June 2012 Cupcake Ride Recap

Our group shot is missing Kathleen and her friend Jessi (visiting from BC) but these lovely ladies braved the heat (with humidex it was 38!) and came out for the June Cupcake Ride!

Many of us rode uptown to Short and Sweet and after climbing several major hills to get to our meetup point, we definitely earned our cupcakes. Lucky for me, I rode with Andrea and Toni who both suggested we take the Christie bike lanes to avoid the extremely steep (and long) Poplar Plains Blvd. Then by happenstance, just as our trio rode towards Avenue, we saw Jen crossing St. Clair after she battled Poplar Plains Blvd.

At Short and Sweet we got to try their sample mini cupcakes and cool off in their air conditioned store. Ness from Short and Sweet was nice enough to bring us more sample cupcakes and chat with us about our rides and also his store.

After we made a new friend – her name is Willow and she pulled her owner to come and say hi to us – we headed out. Since we started uptown and headed downtown we got to enjoy a mainly downhill route with most of streets being on a comfortable decline. We also got to ride down Russell Hill Road – one of the most fun downhill streets (with a proper bike lane) in the city.

The route I mapped out this time was all on what the city of Toronto calls ‘Shared Roadways – signed, on-street routes‘ – basically quiet residential streets that the city has deemed to be good alternatives to cycling on busy major streets. The perk of riding on these streets is that there are bike sensors (that usually work) to cross busy streets.

The problem is, however, that even with a bike map these ‘Shared Roadways’ are hard to stay on and follow because of a lack of signage and because the streets that make up the network are so disjointed. Sadly, no one ends up using the ‘Shared Roadways’ because you’d either have to memorize the streets to use them or end up getting lost in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.

After our epic descent down Russell Hill Road, we voted to to extend our ride by cycling down Davenport so that we could enjoy riding down the West Toronto Railpath.

Then, we were delightfully surprised with this wonderful welcome sign in the window when we arrive at the Wedding Cake Shoppe!

The lovely ladies at the Wedding Cake Shoppe even had chilled lemon water ready for us! Many of us also indulged in 2 cupcakes at the Wedding Cake Shoppe mmmmmm, buttercream.

Andrea was in the middle of explaining what the middle of macarons are comprised of, but I wanted to share her lovely french braided updo that fits under a helmet!

Thank you to all the ladies who came out in the scorching heat to come ride with me!!

You can check out all the photos I took on Sunday here.

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Will we see you at the Sweet Ride: Frozen Yogurt Edition on the 23rd?