Posts Tagged ‘northern Minnesota’
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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Long Time
It has been a long time since I did a jigsaw puzzle at home. After visiting Judy’s and Mary’s houses over the holidays and seeing their puzzles in progress, I felt a renewed motivation to get out one of my own again. Luckily, I had a very special new puzzle in my queue.
For the first time ever, I’m building a puzzle of a picture that I took. Elysa had this made for me as a gift after I mentioned that I thought the image would make a great jigsaw puzzle.
I’ve only spent a little time on this so far, but already I can sense the difference of studying pieces of an image that I captured. The location is a northern Minnesota forest on land owned by our friends, Mike and Barb Wilkus. We were hiking through the woods on a beautiful fall day and I stopped to snap a shot of the small lake surrounded by trees.
I’m going to love working on assembling this puzzle.
It will become a battle of wanting to make quick progress even though I also don’t want the project to end soon.
I suspect this will be a puzzle I have no problem assembling over and over again, although I feel it also deserves a turn or two up at the Wilkus cabin. Hopefully, both scenarios can be achieved over time.
That part of my brain that loves jigsaw puzzling is very happy indeed, especially because it’s been a long time since I’ve built one.
Maybe even more so, because I stood in this very spot.
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Relative Something 