Tea for (twenty in) Two (groups)?

So, I usually have a tea party roughly once each year, and my house's max is definitely 14 for such an event.

I'm not sure when I'd do it (maybe should have gotten on the ball earlier), but I'm wondering if I could have two tea parties to try to generate a few donations.

Your thoughts, please, on this idea:

Two parties, open to more than just the usual suspects (either by extending an invite to more of my friends and/or allowing friends to bring friends), with attendees encouraged to make a donation to the MS Society for my MS 150 ride.

Would friends attend if they knew I was trying to get them to donate (money or time) if they have the means, knowing there is no obligation, but certainly a hope? Would they bring a friend who might donate, which might broaden my donor pool? So, ultimately, would I get more donations than I normally would get without these bonus tea parties?

Is your view swayed by this photo of one particularly rowdy guest who, at first glance, appeared so civilized?

Sitting in the Snow, Thinking about Rain

The Rain

Last year, the MS 150 ride was stupid hot (with nasty headwinds). The year before was pretty perfect. The year before that, the first day started off cool and drizzly, cleared up a bit, and then started raining just as I pulled into Hinckley for the night. So, I got a little wet, but it wasn't too bad. A trick that I learned on that trip is to stuff your shoes with newspaper (when you aren't wearing them) to soak up the extra water.

I've used that technique when I've gotten wet on training rides, like when I accidentally rode in the middle of a massive thunderstorm in the spring of 2011. I had to shield my eyes with my hand so that I could see 10 feet in front of me without my eyeballs getting soaked.

The Snow

If you do a good job fundraising for the MS 150 ride, you can get a gift cards to local bike shop, a MS bike jersey (if you haven't gotten one before), or you can decline the gift card and have the money given to the MS Society. I opted for a combination - a smaller gift card with some of the money going back to the MS Society. I wanted to keep a portion of the gift card because there are costs associated with committing to these bike rides (having an okay bike, buying new tubes/tires, bike tune ups, gloves, shorts, tire pump, hotel expenses, etc.).

So, its February in Minnesota. Lots of snow out there (great skiing yesterday!), so what could I possibly be obsessing over now (at least as related to that dang bike)?

Rain gear.

June and July Routes

In June, I'm riding in the MS 150 - from Duluth to Minneapolis. In July, I'm riding in the MS TRAM - from the Canadian border to Duluth. If it rains for the MS 150, it's no big deal. It's a two-day ride. I have a rain coat. If I have to put on wet shoes for day two, I can handle that. I even have rain pants for camping. I could wear those for a day, in a pinch.

But if it rains on a five-day ride from International Falls to Duluth, I think I need a better solution. My rain coat doesn't breathe very well and I get really overheated/sweaty in there. Ditto for the rain pants, which I'd need to secure to my legs so they don't get stuck in my chain.

I'm looking for recommendations on:

• Breathable rain coat for summer riding.
• Do I want some sort of rain pants for summer riding? Or do I just let my legs get wet?
• If I get waterproof shoe covers for the summer, do I need to be wearing rain pants? Or will the water just run into my shoes?
• Is there some sort of rain thingy to wear with my helmet to help keep my head dry (but still get ventilation)?

Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. I need to redeem my gift certificate soon and rain gear seems like the perfect idea! 

Touring Baltimore, Dreaming of Hawaii, Mapping Minnesota, and Making Progress With Those Goals

My Chariot Through Baltimore

We received some decent snow in Minneapolis this week, but I spent some good quality time seeing the sights of West and East Baltimore by bike. More accurately, I rode my bike on the trainer on the basement and watched episodes of the Wire - pedaling extra hard when I was anxious about Bubbles getting beat up on the West Side and relaxing a bit to hear what Proposition Joe was cooking up on the East Side.

Hawaiian Bike Shop T-Shirt - Perfect Fit!

Also this week, my friend Joan gave me a gift that she picked up in Hawaii, making me wonder when I'll get to go for a bike ride there. It's the best fitting t-shirt I've ever gotten as a gift. I love it. I also like how people think of me as a cyclist, although sometimes I am just a big talker. I apologize for not knowing how to take a picture of my back in a mirror without getting the corner of my face in there. (See my grey hair? How about my new haircut?)

