A few weeks ago on a hot summer’s day a friend and I drove south out of Calgary to a natural oasis just beyond the city limits. The Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area is 4,800 acres of protected aspen forest, pastures of introduced grasslands, and native prairie. Sandy Cross, son of one of the Calgary Stampede’s “Big Four”, A.E. Cross, along with his wife Ann donated the land to the Province of Alberta in 1987 with the stipulation that the land never be developed.

The land is protected and carefully managed to allow native plant and animal species to flourish. As my friend and I hiked under the hot sun, up and down rolling hills and through stands of aspen we spotted dozens of wildflowers. While we didn’t see any deer we found lots of areas where they had obviously bedded down. We also didn’t see another living soul on our entire 3 to 4 hour hike. It was blissful.

I highly recommend you make the short trek out to the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area. Bring a picnic lunch, and definitely bring your camera. Before setting out, make sure you register your visit online, as they request. They also have a variety of fall programs you can sign up for, which give you a guided look at the land, its history and its inhabitants. Check out Paradise preserved : the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area by Bruce Masterman for some beautiful pictures and more information on this conservation success story.

Visiting friends in Montreal this past weekend, we decided to take advantage of their BIXI system to rent bikes to go for a ride around the city and its pathways. BIXI is a public bike system launched by the City of Montreal in May 2009. Because of the enormous success of BIXI, there are plans to implement the system in other major cities worldwide.

The system seems easy-to-use and flexible. Judging from my first experience with BIXI, it's clear to me why it's become so popular so quickly.

There are 300 bike docks throughout the city. Each dock (which is entirely powered by solar panels) has a pay station and a rack full of bikes. Once you've made your payment, you simply release your bike and off you go. You can drop off your bike at any of the other docks; once the bike is locked back into the rack, any charges are put through on your credit card.

BIXI subscriptions can be purchased by the year (May to November--bikes are removed during the city's harsh winters) or for 30 days at a time. For people like us who only need bikes for one day, there is also an option for 24 hour access. For our afternoon journey, we each paid $5 plus our additional time. For those just using the bikes to get to and from work or errands, the first half hour of use is always free. Beyond that the costs increase (to the point that it isn't as economical to use the BIXI for more than ninety minutes at a time). For an hour-and-a-half on a sturdy commuter bike that allowed us to move quickly and easily around parts of the city otherwise difficult to see, our costs were $9.50 each. Well worth it, in my opinion.

For Montrealers without cars (or even those, like my friends, who have a car but try not to use it unnecessarily), BIXI is a quick, reasonably-priced option for getting around the city.

Even though I own a bicycle, I would love to see BIXI or a similar public bike launch in Calgary to give another option to people who wish to travel throughout the city. Could it work in a city as spread out as ours? Calgary has been working to make itself more bike-friendly but there are still some roadblocks to making our city as cyclist-friendly as Montreal. In Spinning Wheels or Making Progress, Drew Anderson did a great overview of some of the issues surrounding cycling in Calgary in FFWD Magazine a couple of weeks ago. I will say this: I was reminded again how much I love the on-street bicycle routes in Montreal, something Calgary lacks. Like my fellow bloggers, I sometimes commute to work by bike. I spend the majority of my 60 minute ride on the Bow River pathway. The ride is beautiful and I appreciate the good bike pathways. If it were safer to ride up some of the regular streets to get from South Calgary to downtown, however, I could cut my travel time in half. I hope Calgary becomes even more of a cyclist-friendly city in the future.

I went on a walk this weekend in Banff, along a trail just outside of town. The trail was edged by buffaloberries, the small red bitter berries that bears eat with abandon at this time of year. Usually I’d feel cautious and extra aware, hiking in a berry bonanza. Usually I'd holler periodically to alert any nearby bears of my presence. But I was in a small group, a group very familiar with the outdoors and with bears, so I relaxed, stayed quiet and floated along, tasting berries. Then we saw the bear. He was a large, very large, very near, very black bear. He was also munching on berries, very quietly, on the path about 10 feet away. He looked at us as if to say Leave me alone– I’m eating dinner, and we turned and silently walked out the way we had come. We should have been making more noise, but thankfully the bear wasn’t too disturbed by our presence.

As we walked out we talked about how differently it could have gone had we been on bikes. Riding quickly, as bikers tend to do, you’d be on top of this bear before you saw it. I don’t think he would have taken kindly to his dinner being interrupted by four bikers shooting out of the woods beside him. God forbid the bear be a momma bear, with young cubs by her side, like the one that charged a Calgary cyclist in Banff on Saturday morning.

The Alberta Government’s Sustainable Resource Development department put out a Be Bear Smart Mountain Biking Checklist last year. They recommend that you “don’t bike in bear habitat in early spring when bears emerge from dens, in mid-August when berries ripen or in late fall when bears are preparing for winter.” If you do encounter a bear while biking they recommend you get off and put the bike between you and bear and walk away slowly. Don’t try to be Lance Armstrong and take off like a rocket. A bear can outrun even the fastest cyclist, even going downhill. Now that’s food for thought, eh?

Check out these Calgary Public Library items for more information on bears and bear safety:

Bear Attacks : Their Causes and Avoidance by Stephen Herrero
The definitive guide by Alberta’s top bear researcher

Staying Safe in Bear Country: A Behavioral-Based Approach to Reducing Risk by Stephen Herrero
A videorecording compiling the knowledge of leading experts on bear behavior, including Dr. Herrero

The Grizzly Manifesto : In Defence of the Great Bear by Jeff Gailus
Gailus is a Calgary author and conservationist

I love my commute to work. How many people can say that in Calgary? I live close to downtown and in spring summer and fall (about five months in Calgary) I ride my bike. It's silly how much pleasure I get from doing this: my heart beats faster while I get exercise, I make it to work in about 10 minutes, and I inevitably feel like a kid again as I race through the streets.

Even if you don't live close to downtown, you have options to make riding your bike a reality. The City of Calgary has seven Park 'N' Bike sites across the city, so you can, well, park your car and bike into downtown. The sites are about 5 to 8 kilometers from downtown, on reasonably flat routes, and you get to avoid the two things that make Calgarian commuters pull their hair out: downtown parking fees, and finding a spot to park, for those without a designated lot. You can plan your route using the City of Calgary's interactive Pathways and Bikeways map.

If you've never biked downtown you might think it's too scary a proposition. But if you follow basic bike safety tips and use common sense, you'll be fine. Give it a spin!