Some Time to Think Over a Piece of Humble Pie

As you may recall, the flooding of the Minnesota River has impacted some of the routes that my friend Matt and I ride, but not our creativity. Ahem. Today, to mix it up, we drove to Prior Lake to ride the Great Scott route. I did nearly this exact route on July 4, 2017, and have been wanting to go back. The first thirteen miles went quickly. This likely was due to a tailwind; I mistakenly thought that perhaps I got more fit while doing the 5-day BikeMS ride last week.

When we arrived in Jordan, Matt announced that his shifter cable had snapped and he was stuck in one gear. While he removed the broken cable, I took this photo of the little river running near the cute downtown area.

We looked online for any bike shops (other than Michael's Cycles, in Prior Lake, which wouldn't open until noon). Google apparently thinks that this meat market down the road would be able to help fix Matt's bike.

Anyhow, Matt decided that he could do the remaining hilly and headwindy 37 miles in one gear. Yeah. So he did. And he rode super duper fast. I had all 22 gears available to me, rode as fast as my back would allow, and could not keep up. 

This gave me some time to think about some highlights from the past week that did not already make it into my typo-ridden phone dispatches from the various Ride Across Minnesota camping areas.

In no particular order, although apparently mostly chronological:

• I really would like to go back to Northfield. The one brewery (and its food) was really good, the town is quaint. I don't know that I need to see the Jesse James reenactment thing again, but wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it.
• Owatonna has a free county fair. Their old-timey Village of Yesteryear or whatever it is called was really interesting. I wouldn't make a special trip, but I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it. 
• Kellie and Gregg provided some good intel on the Impossible Burger, which is a vegan burger offered at a few restaurants I've visited. (It was delicious, and Lavaburger's lava sauce was deliciously spicy.)
• I am SO GLAD I asked the fairgrounds workers in Owatonna about the schedule for the sprinkler system and they turned off the sprinklers so that roughly 300 of the riders wouldn't get sprayed at midnight! 
• The pizza farm near Waseca served as a good reminder that the summers are short and a pizza farm (not to be confused with Dave's Brew Farm) needs to be a priority. 
• The Cycleops team still has tons of creativity for the team poems and team songs. I have a team crush on them. Not a teen crush.
• Not many cities have campgrounds and, if it hadn't been so rainy, I would have liked to have spent more time in Mankato's Land of Memories Park. It might be worth checking out again sometime, just to see what it is like when the river levels are normal. If I was a kayaker/canoer, I think I'd be all over it. 
• I suspect I was among the small percentage of BikeMS cyclists who really liked the hills/river valleys between Mankato and Rapidan on Friday. We were warned that there'd be some hills, but even I was surprised. We weren't warned that it would be 20 miles to the first rest stop, which is probably what made most riders grumpy (20 miles is far, even in flat spaces, for a stretch of a BikeMS ride), in addition to a second day of rain. The pie at the Dam Store was a great ROI.
• I stayed at a hotel Thursday night, and am really glad I did it. I thought I might feel wimpy. I felt great in the hot tub after riding in the rain all day and was glad not to camp with damp gear.
• Peter, a volunteer for the MS Society who was a photojournalist for 40 years in NYC and was taking team photos for the event is the main volunteer for advocacy work in Minnesota. While all the rest stop and traffic control volunteers who have MS are very inspiring, he is amazing. He was working hard to convince me to help do some Minnesota-based advocacy in my *free* time. I am going to give him a call. 
• It was great to see our new teammate, Mike, who has never done a multi-day ride, power through the 3-day route. I love all the smiles and laughs of my teammates Kim, Alicia, and Danaca, and the finish line surprise offered by birthday girl Stacy, Keisha, and Kelly. I loved spending 5 days with my friend Deb, who is a powerhouse and did this ride for the second year in a row. I hope I will stay as strong as she is as time marches on. 
• I also got to spend time with our new friends Gregg and Kellie who rode for the first time this year and camped and hotel-ed with us. I was missing them today on my bike ride. They are funny and sweet. They don't have a car, so they don't really ride recreationally (just like I don't go for a Sunday drive in my car). I will need to find some other way to make them hang out with me.