Your Story; Liz Eames

Liz doesn’t ride a bike though there are three of them next to the rose bush ready for couchsurfing travellers to explore the great city of Toronto.  Liz isn’t the thin, calorie-counting, lycra-clad specimen of competitive athleticism that embodies roadies but she knows more about the pro-tour than I ever have.  Her sons don’t ride but the daughter of her heart owns a bike shop.  Her house is filled with flowers, books and cats but also, bikes, tools, helmets and the endless banter of cycling addicts.  Liz is not what you might consider a cyclist upon first glance but she is one of cycling’s greatest fans and certainly a member in good standing of the broader cycling community.  If you have ever seen the charming film Les triplettes de belleville, Liz is Madame Souza, keeping her cyclists fed, housed, loved and happy. [if you haven’t seen this film, you really must!]

Liz’s involvement with cycling began about 25 years ago when Kt and Rick moved to Prince Edward County to open the Bloomfield Bicycle Co. bike shop.  As Liz describes them, “hungry young dreamers with no money, big plans and a lot of enthusiasm.  I fed them, sponsored their cycling team with food and supplied moral support in times of stress.”  Eventually, Liz moved to the big City.  There, Kt would send her cyclists who needed a place to crash for a few days.  One day, Kt sent Liz Dave, “an aspiring pro-cyclist, coming to the city to work and race and learn.”

Dave stayed to become a housemate, working at the iconic Toronto bike shop, Duke’s Cycle on Queen St. West.  That same summer, after finishing university, I moved to the City and got work at that same shop.  Needing a place to live, Dave dragged me and my bike home to Liz.  Soon enough, I too was living under Liz’s roof.  We brought home a couple of travelling Aussies’s who also worked at Duke’s but needed a place to stay.  Wow, what a summer!

That house was always full of bikes, wheels, cycling shoes, coffee, power-gel wrappers, dull razors and hungry bellies!   Fortunately for us all, Liz loves to cook for her cycling boys while listening to us ramble on about this race and that route; your bike and my road-rash.  Though we all moved on, Peter moved in; another genius bicycle mechanic who once wrenched for the gruelling four-month long Tour d’Afrique.  With Geoff, another side of the cycling equation moved in.  Geoff wasn’t competitive, nor did he obsess about lightweight carbon hubs; he just loved to ride his bike to school, to work, to the bar, to party.  The stories “now became hysterical renditions of bike accidents, close calls, adventures in lunacy and love of bicycles.”  Since then, other cyclists have come and gone.  Most recently, County-boy Adam who just left Liz’s to live and work in the mountains of British Columbia.

Liz now knows more about bikes, frames, wheel-building and cobbles than most other cyclists.  She knows the names of past champions and all the great races.  She understands and watches all the action in the peleton “where the real gamesmanship is.”  In 2007 she and Kt went to France to watch le tour!   As someone well versed in the ravages of mental health, Liz also understands the therapeutic nature of cycling.

“Over the years I have watched cyclists deal with depression and life’s curve-balls by getting on the bike and riding; riding until they are grounded enough to face the problem.  I have watched as cyclists stop riding and fell into deep sadness and depression, only to turn their mood around by getting back on the bike.”  Liz recognizes the benefit of physical pain to alleviate mental suffering that many of us cyclists crave and is always ready to encourage folks to ride for happiness and sanity.

Even if Liz never throws a leg over the bike, she helps many cyclists around the world to keep their pedals turning.

Liz is a cyclist.  This is her story.

Liz; mother to many, lover of flowers and a true champion of life lived on the bike.

Less sleep hours, increasing work panic, relationship problems etc http://robertrobb.com/repeal-the-bales-ducey-car-tax/ buy sildenafil uk contribute to anxiety and impotence. Here are a few unknown facets to this amazing food that could benefit you immensely on the health front: cheap cialis 1. You are just required to login to the website and http://robertrobb.com/make-clean-elections-the-campaign-finance-cop/ order cheap levitra in a matter of few minutes and few clicks here and there, you can get effective results by following those tips. Spinal manipulation 5mg cialis online can be performed with the hands of the chiropractor are used to manipulate the spinal column.