Vistas and snakes

Today's ride was relatively short, but tiring. By design. Or at least the first part was.

I decided to do those "hills" I skipped last Sunday. The Twin Cities aren't known for their hills, for good reason. But I went to where there is one, and rode up and down it as fast as possible 10 times in the hardest gear I could tolerate. I saw one dead snake, a living garter snake, and a cute little brown snake of some variety. I also saw the most remarkable purple flowers, resembling globe thistle, but much brighter and larger.

Then I was not sure where to ride. I'm feeling kind of bored, especially since the flooding hasn't yet subsided. So I decided to explore, since that is fun. I went up a long, not super bike-friendly hill from Mendota to the Cherokee Park neighborhood.

I can't find much info about the history of this gem of a neighborhood, but did find a photo from about 1930 of a "tourist camp."

I took a picture by Cherokee Park of the river and cathedral, with the Smith Ave. Bridge ("The High Bridge") included. I also took a picture of downtown St. Paul. It was beautiful up there.

Also photographed: the swollen Minnesota River from by where I did those hills, with another secret staircase!!

I was hungry after that ride and devoured some jerky made by a company partly owned by one of my co-workers. It was fantastic. My neighbor Jen and I then went and had a real lunch and dessert in the neighborhood. I love living here.

I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the TRAM in two weeks, since I've only ridden about 955 miles so far this year. But I looked at last year's log, and I've done almost the exact same mileage as last year at this time. (This year I'm ahead about 21 miles, but 16 were on my fat tire bike, in the snow. So, I'm really about 5 miles ahead.)

Thank you for the donations that are helping me get closer to my TRAM fundraising goal!

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Maggie2014TRAM

A fine line between adventure and danger

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying,
but a life in which adventure is allowed
to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.  
- Bertrand Russell

This past weekend's rides involved some adventures.

On Saturday, Matt and I picked a route where we could avoid detours due to the flooding. We met at Fort Snelling.

Old timey military bike at Ft. Snelling

View of swollen Mighty Mississip from Ft. Snelling

We then rode to look at the gushing Minnehaha Falls, crossed into St. Paul, and rode up Summit Ave. to behind the capitol. The trail behind the capitol was closed for road construction. A portion of the alternate route we took was partially closed to to repairs of a purported sinkhole. Once we were back on track, we had to take a detour on Wheelock Parkway due to a bridge being out. Finally, when we got back to Minneapolis, we decided since we'd been detoured enough, we'd ride our bikes past the barricades to go look at the cleanup of the mudslide by Fairview Hospital. If it was clear enough, maybe we could pass by on our bikes.


The path certainly was not clear. And lots of  heavy construction equipment was out there, bulldozing big piles of mud, trees, etc. We then decided to walk our bikes up this mysterious staircase tucked in the woods, which brings you to a little wooded area within a neighborhood park in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. Who knew?

Mysterious, and slightly magical-looking crumbly stairs.

We rode to Target Field and parted ways, since I was going to a baseball game with Dan and our friends Tim and Lizzie.

On Sunday, I thought I would try to beat the forecasted rain. Again, a dilemma. Where to ride when all the trails are closed? I decided I'd go to St. Paul, take Shepard Road to the 35E bridge, and cross over to Lilydale. Certainly, Lilydale Road, right along the Mississippi would be underwater, as it is whenever there's some flooding. But I could instead head up the Big Rivers Trail to Mendota, and then take the MRT trail to a hill and ride up and down the hill a bunch of times to try to get in shape for the big bike ride in three weeks.

The St. Paul Yacht Club, on Lilydale Road, from 35E

Coming down the hill from 35E to Lilydale Road, I wasn't even sure I could get on the Big Rivers Trail, due to the water levels. The flooding stopped right at the entrance to the Big Rivers Trail. I rode to enter the trail, and saw a notice that the trail was closed due to an "unstable slope."

Entrance to the Big Rivers Trail at Lilydale Road

The trail is closed once a year due to the threat of some pieces of rock breaking loose, but how bad could it be? Besides, I saw a lot of people going up the hill to 35E from this area, so they must have just gotten off this trail, I figured. And, this guy went around the barricade. He looked like a regular rider. So, I followed him.

I saw a couple of spots with some loose rocks that had fallen from the cliff-like area. And a boulder. I decided to just ride as fast as I could. This way I would minimize the amount of time I was on the trail, decreasing the likelihood that a big rock would take me out. (As my high school physics teacher wrote in a scholarship recommendation letter I was not supposed to see, I'm not the best at math, and certainly not with calculating probabilities.) Also, I could see some storm clouds straight ahead, clouds that I would not want to be under on a trail with an unstable slope.

