Relative Something

I am experiencing a bit of post-vacation stress disorder. I am not clear what the specific symptoms are, but along with the overall strange feeling that I am lost or not where I am supposed to be or something is missing or I’m not really awake, right now I am very aware that my fingers appear to no longer have any idea how to locate keys on the keyboard. I think the *delete* key is starting to give off smoke from overuse.

Here is a sneek preview of a picture from this year’s ride to the Canadian border along the north shore of Lake Superior. This is the High Falls on the Pigeon River in Grand Portage State Park. That is Canada on the right side of the river. I was in a group of riders that were smart enough to turn around before we went too far and would be forced to face the border patrol inquisition, unlike someone else who was on our trip last week.

I got home about 4:30 p.m. Friday evening and opened up the tent right away to dry it out. Most all other clean up and put-away chores are being saved for today. We had a great week of riding and socializing and eating and exploring northern Minnesota and giving our blood to gnats, mosquitoes, and biting midges that people call no-see-ums. I’ll review my journal entries and try to capture some of the week’s adventures in posts here in the coming days. In the mean time, what little lawn there is here to mow is desperately in need of a haircut.

Hopefully, I will find that to be good therapy for post-vacation stress disorder. My *delete* key could use a break.

The grand finale! Today we eat our last breakfast together and start saying our many good-byes. Then we all start hustling to ride back to our cars in Tofte where we parked a week ago. Usually there is a lunch spot where we will see some folks that ride about the same speed as ourselves, and say good-bye to them once more, but Jim doesn’t ask us to wait for the whole group to arrive (like we usually do all week) so we can get back to cars early enough to drive home before too late in the day.

I wonder what stories I will bring back with me from this year’s trip?

Playin' and singin' by the luggage trailer a few years ago.

Hopefully, I had plenty of opportunities to play my new travel guitar this year. Here is a shot of me from a year I hauled my full-size guitar along. Of course, I don’t really do much in the way of actually hauling it. The kind gentleman in the background did that in the trailer that carries all our duffle bags while we peddle away. I rewarded him with a little concert on the edge of our tent city. It looks so big to me now, compared to the little one I have been playing.

Believe it, or not, we return to Grand Marais again. This will be deja vu.

My normal view, since I usually don't find myself in front of everyone else.

The 6th day of the trip is a very special one. We have really gotten close to each other by this point and we are reaching the end of the trip, and sense it. We usually have some kind of festive gathering in the evening and celebrate our good fortune and bask in the moment.

Spreadin' out on the country roads

I’m sure hoping our weather this year turns out as nice as this shot from last year’s trip looks.

We are at the Gunflint Lodge today and get to pick our choice of canoeing, hiking, tours, or biking to the end of the Gunflint Trail. Weeeee!

Sometimes, you just gotta stop and pose with the local landmarks… It’s good practice to take notes to keep track of identifying information for your pictures. This shot from last year is one that I didn’t take any notes for. I have absolutely no idea where I was when I found this corn cob photo opportunity.

Today, we ride the Gunflint Trail to Gunflint Lodge where we will enjoy the unique opportunity to leave our tents packed and take advantage of staying in their cabins for a couple of nights!

Riding bikes is all about balance.

Bruce and Curt with me, balancing our water bottles.

Today, we ride back to Grand Marais, according to the itinerary. We aren’t lost yet, are we?

Today we ride from Grand Marais to Grand Portage near the Canadian Border. I don’t think I’ll bring my passport, so there’ll be no jaunting to Canada while we’re here. Years ago, on a “Jaunt with Jim” to International Falls, I had the wonderful opportunity to ride my bicycle across the border. It was a completely different experience to deal with the border patrol from a bike rather than a car. They showed no change in their normal humorless attitude with us.

Cyndie and I were just in Grand Portage in the fall of ’06 during a little trip in which we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. I love this part of the world.

The first Saturday morning of the ride begins the routine that we follow for a week. We wake early and figure out what we will carry with us on the bike and what gets packed in our duffel that will be trucked to the next camp site. We take down our tents, pack up and haul our bags to the truck and head off to breakfast.

