Blowing & Drifting

The very best sound a bike can make is the crunchy sizzle of tires going fast over gravel. The second-best sound a bike can make is the crisp crackle of going through dry leaves, like these early fallers on my route home from work.

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We’re all not killed on the roads every day. Yesterday, in the course of a couple blocks of my ride home, I saw a woman who didn’t look up from her cell phone for the better part of a full block, another woman who hurtled through a three-way stop at about 35 miles an hour, [...]

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This hill is short and not very steep, but I love the way it seems to just end, rather than start to descend - in my imagination, like some of the great summits in the Tour de France. This one’s about 99% shorter than those climbs, though…

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After finishing the Almanzo 100 in May, my thoughts turned – as they do – to writing something about it. My two-part race report was a start (May 16 and May 20), but I was lucky enough to be able to turn those blog posts into something more like a real essay, one that’s just [...]

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Today was a Very Big Day for bike-riding at our house. After a week’s hard work, Julia mastered the ability of starting all by herself, meaning that she no longer needs a parent to help her start, go, or stop. She wins the day’s Overall Achievement Award. If anything, Vivi did even better. She’s been [...]

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Right now, a Northfield cyclist named Ben Oney is 1900 miles into Tour Divide, an insane bike race that starts in Banff, Alberta, and follows the Continental Divide all the way down Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on the Mexican border. (You can track Ben online; he’s currently about 1,900 miles – yes, miles – into [...]

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Today was my fist ride since the Almanzo 100, my first pain-free workout in three weeks, and my first ride in short sleevesince last fall! The view – though a bit gloomy – wasn’t bad, either.

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(A tanka.) Trees lean together Touching limbs over the street Rows of lush arches They open as I ride through Letting the sky down to me

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I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I [...]

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In the lengthy first part of my Almanzo 100 race report, I dealt mostly with the overall shape of the experience for me. This second part relates some details that I want to remember, that fill out the Part I post, and that might be interesting to other cyclists who want to ride the Almanzo, [...]

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Trying to accommodate my athletic-endeavor verbosity, I’ve divided my race report into two pieces: this summary of the race and a separate, more detailed description of the experience, to follow soon. These 800-odd words are the one to read if you’re just passingly curious. And if you’re not even that, I don’t blame you! The [...]

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The torrent of stuff about the Almanzo 100 is just starting to trickle onto the web, but here are a few good items. First, the race director, Chris Skogen – who stayed the finish line to shake the hand of every single finisher, even the poor bastards who finished at 11 p.m. – shot this [...]

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Here’s how my body and my face looked just a few minutes after the end of Almanzo 100. Not pictured: the extreme soreness in my neck, the crazy butt cramps (TMI?), or the insane toe-to-knee mud that was washed off around mile 80 when we had to wade through a creek!

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No, not mine. The weather’s: Forecast for Spring Valley, MN Saturday: A chance of showers in the morning…then showers in the afternoon. Highs around 50. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80 percent. and Vivi’s: she realized at bedtime tonight that I’d be gone almost all day on Saturday – at least from [...]

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Seven days from right now, I will (with luck) be well done with the Almanzo 100 – my big spring race, 100 miles of gravel roads around Spring Valley, Minnesota. I’ve been training hard since well before the snow melted, and I’ve liked the way my work has been paying off. I’ve never felt fitter [...]

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