One Week
The trip I am on provides an excellent example of the relativity of time. I will be gone from home for one week. How long is one week? It is just 7 days. I have been gone from home for longer than that on many occasions. From my experiences of the 15-odd years that I have participated in this week-long bicycle/camping tour, I know that one week seems both incredibly long and woefully short.
I will miss my wife, our bed, the convenience of our bathroom, and all the rest of the comforts of home. For some reason, spending an entire week exclusively using a bicycle for transportation, makes riding in a car at the conclusion of the trip seem like a totally foreign experience. Upon arriving home again I have always found that it seems like I have been gone forever and changes that occurred while I was gone are dramatic. But it is just one week.
I tend to believe it has something to do with how different the days are from my usual routine. For this one week I am able to immerse myself in the experience and camaraderie without needing to give any thought to my normal daily concerns. That makes for a great vacation. The route and meals have been determined for me, as well as where I will camp. I get to relax and enjoy the miles of riding and camping in the great outdoors, and most significantly, immerse myself in sharing the experience with like-minded friends.
For that reason, the week seems to pass in a blink. We hardly get started and it is already over. This trip makes for both a very long week and a very short week, all at the same time. Maybe that is why it seems so magical.
Today we ride from Worthington, MN to Luverne. Happy Father’s Day!
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Middle June
Today is actually the first day of riding for the Tour of Minnesota bike trip I am on. After camping in Jackson, MN last night, we will be riding to Worthington where our visit coincides with the 2014 U.S. Windsurfing National Championships.
To give you a taste of what this ride is like, I am going to re-post a video slide show I created to a song that I wrote about the annual week of bike touring and camping we have been doing for decades. It’s a bit long, but if you don’t have time now, it will still be here when you check back with time to spare.
I figure I should update the lyrics this year to reflect the change in leadership. It is no longer “jaunting with Jim,” but it could easily be sung as “biking with Bob.”
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Start Vacation
My vacation starts today. I saw a news headline somewhere indicating that today, Friday the 13th, happens to coincide with the full moon. What luck! It also happens to be the day I leave for southwestern Minnesota to camp in Jackson overnight for the start of an annual June tradition, a week of bicycle touring and tent camping that I have participated in for two decades. The moon can serve as my night-light while I try to reacquaint myself with my usual —but several years removed— camping routines.
For 39 years our ride was called the “Jaunt with Jim” because the ride was conducted by adventure/travel writer/columnist, Jim Klobuchar. Last year Jim retired from leading the ride and turned the task over to Bob Lincoln. Bob established a new name and identity for what will actually be the 40th year of the ride, so this year I am riding in the Tour of Minnesota.
As I have done for most of my adventures, I will journal my experience using the retro-tech of pencil on paper, and then compose and post stories upon my return. For the week that I am gone on this vacation, my daily posts will come from pre-scheduled tidbits that I have composed to give you a peek at where we will be this year with some images of what the ride has looked like in years past.
I’ve done as much to prepare our property for my absence as time allowed. Now I leave it up to Cyndie to keep things under control until I return. I’m hoping her recovery from hip surgery is far enough along that she is up to being the sole caretaker of animals and property for a week. I know from experience that it is a daunting task.
If all goes as planned, posts here will return to “live-daily” again on Saturday, June 21st. Till then, feel free to envision sunny skies, cool tail winds, and low dew point days for me and my friends for the week ahead. I’m off bicycle touring! Ta ta.
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Man Power
Well, man and machine power, anyway. I cranked up the power trimmer yesterday to knock down the grass and weeds growing along our fence line. The tall growth is starting to put a load on our electric fence. I swear, things are growing inches per day around here lately.
Cutting with that Stihl trimmer is way too much like vacuuming for me, and if you recall my story about vacuuming, I find it to be a frustrating process. Everywhere I turn there is more that could be cut. How do you know where to stop? I am so obsessive about being thorough that it takes me forever to complete each section I’m working on.
I was most of the way down the driveway when Cyndie arrived home with a pizza. I told her I wanted to finish the fence around the front of our property and then I would come up for dinner. As she drove off toward the house, I restarted the trimmer and it promptly ran out of nylon line. I can take a hint. I went up for dinner, and to load new line for the trimmer.
The focus shifted at that point, and the labyrinth became the priority. Even though I had used the trimmer to cut the labyrinth path the previous time, things are growing so fast that it was already too thick again for the reel mower. Cyndie took a shot of the new peace-pole while I was working. She got that from her mom for her birthday.
I stopped cutting long enough to take a picture that shows the result of my effort. The area on the left is what it looked like before I cut it.
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Horse Power
I was able to use our 4-horse power grass mower yesterday on the strip just outside the small paddock. We had put up a fence around a small section of our driveway to give the horses somewhere to stand that wasn’t always muddy, but it didn’t encompass that grass strip. I decided to make a small adjustment in our temporary fence so we could give them just enough space to reach a large majority of that front section.
Without any hesitation or fussing about, the four horses spaced themselves nicely outside the paddock fence and got down to business cutting the grass. They do great work. They mow a little bit like Cyndie does, haphazardly picking spots to work on, but there are no clippings left behind, and given enough time, they eventually get it all trimmed to the same length.
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Vacation Planning
Like this has never happened before. The faster I go, the behind-er I get. It doesn’t surprise me, but it seems so wrong. I am quickly running out of time before I leave for a week of vacation and I find myself unable to get into gear to prepare for departure. I feel like I have been afflicted by some zombie disease. My thought process is slowing to a crawl and motivation seems to be going with it.