So I rode. I rode fast. I can't tell you how fast, because my stupid speedometer/odometer thing got messed up when I fell on my bike on Saturday due to a failed attempt to unclip my foot from my pedal. I caught up to the guy who had crossed the barrier just as he was turning around back towards me due to the entire trail being covered by the aftermath of a huge mudslide.

So now I rode as fast as I could back the way I just came to not get hit by a rock or a mudslide.

I ended up taking Highway 13 through Mendota and could see the mudslide area from the top. It was pretty freaky up there and made me think that perhaps it was stupid of me to cross that barrier... I had no time to dwell on this though, because I could see lightning and hear thunder. I skipped the area with the hill and cut through Fort Snelling to head back home. A most torrential rain storm hit. I had to keep on wiping my eyes, which were full of water like they would be standing with my head in the shower. I rode about 3.5 miles in this, trying to be as visible as possible to traffic and not get hit by the dumb guy driving the pickup truck who really, really, really wanted to pass me just so that I could ride his bumper the whole way.

And then the rain slowed dramatically about a half-mile from my house and had totally stopped by the time I got home. Oh well, good enough ride, I guess.

Three weeks from now, I'll have finished the first day of the five-day MS TRAM, and hopefully will be sound asleep in my tent in a field with 800 other cyclists.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Maggie2014TRAM

Turning lemonade into limes?

My brain is fried after working a super-huge long day.

I'm freaking out about my big bike ride in a few weeks and the fact that I've only ridden once in the last nine days. I was telling someone that at least I took full advantage of my laziness and donated blood today (making it difficult to ride a ton, or, I guess, at all). I was going to describe this as making limes out of lemonade, I mean lemonade out of limes, I mean... oh forget it.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Maggie2014TRAM

"I wear my Viking helmet because the horns define how sharp my brains are."

Ah, Flavor Flav. Using that reasoning, I'm not very smart, especially if you look at the helmet I wore this weekend.

We went to my parents' cabin this weekend. After going for a walk with my mom and losing my parents' dog in the bear-laden woods, I went for a bike ride. I forgot to take my helmet to Wisconsin, so I rooted around the treasure-trove garage and found this beauty, which probably was last worn by my baby brother in 1995.

It was a nice ride with gentle, small rolling hills. I was chased by a juvenile deer for a while. Was it attracted to my neon yellow?

After the ride, Dan and I went to a beer festival. On the way home, we were crossing a river and my parents' dog came trotting across the bridge, many miles from where we lost her nearly 7 hours earlier.

I'd love to know what she did all day and whether, when we heard her barking shortly after she ran off, she was wrangling with some bears by the river. She clearly followed the river to the road. That actually was kind of smart. I wonder what kind of a helmet she has.

Don't you know you're going to shock the Molly

My sister likes the funny stories from my bike rides - the songs in my head, the random thoughts, etc., usually stemming from dehydration and/or exhaustion.

I actually don't have many from this ride. I saw, at about mile 135, a sign for Forest Land Nurseries. I thought it said Forest Land Nursebleeds, whatever a nursebleed is.

And at about mile 144, I said to a lawnmower in someone's yard, "on your left."

But really, this ride was sort of tame compared to the first year's Eye of the Tiger/Eye on the Tire issue, my wondering a couple of years ago how much a city spends powering the big fan (uhh, a windmill! Powered by the, uh, wind!), and last year's confusion during the TRAM about not having a seatbelt on.

Don't you monkey with the monkey.

"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best"

The MS150 2014 Weekend

Friday

A huge beer - just
like Grandma Mahoney
used to drink. While
playing poker.

Well, apparently the post that I wrote Friday night is stuck in some weird Internet limbo. It shows up on my phone as existing, but never got posted, and cannot be opened. It's probably for the best. Basically, we went up to Duluth, and Travis' kind parents once again had beds and food for about a dozen of us.

Saturday

We got to our bikes in the morning and it was pouring and cold. Thankfully, I was fairly prepared and all of my gear (mostly camping gear, rather than biking gear - check out this official photo) kept me warmer and drier than a lot of other riders. 

The rain stopped by lunch time. I took these next two photos at lunch, in Willow River, to try to show how crowded the rest stops are.

Willow River

This guy was smoking a heater.

