A Recovered Stolen Car and a Ride in Pitt Polder

Saturday morning started out with a wonderful sunny day on Bike Patrol. It was a successful one, too, as we recovered a stolen car. It was a Subaru, later model, with no obvious signs of entry - we were just blitzing side streets in the downtown area of Maple Ridge. It was a good feeling to get someone’s car back to them and a good way to start off the day. The photo above, by the way, was taken about fifteen minutes before actually finding the stolen car as a shot for the Bike Patrol website. Unfortunately, the battery died after this photo!



After returning home, I took the Vespa into Port Coquitlam, near Maple Ridge, to buy a part to fix my electric guitar. On the way home, I took a different route and ended up going into Pitt Polder, an area of dyked land in both Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge. It’s a very nice area with lots of farmland, framed by the mountains in the distance. The photos, unfortunately, were a bit hazy due to weather conditions. This area is in the local news lately because of the potential for floods. There is a lot of snow on the mountains - way above average - and as the weather warms, the risk increases.



As I was riding down the road and looking at the scenery - looking with a different eye, as I am trying to be a better photographer - I was struck by how the mountains and the snow on the peaks reminded me of riding my bicycle in the Rockies. Maybe I should go on a really long road trip this summer!




I went north until I reached Grant Narrows Regional Park. This is on a body of water called Pitt Lake. On a sunny day, there are many boaters who launch from the dock. There is also a bird sanctuary, picnic tables, and a concession stand that opens in the summer.

I usually take my class on a bike ride there in June. It is a fairly long ride for Grade Sixes (35 km round trip) but it’s flat and often a nice day for a ride. It’s a very busy field trip - it takes a couple hours to get there, we walk into the bird sanctuary, return to the riverbank and have lunch, and then hop back on the bikes and head back. There’s a real sense of accomplishment for the students that finish the trip. I’ve saved the map in Google Maps.

After a short rest to take in the scenery, it was back home for dinner, some marking, and a celebratory glass of wine.