Spring has sprung

 

Well, we had some false starts - including our most heavy snowfall of the winter - in February and early March, after an otherwise mild winter. But there are now buds on the shrubs, the trees will leaf out any day now, my chives are happy (i.e. tall), and there are baby bunnies inconveniently nesting in my flower bed. 

Now I'm just waiting for temps consistently above 50 so that I can clean up the yard without displacing the pollinators, and so that I can continue the good cycling trend I've recently been on.

The weather this weekend was pretty amazing. I got some shorter distance bike rides in, but rode with more intensity and sought out hills. And I got some nice long walks in with Haley.

3 weeks ago - many layers!

Today! 

My hip was bugging me going into the weekend after being in DC this week for work and doing A LOT of walking (yay!) but doing very little of my PT exercises (boo!). But after doing all the stretches and the exercises tonight, I'm feeling pretty good.

In the third week of March, I went to Zion with the sister and brother to whom I'm fully blood related. We did a lot of hiking (the second and third days I used hiking poles, which helped my stability and my hip on uneven terrain), and talked about how much my dad would have wanted to be right there with us. We all miss him so much. 

Early on day 1 - wondering if we'll
survive vacation together. (Also, I didn't 
get their permission to share this photo. Whoops.)

Day 1 - we walked down this
river valley, further than the hoards.

Day 2 - a less crowded area of the park,
with lots (>50) stream crossings.

Day 3 - super isolated hike - - 
other than the evidence of coyotes
and mountain lions.

Day 3 - it would be oppressively hot
on this trail in the summer. We lost the 
trail a few times, but found it again.

It was a great trip - so good to be moving, hanging out with people I like, and getting a mental break from work. Nonetheless, I was feeling pretty discouraged after the trip, due to the discomfort despite all the effort I'm putting into getting that dang hip better. But with some recalibration by my PT person, I'm now feeling much more optimistic about the future, including my ability to comfortably-enough do the fundraiser 5-day bike ride.

Thank you so much for your donations to the MS Society of $1,225. I am optimistic that I can meet my goal of $5,000. I found this interesting image on the MS Society website about its research initiatives. They're doing really good work. (And they don't just do research; they also provide services and engage in advocacy work to ensure that people who are affected with MS have health care, access and protections, etc.)

You can help support them! Here's the link to donate for the 5-day bike ride I'm doing in July. https://events.nationalmssociety.org/participant/Go-Maggie-Go

A bit of fresh air

Today was very warm for Minnesota this time of year and, since I will be in ATL soon, I thought I should compare the two.

After doing some chores and a bit of work, I went for a 30ish-mile bike ride. Nearly 2/3 of it was roads that I haven't yet been on in 2024. 

Some highlights include seeing my brother's M-I-L walking and stopping to talk with her for a while; seeing at least a dozen boats fishing at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers; seeing several eagles: and discovering that my idea of making fruitcake, cutting it into pieces, wrapping them individually, and freezing them was a great idea. 

A couple of cars underestimated my speed, but only car put me in a true, unsafe situation. Lacking originality, the license plate on that car was "DevlDog"

It was a great ride nonetheless!

https://events.nationalmssociety.org/participant/Go-Maggie-Go

February Frolic

 Well, today was a mostly sunny, dry, and pretty much zero-wind day, which made for the perfect first bike ride of the year! 

I've commuted with studded tires and have ridden my fat tire bike in past Februarys (Februaries?), but it isn't usually the month in which I pull out a road bike and tool around the city. 

It was 32 when my friend Matt and I started riding this morning at 10:15, but we warmed up quickly and had to stop a couple of times to adjust our layers before the temp rose to 45. We rode our slower bikes, which have racks for panniers, so that we would have a place to stash our shed clothing (and our spare, lighter gloves). 

We rode up along the Mississippi (and saw some snow under the bluffs), took the #9 bridge over to the U of M, took the transitway to Como Park, Wheelock Parkway to Lake Phalen (where I used a disgusting biffy), and then Johnson Parkway to Mounds Park. Instead of coming back through Lowertown St. Paul, we detoured over to Upper Afton Road so we could take the beautiful winding trail through Battle Creek Park (so pretty) and through the weird but cool fishery area to Warner Road/Shepherd Road. We started at Fireroast Cafe so that we could also end there and have a tasty lunch.

What a pleasant day! This is the third weekend in a row that I have not worked after working a totally unsustainable amount of hours over the past six months and it is so nice to have days off. I forgot that weekends matter as much as they do.

Matt and I had a nice catch-up chat about all the important things in the world, such as why Red Delicious apples were so popular in our youth, Killers of the Flower Moon, hamburgers, foods that have hard outsides but soft interiors, bicycle chains, the number of years we've ridden together (11, but it seems like longer in a good way), board games, music, and the Crusades. You know, typical stuff.

It was a 39-mile ride for me (because I rode to and from the coffee shop). I just spent (wasted?) a bunch of time downloading all my ride data from my Garmin from last year. I normally track my rides week by week in a spreadsheet, but didn't do that last year because I was hardly riding due to my hip/femur injury. I thought my longest ride of last year was my first ride of the season (36-mile ride with Matt on a not totally dissimilar route as today's ride), but it turns out that I did get a 42-miler in at the end of the season and a grand total of 1200 miles. (Normally I do about 3x that, or more, with a few 75-100 milers tossed in for good measure, although there have been a couple of 2k years, I see, looking through the archives.) I realized I rode a fair amount after I first went on my crutches, following the letter - but not the spirit - of the law laid down by my doc. At some point, I must have realized that wasn't actually going to be all that helpful and discovered that it is fun to swim at Lake Nokomis. Anyhow, the point: I think it will be a good year for riding and it was great to have a reminder of how liberating it is to be out there cruising around. 

I'm even more excited about the week I'll have off in July for the BikeMS TRAM. Thanks for the donations that you have been making to support the MS Society! https://events.nationalmssociety.org/participant/Go-Maggie-Go