Category: nature

Wild Life

This spring’s riding has been ridiculous with wild animals, both alive and not. The high points so far both came on my muddy ride yesterday. About ten minutes into the outing, as I rode along the east edge of the Carleton Arb, a bald eagle flew directly over me, so low and slow that I could see it turn its big head and look at me with one eye. Very impressive.

An hour later or so, just after my turnaround, I was riding a sketchy descent when a big white-tail deer vaulted out of the brush to my right, bounded across my path not two car lengths ahead of me, and tore across an open field at what looked like a million miles an hour. I was so amped on adrenaline that my heart rate jumped about ten beats and I sped up by about 5 mph. I wonder if a cyclist has ever been hit by a deer?

Added to those spectacular encounters were, on this ride, two chases by rather mean-looking dogs (a phenomenon I’ve rarely experienced until this spring) and sightings of various pheasants and wild turkeys – plus scads of road kill – including one long-dead deer upon which someone’s golden retriever was snacking. The dead animals have been especially varied this spring. The most unusual roadside corpses were two coyotes, tossed in a ditch not far from our house – probably shot, and certainly disgusting to see.

Four Weeks to 100 Miles

Today starts the four-week countdown to my first event of the new racing year: the Almanzo 100, a 100-mile race in southeastern Minnesota. I’m a little bit frightened of the event, since I’ve only completed one “century” ride (a solo effort last fall), but I’m a lot excited to try this one. The Almanzo 100 is a “gravel grinder,” a low-key event that’s free to enter, that’s held almost entirely on dirt and gravel roads (as versus either pavement or off-road trails), and that’s “self-supported” – meaning, as the saying goes, “you are responsible for you.” There’s no sag wagon, no bag drops, not even aid stations with water and food. The organizers give you a map, and then you’re on your own for food, drink, repairs, etc.

Well, not completely on your own: this year more than 400 riders have for the Almanzo 100. It should be quite an event! I’ll be happy if I a) don’t crash and b) finish in less time than I needed to do last year’s gravel century – 6:53. Between a heavy training load this spring and the effect of riding with others, I’m optimistic I can hit 6 hours. I’m eager to find out.

To mark the start of the last phase of training for the race, I rode two hours to and from Cannon Falls. Here’s my turnaround spot. Note the snowy fields.
40th Avenue, Cannon Falls MN

Thanks to the melting snow, the roads were hellaciously muddy. My derailleur got so caked with mud that it stopped shifting:
Muddy Derailleur

And I’m not sure what I’m going to do about my shoes, which were once blue:
Muddy Shoes

Stuck at Church

We went up to Moorhead to attend a party honoring my father-in-law, who has just retired from his position as a chaplain at a hospital in Fargo. The party was held at the church where he had previously been a pastor for many years, a tiny rural parish that literally becomes an island when the Red River rises. The date of the celebration was subject to change, in fact, depending on whether the Red was so high that the roads to the church were already impassable.

As luck would have it, the river hasn’t crested yet, and so the party was on. Before we drove out to the church, which is a few yards from one of the Red’s smaller tributaries,we were warned that the parking lot was very muddy. I initially pulled up on the sidewalk next to the church so that Shannon and the girls could get out, but then I had to park further away so that others could do the same thing. After church, I tried to pull this trick again, but I was defeated by the mud:
Stuck in the Church Mud
A nice parishioner with a four-wheel-drive truck and a tow cable managed to pull me out.

Springing Back on the Bike

Today was my first outdoor bike ride of the year – a relaxed hour’s ride south and east of town. Going out was tough, thanks to a stiff southerly breeze, but then again going back was really easy – 22mph without even pedaling hard, thanks to that breeze. All in all it was a good start to the “off-season,” which will have an early peak for me on Sunday, May 14, when I’m going to do a 100-mile gravel-road cycling race, the Almanzo 100. I’m a bit freaked out by the race, since I’ve only ever done one ride that long, but I do have a few days to train – 56, but who’s counting?

There was a bit of yin/yang to my ride today. On the one hand, this was a typical sight. All of this will all be green in a month, but it’s pretty bleak right now.
First Ride of the Spring - 1

I tried to cut home across the still-snowy Upper Arb, but it was impossible to ride through three inches of icy snow – not least because my brake pads literally froze up:
First Ride of the Spring - 2

Daylight Super Time

The change to daylight saving time snuck up on me, so I didn’t have time to get too worried about the effects of the time change on the girls’ sleeping. And for the first time since Julia was born, the change didn’t involve unpleasantness: the girls went to bed early and exhausted on Saturday night, slept to a reasonable time on Sunday morning, and went down at 6:30 on Sunday night. Plus and so, it’s still dazzlingly bright outside, which means that I could conceivably go skiing in the evening as long as the snow ice holds out. This is a good situation.

No Bad Weather

According to Carleton’s weather station, the temperature at two this afternoon was about +5°F, with windchills in dipping down past -10°F.

This is undeniably cold, but with the City of Lakes Loppet coming up in a week and a half, I needed to do one last long ski this afternoon – at least a couple hours, and at least the race distance (25km or 15 miles). Well before the temperatures went all Irkutsk on us, I’d chosen today for that long ski.

Since waiting would do me no good – at least in a race-readiness sense – I emptied my workout-clothing drawers after I saw the forecast, and then this afternoon I just did it – 2:44:38 total time and 31km total distance. Except for the first five minutes, when I was just out of the warm car, I wasn’t cold at all. In fact, the only time I shivered was when I got home and failed to change out of my sweaty clothes fast enough.

That’s all to say that good clothing beats bad weather any day. Here are all 22 items I wore on my ski:

  • ski boots
  • “expedition” weight ski socks
  • polypropylene sock liners
  • heavyweight long underwear baselayer bottoms*
  • windbriefs*
  • boxer briefs
  • heavyweight ski tights*
  • wicking t-shirt
  • midweight thermal baselayer shirt*
  • heavyweight outer jersey*
  • windproof vest*
  • balaclava mask*
  • ski hat*
  • thermal glove liners
  • racing gloves*
  • ski mittens*

(All the asterisked items were one or another brand of ski clothing, mostly the incomparable Craft, from Sweden.)

Dragging My Carcass Around

I went for a long ski tonight. Thanks to the exertion and an oddly wet snowfall, things got blurry just a few minutes into the session  and continued to get blurrier until I finished. At one point, I noticed what seemed to be a glove or mitten half-buried in the snow alongside the trail.

On my next lap, I slowed down to scoop up the item, thinking I’d stick it on a trailside sign for the owner to find later. Without stopping, I picked it up (rather deftly, if I do say so myself) and glanced down at it – whereupon I discovered that it wasn’t a glove or mitten, but a desiccated opossum. The empty eye sockets and bared white teeth were the tipoff.

I whipped the carcass back into the snowbank along the trail and continued on my way, now somewhat more grossed out than I had been.

Snow Day

A blizzard of stuff on a grand snow day…

Trip Shakespeare, “Snow Day”
Snow Days – LIVE on

Trip Shakespeare | Myspace Music Videos

A list of things that got stuck today:

  • Us, inside the house
  • My SUV, at the end of the block
  • My skis, in waist-deep drifts in the backyard
  • Vivi, in a bad mood that lasted all day
  • The garage door, after snow covered the sensors and kept it up for an hour
  • The snow-removal contractor’s tractor, in a massive pile of snow in the street
  • The girls, in the colossal drift on the patio:

Patio Snowdrift - 05