Yes, Hot
It’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity, too. I started receiving weather warnings from the app on my phone sometime in the middle of last week. While at a restaurant on the bike trip, I spotted a weather map on a TV screen over the bar, and it looked like 80% of the US was depicted with a burning deep-red, indicating extreme heat was on the way.
Well, the heat has arrived. Try being a 1200-pound horse in this kind of weather.
Cyndie put out the large water trough that the horses have a history of splashing in when we intended it to be used for drinking. Now we would be glad to have them splash in it.
Mia came right over while Cyndie was filling the tub from a hose and dipped her face into it. I said she should have placed the trough under the shade sail. We may still move it there later today.
Asher isn’t taking the heat much better than the horses. Luckily, he has an air-conditioned house to lounge in. He begrudgingly accompanies us on walks to tend to the horses.
I am deeply grateful that this level of heat didn’t occur while we were biking for hours every day. If there were a choice between riding in the rain or high heat, I would choose the rain.
Unfortunately, I still have some mowing to do today. I’m going to try to finish before the hottest part of the afternoon. Not that it matters, since the temperature was 81°F with a dew point of 72° when we woke up at 6:30 this morning.
Yeah, it’s hot outside.
There is one really cool thing about today, however. It’s Elysa’s birthday!! Here is a celebratory photo of her from six years ago:
Happy Birthday, dearest! Stay cool!
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Welcome Home
Guess what I have to do with a certain urgency before we escape to the lake place for a ten-day getaway?
I had a nice visit with the mechanic at my local bike shop about his experience with Trek Domane e-bikes. He wasn’t aware of any issues with the fastening hardware. I left my bike with them, though he didn’t expect they would get to it before Thursday.
While we were talking, he was on his computer, opening a potential warranty issue with Trek on my behalf. It would be really lovely if I could be refunded the expense of the labor to remedy the sheared bolt and noisy bottom bracket.
Maybe I just pedal too powerfully for the steel fasteners.
Today, I’ll ride my mower instead of my bike, but I’ll be thinking about the friends I’ve been hanging out with over the last week, enjoying the residual energy of their happy faces and our joyful laughter.
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Headed Home
Today is the last loop ride of the week, after which we pack up and drive back to our regular lives.
In truth, I don’t think I’ll bother with the biking since my precious Trek bicycle isn’t much fun to ride in the condition it’s in.
I gave it an attempt yesterday, and the crunchy sounds and precarious status of a broken bolt made the ride much less enjoyable.
In contrast, hanging out with great friends is the best part of this annual adventure.
I chose the short option which logged 33 miles past a beautiful patch of the state flower, Lady Slippers, and through scenic iron range terrain.
Yes, there were hills. There was also a persistent drippy, pesky sprinklely drizzly precipitation that barely wetted the ground, but did a good job of messing up our bikes.
Of course, as soon as Steve and I got back to camp, the sky turned blue and hot sunshine prevailed for the rest of the day.
All in all, the weather was far from the worst we’ve endured, the camping was good, and the northern Minnesota scenery was as beautiful as ever.
My body was in better shape than my bike. I keep threatening that I don’t want to continue to do this ride every year, but oh how I would miss these friends if I were to finally stop.
I plan to drop off my bike for service on the way home. Then comes the post-trip cleaning and drying of gear, followed by a luxurious sleep on a real bed again.
Adventures with friends are great, but gee, it’ll be great to be back home!
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Interesting Day
I recognized his face right away, but it took a second to figure out from where. When he turned to me and instantly recognized me, we both quickly knew it was PHI.
It was John Newman from the Lab at Physical Electronics. Finding him in the kitchen of a Catholic Church in Ely, Minnesota where the Knights of Columbus were serving us breakfast was a wonderful surprise.
We shared the classic life comparison that follows “What are you doing here!?”
We biked mostly roads to Babbit and back before packing our gear to drive down to Chisholm.
After dinner, some stretching was needed before the walk back to our tents.
My bike was back with the mechanics again to continue their efforts at silencing the ratchety creaking.
Efforts were suspended after a screw sheared that will require more work than they are able to provide from their mobile repair trailer.
I’m going to try gently riding it as is today and see how it does. I will have the phone number for the sag driver handy, if things don’t go well.
It was an interesting day.
Happy Juneteenth today!
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Constant Shifting
We rode from Ely to Tower after barely surviving the epic downpour on Monday night.
I took a picture of the high water mark where floating debris remained after the flood receded.
Just a little further and our tents would have been inundated.
