Luke Doucet’s discoveries on two wheels
Discoveries on two wheels
As a singer-songwriter and touring musician with Whitehorse, Luke Doucet has built a life of ongoing improvisation. Sure, tours are planned, recording sessions are booked and a management team takes care of shortand long-term work schedules. But, as an artist, no matter how rigid your schedule, gigs can be cancelled and the music industry can shift in new directions overnight. You need to be nimble. Of course, penning songs and jamming with other musicians often begins with improvisation.
Cycling, for Doucet, is also about improvisation. It’s not about the destination; it’s how he gets there. Doucet lives near High Park in Toronto’s west end. Go-to city rides include: the Beltline Trail, the Humber River Valley and a loop around the park. He prefers cycling alone and getting out of the big city for century rides. Before one of Doucet’s improvised rides, he always knows where he will end up. What he loves is that there are often 10 or more ways to get to a place. Most summer weekends, when not playing a gig, he takes the train west to Burlington (where most of wife Melissa Mcclelland’s family lives), making it the perfect point to begin many of his outings. From here, he jumps in the saddle and heads north to Collingwood or west to Waterloo, often crashing at a friend’s house before returning the next day.
“That sense of discovery is my favourite part of cycling,” Doucet says. “It takes me back to when I was a kid and my bike took me everywhere.”
Born in Halifax, Doucet got his first bike at five years old from his stepdad. The boy learned to ride noodling around in the parking lot of the highrise they lived in.
After moving to Winnipeg a few years later, Doucet found his bike was the best way to explore his new hometown. He lived downtown and biked to and from school and everywhere else. This is where he developed a deep relationship with his new twowheeler – a 1980s bmx by ccm that he dressed up with fancy parts, such as alloy rims. He loved doing freestyle tricks and, in junior high, he broke this bike in half.
Doucet bought his first road bike, a Klein Q-pro, just a decade ago. “When I ride with ‘real riders,’ they always joke it’s a Coke can and make fun of me, but at the same time they are impressed with the paint job for some reason. It’s sparkly red like a candy apple 1962 Fender Stratocaster,” he says.
At first, Doucet didn’t ride this red two-wheeler often. After cycling in three two-week cycling trips with Gold Medal Plates (now Canada’s Great Kitchen Party) to Mallorca, Tuscany and Provence, the musician returned home with a new love for the sport.
A map doesn’t always reveal the true nature of a sideroad. Doucet sometimes takes his rides on these routes, which can be white-knuckle affairs with the songwriter desperately trying to keep his Klein steady on busy, gravelly concession roads, while long-haul drivers barrel past in both directions. After a few of these intense encounters, Doucet invested in a second bike: a cyclocross rig with wider tires. He now feels safer riding on all surfaces. It’s also allowed him to explore new destinations, such as Boyne Valley Provincial Park, where his road bike previously could not go.
“I can still improvise and take those concession roads,” he says. “Getting the ’cross bike was a real revelation.”
“It’s sparkly red like a candy apple 1962 Fender Stratocaster.”