Archive for the ‘bicycling’ Category
Touring Home
Today is the last day of the trip. We will bike to Willmar to get our cars and try to remember how to drive again.
As the song I wrote describes, “Bittersweet to reach the end
Don’t want to stop, can’t wait to get home.”
Since this post is now being composed while on the tour, I am able to attest that it has been another great year.
Good people having good times in great places.
It is what touring Minnesota by bike is about in the middle of June.
I love… when the legs have strength, the wind and weather are favorable, the road or trail is smooth, and I am riding with precious friends at a comfortably aggressive pace for long durations.
I miss… my bed, my bathroom, and my treasure of a wife, Cyndie.
It’s time to head home.
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Touring St. Cloud
So, here I am in my tent, trying to schedule the last few posts on my phone, while the street light above is turning off and on randomly. 
There are formatting steps I still haven’t learned how to accomplish to get things to look the way I want.
That is probably because my brain is on vacation.
It may not make for much in the way of interesting reading, but it’s sure a pleasant week for me!
I love… discovering new friends on this ride, having skilled bike mechanics fine tune nuisance problems on my bike, and laughing to tears and breathlessness over hilarious stories that people share.
Alexandria was a pretty fine place, too.
I miss… access to my laptop computer for writing and formatting these posts.
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Touring Little Falls
It usually feels good to get back on the road again after the day off. I have no idea how it will feel for me this year, because my pre-trip training was far short of ideal.
My pre-trip blog preparation also fell short, so I am now posting from my tent. Ugh.
I love… settling into the tent and then hearing Julie and Rich start laughing inside each of their respective tents a few feet away. Laughter is absolutely contagious.
I miss… not hearing loud pickup trucks revving (sp?) their engines in the vicinity of where I am trying to sleep. I guess it’s a thing in small towns when a couple hundred strangers drop by to camp in the park.
Touring Alexandria
Getting to Alexandria is bolstered by the added blessing that it is the location of our day off from the regular routine of getting up before the sun and struggling to pack our things while in a sleepy fog within the cramped confines of our little tents. Then it’s a forced march past the food troughs before unceremoniously resting our bottoms on the tiny bike seat for hour after hour all day long.
What? I love this bike tour! Doesn’t that sound like an awesome adventure!
Maybe you have to be there.
On our day off we get to sleep in as much as possible in a tent that turns into an oven when the sun hits it. We are on our own for food and whatever adventures we feel up for. Some folks find a laundromat, but that is the furthest thing from a vacation activity I want to seek.
I just might find someplace where World Cup games will be shown. I may, or may not, ride my bike. I’ve been inclined toward both options over the years, so I make no hard and fast rule about such a possibility. It’s usually dictated by how well I have been tolerating long hours on the saddle for the first three days.
I love… sleeping in a little bit on the day off in the middle of the tour, and then living in the moment to watch the energy of people around me flow, paying attention to what ever grabs me and following wherever that leads. What, me plan?
I miss… being able to go to my closet for just the right shoes or clothes and accessories for all the wide variety of adventures that may become available in a moments notice. Pickle-ball anyone?
In sandels?
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Touring Fergus Falls
I’ve been here before. Fergus Falls. I remember it fondly, although, only vaguely. For some people, retaining specific details happens naturally, but I am much more inclined to form a general impression about places I’ve been. I know I have biked to Fergus Falls before on at least one previous tour, but all I have in mind of the experience is a notion that it was good and I thoroughly enjoyed time spent there.
Maybe this year will foster a more specific detail, or two, for the permanent memory bank. It may depend on whether I found ice cream, or not.
I love… the years when the bike tour coincides with FIFA’s World Cup soccer tournament, like it does this year (even though the US team is not in it. Ugh!!). There is often a sub-group of like-minded “football” fans among the bikers who then converge on whatever establishments can be found which offer television coverage so we can hoot and holler together over the beautiful game.
I miss… being able to sit down on my easy chair upstairs on our loft in front of our big screen tv to watch sports or movies with my favorite snacks and beverage at a time of my choosing and not when I’m in the middle of some other distracting fabulous adventure in its own right at the very same time.
A little weak, maybe, but I had to miss something!
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Touring Morris
Today, if everything went as planned, we awake in Morris, MN. A prairie oasis on the Pomme de Terre River. If there is a Dairy Queen within walking distance of the high school, there’s a good chance I visited it last night.
I love… that so many of the brilliant people who do this bike ride with me every year share a fondness for walking after a long day on a bike seat, plus they seem to have an equal interest in searching out ice cream at every opportunity.
Bonus love… Biking all day long burns so many calories, I can indulge in ice cream treats more often than usual.
I miss… Cyndie’s home cooking, especially her fabulous breakfasts, the incredible “love-lunch” sandwiches she makes for me on work days, and the delicious dinners that somehow keep tasting better than the best one she made the time before.
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On Tour
I am on vacation! Per my habit, this includes taking a break from writing every day while I am away. There’s always a chance I might post a fresh tidbit here or there during the trip, using my thumbs on the teeny-tiny mobile device I’ll have with me, but the year I tried doing that every day of the tour, I found it made my vacation less of a vacation.