Riding was superb on this leg of the Mesabi trail.
In the photo, I am secretly trying to hold Steve’s pack so he can pull me while I coast.
The up and down gyrations of this trail forced the most shifting of gears that I’ve done in a long, long time.
Eventually, the sky cleared up so we could dry things out after we returned to our tents in Ely.
It looked like the tent had regurgitated its contents.
In honor of Rich’s sharing his photos with me to use here, I will close with a shot he took that features him prominently.
Thanks, again, Rich!
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Telling Trend
I seem to be all too willing to skip a day of riding lately when rain looms close on the radar.
Some folks squeezed in their miles before rain reached Grand Rapids, others got a little wet.
I joined a group that opted to pack up dry tents and set out for Ely early to put them up in the park here before even bigger storms arrived.
There was a possibility of riding around Ely, but we chose to eat lunch and wander the shops instead.
Back at our tents, we debated the amount of rain headed our way .
It was a LARGE amount.
A single dripping leak in a rainfly can lead to a big mess in the tent.
Looks to be much dryer today, so the likelihood of riding is high.
I suspect the trend of becoming more willing to forego biking on “iffy” days reveals my priorities are on spending time with these special friends more than accomplishing big miles on the bike.
Unfortunately, I still ate yesterday like I was burning a lot more calories than I actually did.
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Mesabi Scenes
It didn’t rain on our first day!
Something was creaking on my bike. Very annoying. Yet to be solved.
Thanks go to Rich Gordon for providing photos he took with me in them!
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Grand Start
The day is starting promising with visible sunshine.
I’m ready to ride!
Almost Packed
Today, I depart for the annual Tour of Minnesota biking and camping week. I think this will be my 26th time in the 31 years since I first tried my legs at long-distance cycling. I guess you could say I found out I liked it.
I almost finished packing last night.
The bag currently weighs in at 45 lbs. That’s not a concern this year because the tour has changed from them hauling our gear from campsite to campsite, to riders needing to drive their own cars to each destination after biking a loop that day. Unless this new routine really ‘wows’ me, I believe this will be my last year riding the TOM.
What brought me back this year? The people who have become treasures whom I get to share the week with, submersed in the great outdoors and pedaling together for long hours over many miles.
One of the things I find challenging about packing for trips is the number of things I am still using, and thus don’t get packed until the last minute. After that, my challenge becomes trying to recall where I put things that did get packed.
Usually, I end up figuring out a system by the 3rd or 4th day, but by the end of the week, I’ve started tossing things anywhere and everywhere, and my duffel bag becomes a big mess. The amount of chaos in my bag is often related to how rainy the week has been.
This year, the forecast looks like a good chance of rain up north. We are starting in Grand Rapids, then heading up to Ely for two nights before coming back to Chisholm. I predict my bag will end up messy.
I’ve not prepared any posts in advance this year. Hopefully, I will be able to connect to the internet through my phone and, at the very least, provide an image or two each day.
Northern Minnesota Iron Range, here we come!
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New Discoveries
Quite a while ago, we discovered that a person we knew from our school days in Eden Prairie was a volunteer for elections in our township. She and her husband own a log home nearby on the Rush River. We plotted getting together for lunch, but somehow failed to accomplish it for years.
Yesterday, we finally made it happen. Ann and David showed up at our house, and the minutes flew by as we shared snippets of our life stories over a fantastic meal and a tour of portions of our property. We found Dave to be a wealth of knowledge about our plants and trees.
I queried him on the demise of the maple in the labyrinth, but he was stumped (no pun intended) as to why it died so mysteriously.
Right away in our woods, Dave spotted golden oyster mushrooms on a downed tree and alerted us that they are good eats. We gathered a bunch to try cooking up.
That is definitely a discovery for us, as we’ve never considered eating mushrooms growing in our woods. When we first moved in, we spotted some that looked like the coveted morel mushrooms with the irregular honeycombed surface, but we weren’t confident enough to try them.
We learned later that it was very likely that they were morels, and we could have consumed them. Sadly, we’ve never seen them growing here after that time.
Dave went on to share his experience cooking down wild plums, making juice from wild grapes, creating a lotion for skin out of jewelweed, and he pointed out one other edible berry I didn’t know about on our property of which I’ve already forgotten the name.
The most important discovery is that we need to get together with them again soon, as we share many commonalities and a similar respect for the natural world in which we live. We are looking forward to seeing their property and strengthening the surprising number of connections we discovered during this initial all-too-brief visit.
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Relative Something 