I am thrilled at the idea of being free of the usual daily responsibilities and spending extended time with a group of very precious people, but that has not resulted in any rush of energy toward getting valuable tasks addressed in preparation. Most notably, since my vacation will involve riding a bicycle all day long for a week, this year I failed to get enough miles on the saddle to condition my butt in advance of the trip. I may finally have found a reason to test the use of a chamois cream, but my concern is less about skin hotspots and more about tenderness from prolonged pressure on the sit bones. It’s feels like a bruise until the body adjusts and builds up the equivalence of a callous in the region.
Yesterday, as I toiled away on an unexpected kitchen sink plumbing adventure, it occurred to me that I have done very little in the way of mental preparation for the annual week of bicycling and camping that kicks off in 4 days. I think that is because the trip is something I have done many times before with a common group of precious friends. I know what to expect, so I am less inclined to fret over preparations.
Unfortunately, it is feeling like I may have swung too far in the other direction and am at risk of finding myself unprepared at the last-minute. If something ends up being neglected, I’m hoping it is a chore at home that I overlooked which I can just deal with when I return. As long as I have my bike gear, the tent and sleeping bag, and a few things to wear, I’ll be ready to vacate.
Sunday, after a bit of anxious searching, Cyndie rescued me by finding where my tent and sleeping pad were stowed. The most critical elements are beginning to accumulate into a pile in the basement, so I’m probably in better shape than my foggy mind is making me feel.
The next phase involves the irritating challenge of a nagging perception that I am forgetting something. How do you figure out what you are forgetting if you don’t know whether you are forgetting anything or not?
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Gone Shedless
I received the greatest gift from my family yesterday. Since I will be gone on Father’s Day, riding the Tour of Minnesota, we celebrated a week early. The kids came over and helped with chores around the property. Most significantly, we dismantled the toppled woodshed.
I had been considering ways to pick it up again, thinking it might still stand on the six support posts. After we cleared away everything that had been stacked inside, closer inspection led to a decision to just take it apart, one leg at a time. Having the extra hands made the project infinitely more simple for me. Getting that shed taken care of was high on my list of desires, but I never imagined we would be able to get as far with it as we ended up accomplishing.
I am so very happy to have that damaged structure dismantled. Thanks, kids!
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Horse Race
I was able to watch the third race of the Triple Crown yesterday, after putting the television antenna up on an end table that I had propped on top of a kitchen stool. The NBC channel broadcasting the race is the only one we can’t pick up when the antenna is positioned in a more reasonable table-top position in the loft where our tv is located. We were supposed to be leaving for a dinner date, but a little multi-tasking allowed us to squeak in the viewing while primping, before dashing out the door.
The Belmont Stakes held heightened drama yesterday, due to the fact that it had been 36 years since any horse had achieved the feat of winning all three intense Triple Crown races that occur within just 5 weeks. California Chrome was poised for the possibility with prior victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.
I marvel over the fact that these thoroughbreds are a mere 3-years-old. A quick search provided one explanation (from 2004) that the horses generally reach physical maturity in their 4th year. Races of 2-year-olds is like watching a junior-varsity competition, and by the time they are 4-years-old, drama is lost over which horses have it and which horses don’t. This is a gambling game, after all, so the 3-year-olds serve up the perfect level of excitement and uncertainty.
As California Chrome ran that home stretch, unable to kick it up to a faster sprint than the other horses around him, I got the impression he looked more tired than not fast enough. His is an endearing story, beating the odds to achieve as much as he has thus far. It’s easy to appreciate his success-at-a-bargain, in the game where millions are spent to breed winners.
Our horses aren’t race horses, and we aren’t millionaires, but it feels like it to me this morning, being able to stand next to our powerful creatures, feeling their breath, watching them prance in the grass.
We are not in a sprint, we are on a journey together. We are living our own version of a different kind of horse race.
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Flowers Show
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Not far behind all the fast growing grass we have around here, flowers are beginning to display their best selves for our delight. Like so many things this spring, it seems like they have just appeared out of nowhere. If we neglect to walk around the house and property for one day, we miss the grand entrance of some plant or another.
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Unfortunately for me, the weeds grow just as fast and get just as tall as some of the desirable flowering plants. I’m never sure which is which, and therefore am unwilling to be very zealous about weeding our landscape.
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The emergence of the flowers is matched closely with the appearance of pestering flying insects, several of which have a taste for blood. While stepping in close to capture the little blossoms on this flowering tree, I fell under attack from a swarm of tiny flying things, a few of which seemed to be driven toward burying themselves in my hair. That’s a joy.
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Speaking of that kind of joy, while working to clear trees from the drainage ditch along our southern border last weekend, I was sure that a mosquito almost large enough to pass for a humming-bird was responsible for the giant welt that swelled and itched when I came in for the night. I showed the welt to Cyndie right away to see what she thought of it. Inconclusive response. It had quickly gotten bigger than any mosquito bite I had ever experienced before.
In a few days, it became painfully obvious that it was not a bug bite. I’m guessing I unknowingly handled some poison ivy down in that ditch, then directly transferred it to my neck when trying to wipe off dripping sweat. The swelling and wide area of reaction is so distinctly different than the usual itchy spots that appear on my skin, I believe it suggests the level of exposure was an order of magnitude higher than my usual experience.
I remembered that my doctor advised I try an antihistamine to control the reaction, before resorting to a steroid prescription. That seems to be working for me, to suppress the swelling and itching, but it doesn’t necessarily shorten the average two weeks duration like steroids will. That’s okay. I dislike the prescription stuff enough to be willing to endure the duration of the process using antihistamines alone for now.
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