For the week, I have programmed Relative Something to offer you a note about the towns we are visiting, along with two thoughts about being away from home. The yin yang duality in the whole of my annual biking and camping week, the Tour of Minnesota.
Today, the group of more than a hundred of my closest friends wake up in Willmar, MN, after our first night of camping together.
I love… The first night of seeing this large number of incredibly close friends and casual acquaintances reunite with shared anticipation for the adventures that lie ahead.
I miss… Waking up in my own bed every morning after a night on a comfy mattress snuggled on a familiar pillow beside my precious wife.
“And they’re off!”
Let the pedaling begin.
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Riding Lessons
It’s supposed to be like riding a bike. Once you know how, simply climbing aboard and spinning the pedals is all it takes to get going again, right? Not always.
First off, there is a wide disparity between physical reality and imagined accomplishment. I envision myself gliding along almost effortlessly along the road for hours on end. Having not been on my bike for almost a year, my experience now is far short of where my abilities have been in the past.
I’m not built with the sleek body type of competitive cyclists. I ride a heavy old bike that is decades old. The unconscious reactions of shifting aren’t there, causing inadvertent pushing on a lever that should have been pulled. Being uncomfortable on the saddle influences the deviation from my ideal pedal cadence. I’m forgetting to hydrate enough while riding.
My brain is visualizing ideal performance, my body is struggling to cope against gravity.
After five consecutive days of riding, I have progressed to a level where glimpses of my old self are showing up, which is encouraging. I’m already sitting more comfortably and this helps to bring my cadence up to improve performance.
It’s just like riding a bike.
In my desire to dodge the exhausting climb of the many hills around here in my quest for time on the bike, I selected a flat route a couple of days ago that offered a life lesson. It was easier, but it was a lot more boring.
Empty farm fields and dreary ditches. Instead of wild flowers, there were empty beer cans, likely jettisoned by kids seeking to get rid of evidence.
On one side of the road there were rows of sprouting shoots of corn plants.
On the other side, a whole lot of nothing.
Seeking a return of adventure, the next day I girded myself for some climbing and got back into the more interesting terrain that offered views of trillium and livestock.
As I ever so slowly climbed one hill, I looked up to find three horses, side by side, staring directly at me. It felt like they were enjoying the spectacle of my slog up. It was a fabulous picture, but before I could pull the camera out of my jersey pocket, two of the horses lost interest and went back to grazing.
This brought me to the field where I had seen bison a few days earlier. Ian had challenged me to present a photo.
This is what I found:
Nobody home! Where’d they go? I’m not sure. Maybe there is more grazing pasture beyond the horizon that I can’t see from the road. It’s off the beaten path enough, with the road turning to gravel, that it’s not a farm I regularly pass, so I am unfamiliar with their routine.
Bolstered with a renewed sense of adventure, I overcame my aversion for rolling my skinny tires over the hazardous surface and forged ahead on the rough road.
In a lesson that translates easily to life, I was richly rewarded with an amazing exposure to a rich variety of landscape, life, and activity that exists, mostly unknown to us, in surprising proximity to our home.
The road less traveled, you know?
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Final Day
Today is the final day of this year’s Tour of Minnesota bike trip. As my song says, it’s bittersweet to reach the end. After our daylong slogging through rain –riding part way on a limestone trail that was in process of being logged by heavy machinery that wreaked havoc on the surface– I am feeling ready to be done.
At the same time, I didn’t have enough time to adequately visit with all the fabulous people riding this year. Just yesterday at lunch, I sat next to someone who I hadn’t yet met, and there were too few minutes to do our visit justice.
Guess I’ll just have to come on the ride again next year. Sometimes it takes a few years to fully reach the potential for precious connections that are possible with this adventure.
Julie, one of my bestest connections made on these trips, took this picture of me playing my travel guitar among the tents. I didn’t get my name in lights, but they felt my impromptu performance deserved to include a little light show.
Rich took this photo of Julie and me jumping into the middle of someone else’s chance for a candid moment.
We are having a great time, despite the complications of weather and construction which have altered the otherwise smooth sailing we always hope will greet us.
Tonight, I am hoping to be back in my bed again, and I am looking forward to hearing how things went for one-armed Cyndie on the ranch while I was gone.
I expect I’ll be telling you all about what I learn in the days ahead.
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Almost There
I was close. Right down to the last minutes, extra minutes actually, I was composing new posts and scheduling them to publish. I was two days short. I ran out of time.
So, I am writing this with thumbs on my phone while sitting in my tent in Superior, WI on the morning of our day off.
It will be brief.
So far, this year’s trip is living up to the best of years past. It is a combination of traditions we love and new experiences and people discovered.
We are camped on school grounds where we keep laughing over the graffiti on the wall:
“Jeff was hear”
The common opinion is that Jeff should have been paying more I attention to going to class than making his presence known on the outside of the building.
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Relative Something 