Today we ride to Temperance River Gorge and then to Grand Marais

My sister, Mary, and me, from the first year she rode the Jaunt with Jim.

There is a wonderful feeling in the moment you leave work on the last day before a vacation, even if you still haven’t packed and need to rush home to get the lawn mowed. I did my best to enjoy that moment. Then I mowed the lawn. After that, I started pulling everything I own out of storage to find the item I can’t remember where I put. I was really hoping to find out from Cyndie, when she got back from out of town, that she had seen it and moved it to somewhere that I wasn’t looking. No luck. My last hope was dashed. I began looking for an alternative. Then, for whatever strange reason, I went back to a place I had looked in my closet a bunch of times already, but this time I brought a flash light and suddenly I spotted my item, tied up in a semi-logical storage place. It is the stuff-sack for my sleeping bag.

The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

It seems a little weird that this stuff-sack has become so important to me. There is a certain amount of sentimental value to it. It has served me well for over 30 years, traveling to camping trips that have included the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming when I was young, and almost every Jaunt with Jim bike trip I’ve been on. But it’s just a stinkin’ stuff-sack. Well, there was one other year when I couldn’t find it and I borrowed one from Cyndie to store my sleeping bag in. Hers was a heavier material and it originally had some coating on the inside that, with time, had begun to flake off. And it just didn’t have the stretch that mine does. It really bugged me. But geez, it’s just a sack. It seems silly that it has become so important to me.

But I’ve found it and I think also, pretty much everything on my list of things to pack. That’s close enough to ready that I can get some sleep. I’ll pack it all up in the moments before Gary comes to pick me up for the drive north to Tofte. And like my song says, I’ll have much more than I meant to bring. Happens every year. And yes, that is Gary from my Himalayan trek in Nepal. We met on last year’s bike trip and are partnering again on this adventure, driving together to the 35th annual Jaunt with Jim week-long bike trip. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.

In the mean time, I’ll share some pictures of bike trips from the past and a mention of where we plan to be each night in posts throughout the coming week. Enjoy!

It has been a pretty cool spring, thus far. After serious drought-like conditions, we’ve now had several days of rain in a row. Cold and wet is not my favorite way to ride bike. The good news is that maybe the gloomy weather we’ve had recently will be spent and as often happens, get followed by warm sunny days! I’ll pack some warm clothes, just as insurance, based on the old adage that if I have it, I won’t need it, but if I don’t bring it along, I’ll absolutely regret it.

Looks like good sleeping weather, too. Those of you who need to be awakened by an alarm clock may recognize this phenomenon: often times waking just minutes before the alarm is scheduled to signal. I wonder what is going on to trigger that? This morning, I woke about a half hour early and lingered in bed, doing the snooze thing, fading in and out of sleep. Some really interesting dreams happen in the morning after I fall back asleep, or at least it’s that I am better able to remember the dreams that happen then. This morning I was dreaming that it was now just 2 minutes before the alarm was going to trigger and for some reason that startled me awake, only to find that it wasn’t that close and I still had 13 minutes till alarm. Hmmm. Was I anxious about waking on time this morning?

In a few days, I will have Jim Klobuchar blowing a whistle in short bursts for an alarm. Often times I’m already awake and listening to the early bird bikers clicking their tent poles as they take down their tents and head off to find morning coffee. I fall more in the middle, not the earliest and not one of the ones that sleep until the last minute. I like to avoid living out the dreams where I am coming out of my tent to find everyone is already packed up and I am the only one left and then can’t find something I am needing to pack. You know, those classic anxiety dreams. I find I have less anxiety dreams when I manage my life well enough to experience less anxiety. The logic works for me.

Maybe I was anxious this morning because when I went to sleep, I was struggling with another interesting phenomenon: I am sure that when I got home from Nepal and unpacked, I placed one of the stuff sacks I used, somewhere special, knowing I would need it again for this bike trip. For the life of me I couldn’t recall last night and it wasn’t anywhere logical that I could think to look. Don’t you just love that?