’s no point judging our adventures against those of others. If a ride to James Bay on a KLR feels epic to you, just because someone else did it in winter on a motorized skateboard, doesn’t diminish your ride one iota. Value your own adventures. Ride your own rides. If I felt a tiny bit hardcore for taking my old Guzzi for a spin on a chilly New Year’s Day and happened to encounter another rider who’s out for a longer ride, it shouldn’t do anything to minimize my experience. That, at least, is what I keep telling myself.