I spent a bit of time today trying to remember some of last year's training ride adventures after inserting one of my favorite photos on Facebook as my profile picture. I thought there was absolutely no way I could have really gone for one bike ride last spring where: (1) I wiped out on my bike, (2) Two of the handful of us on the ride had flat tires, (3) A bridge was under repair and we had to carry our bikes, and (4) Two inches of rain the previous night had us turn a corner where we ended up riding our bikes in foot-deep water. Seriously, that all happened in one bike ride. I like adventures as much as the next person, but hope that this year's training rides will be a little more tame. 

Kim and Stacy, refusing to grumble

Part of me thinks I'll have good stories no matter what, though, once we start training. I'm starting to think that my presence is some sort of a jinx on the rides, since we had to carry our bikes over some train tracks and a plastic construction barrier on my second-to-last bike ride of 2012.

I spent a good portion of time this evening putting together another training route with the (less snappy) descriptive name of Southern Circuit. This is a ride that I made up on the go last year, while checking the Google Maps bike layer on my phone while out for what I thought would be a shorter ride. It's a 40-miler with a wide range of scenery, and involves more street riding than usual. I don't know that we'll do this as a big group ride - it can be hard to stay together as a group on the road since people on my team have pretty different abilities, different loves of speed, and a wide range of bike types.

As part of my route captain duties (pretty much self-assigned), though, I put a bunch of maps and a training calendar in the shared Google folder to help us as we plan our group training rides, but also added some maps my team members can use on their own as they train. I also put together an Alice-in-Wonderland-like document ("Read me!") in the folder that gives people brief descriptions of the routes and ideas of how to combine routes into longer rides.

This week I received another donation for the MS150 ride, bringing me to just over 25% of my overall fundraising goal of $4,000, with just over three months left. Thank you so much for all of your support - financial and otherwise - it means so much to me that people far and wide want to help me meet my goal of making a difference in the fight against MS! 

If you would like to donate, here's the link to my fundraising page: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/MaggieMahoneyMS150.

Kittens on bikes... Really?

Day Two of my blog experiment has me resorting to posting pictures of kittens on bikes to drive up blog traffic, per Kim O's suggestion. Really? Already?

Duh-dada-dah! My First Blog Post

I decided to try blogging about my antics and adventures as I train for the MS150 and the other MS Society events that I registered to do this year. We'll see how it works.

In the last month, I went to a few free spinning classes, rode my bike on the trainer a bit and did some yoga-like something-or-others, but have been expanding my horizons a smidge under the guise of "cross training."

I bought ice skates and am trying to teach myself how to skate with the help of my friends, brother, and nephews. My nephews are good motivators - taunting and teasing me so that I would chase them, yet offering me their hockey sticks in case that helped me with my balance.



I've also taken out my cross country skis with some friends.

As you may recall, I'm the training route captain for my team. I spent a fair amount of time last night adding a new training route (snappily titled, "District Del Sol") to my collection and putting together a rudimentary calendar with the MS Society's suggested mileage for the eight weeks before the ride. I will be adding group training rides to this calendar, once I figure out which rides we should do as a group and what days are best.

The District Del Sol is a route that I made up one day when I was exploring St. Paul's nether regions (Can you use that term in geography? Is that even how it is spelled?). I was able to convince Stacy and Kim from my team to try it out, with the promise of tasty food and a margarita from Boca Chica at the end of the ride. There's another ride I did in some southwestern suburbs last year when it turns out I had a sinus infection. (I wouldn't recommend those conditions.) I will be mapping that out as a potential training route for the spring. I'd tell you where it was, but I'm not really sure. I'll make it the subject of a future blog post.

In the last month, I've gotten to about 1/4 of the way toward meeting my fundraising goal for the MS150, and am humbled by people's generosity. I'm feeling exceptionally grateful for the fact that I can ski and skate to fight the winter doldrums and hopefully get in shape for my bike rides this summer. As I've learned more about MS over the past few years, I know that not everyone can do this. Hopefully all of these adventures of mine help raise awareness as well as money for research, treatment, and advocacy.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/MaggieMahoneyMS150