So I rode a good portion of Saturday's 75 miles by myself. Well, as much as you can be by yourself on a bike ride with thousands of other riders. I didn't ride with anyone I know, though. I learned during last year's TRAM that I'm pretty content to ride alone on a ride like this. What I realized on Saturday is that although this was my fifth year riding this same route, I saw a lot of new things because I was by myself and wasn't chatting with other people, or worrying about whether I was going too slow or too fast for them.

In Finlayson, I took a picture of my head by the old train station, so that I could juxtapose it with other photos from this same spot. 

Photo with braids: MS150 June 2012, super duper hot.
Photo with bandana: Solo ride in November 2013, in the 40's, but dry.
Photo with shower cap: MS150 June 2014, drying out and warming up after the rain.

After arriving in Hinckley and taking a shower (in the shower truck - no line!) and eating some snacks, I went to the VIP tent so that I could find my name on the list of top fundraisers from 2013. After my team went to the hotel, I set up my tent and settled in for the night.

Sunday

Sunday was essentially perfect in terms of the weather. I rode with Matt, Dave, and Dave - and, for a short while, The (self-proclaimed) Purple Avenger - and we rode at a fairly quick pace (for me). The worst stretch each year, in my opinion, is the stretch between Wyoming and Hugo. I am not sure why. It is kind of boring, you're feeling your most tired over the two days, and it is kind of a long stretch of trail. And this year it was even a little longer because the second-to-last rest stop was in Stacy instead of Wyoming this year, due to construction. Anyhow, the Hugo rest stop - the final rest stop of the ride - is always a welcome sight. 

There's a beautiful lake, in an area with a lot of tree cover, you know you only have 8 miles left, and, if you are one of the people who raises over $1,000 you not only get to use the port-a-potties without lines (a perk of the whole ride, thank you donors!), but you get to stop at the little tent with special treats - - homemade cookies. Of course, I ate a few.

Continuing with the juxtaposition theme, here's a photo of meh with Mariette and Tom at the Hugo rest stop in 2012, and one of me at the rest stop this past weekend.

So, then, I finished (the photographer always catches me when I'm unclipping my foot)! That was a good ride to help prep me for the week-long MS ride in July.

So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.

So, I got home from Wichita. As much as I whined about being stuck there an extra day and making an unexpected trip to Houston, I feel obligated to point out that I could have real problems. I don't. 

What does a footloose and fancy free person like me do in her spare time?

The ladies. (We had one guy on the ride,
but he rode ahead to get to a kid event.)

First, she goes on a bike ride with her team. On a merger of an old route with some new parts designed to avoid a road closure (thanks, Matt, for the new ideas). I want to say that this photo is from around mile 33, but my bike odometer/speedometer thing wasn't working. It said that my maximum speed was 137 mph and, while I know I was going kind of fast down that one hill, I was not going faster than I've ever driven a car.

Then, she goes to a Mexican restaurant and eats a most satisfying chile relleno and splits some chips and guacamole with her teammate Carmen, not paying her fair share. After going home and not doing her fair share of the work there, she goes to a party. 

And not just any party, a party that Stacy and Travis host to help raise money for the MS Society. Thankfully, Stacy and Travis were prepared for the massive storms that rolled through the area, having the band set up in the garage with a big tarp roof in the driveway. I took our little pop up screenhouse tent thing, which ended up being a good place for kids at the party to hang out when they needed a break from sliding around in the mud.

Carmen's bike
by the cool sculpture
near Kaposia Park

Then what did I do? I mean what does a footloose and fancy free person do? Go home, sleep, wake up, go to Stacy's and ride bikes to Raspberry Island to join Millie for Lisa's Yoga in the Park class, overlooking the Mississippi.

Then she goes home and inspects the VIP materials that arrived in the mail and the registration stuff that Stacy picked up for her, including a nice event t-shirt this year (better quality and better design, despite all the wrinkles I, I mean she, added), a parking pass for premiere parking at the spot where her car will sit all weekend while she rides her bike back to it, a number for her bike that matches the number on the blue wristband, a pass to go to a VIP tent (special snacks!) after the first day of riding, a coupon for a free massage after the first day of riding, a yellow wrist band for access to the line-free port-a-potties, and a decorative bib.

Check out the bib, por favor. It says that I was ranked 39 out of the 3800 riders last MS150 in terms of my fundraising. Thanks, you guys! It also says that I raised $4,540 for the MS Society by doing the MS150 in 2013. I have a secret to share. I have raised $4,781.67 this year for my MS150 fundraising efforts (I've also raised some money for my July 300-mile bike ride). Wow, wow, wow!!