Category: Northfield

Bike riding in a pandemic

Today marks the thirteenth straight weekend that I’ve gone for a longish bike ride with one or more friends.

Till this summer, I’d gone years without riding with anyone, ever since getting out of the habit of the Tuesday-night gravel rides that the club here in town organizes (or used to, in the Before Times). Pressures at home made me stop, but now with teenagers instead of elementary school kids, it’s easier – if not painless – to get out the house on a weekend morning for a long ride – 30 up to 60 or so miles so far.

It’s been absolutely great to do these rides – physically, socially, emotionally. I have not amassed this many bike miles in many, many years, which can only pay off when or if I can race this winter. And I’ve turned a corner with my riding, where going for a ride, even a short one (like the 20-ish miler yesterday evening with Pete), feels wonderful – but where a 60-miler feels even better.

The pandemic has constricted almost everyone’s social life; mine is largely now messaging with a few friends, talk at work (which isn’t really a real social life), workouts with one other guy a few evenings a week, and the occasional evening beer with a couple people at most. Plus the bike rides, which have been 3-5 hours of conversation about politics, the pandemic, work, Carleton, etc. etc. It’s wonderful. I love the rhythms of these bike-ride conversations, which appeal both in being Guy Talk and in being chats with like-minded friends – and which are thus very emotionally satisfying without being soul-searches. I always end the rides feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally satisfied – and maybe spiritually too, since it’s hard not to like scenes like this:

But. Given the constant talk about physical distancing, about masking, about washing hands and such, it’s a bit weird to spend so long in relatively close proximity to several other humans. It feels wrong, even if we’re pretty far apart from each other. I have to keep reminding myself that this is normal and relatively healthy, that riding bikes was a perfectly ordinary thing to do this time last year, that not too long from now it’ll be normal again. I hope. In the meantime, we’ll ride a few arms’ lengths apart and bring masks so one of us can get beer at the brewery afterwards.

Saturday Activities

Today was an ordinary day, but the pandemic shot through aspect of it.

In the morning, I went driving with Julia so she could practice on the freeway; she’s had her permit for 14 months and won’t have her behind-the-wheel exam for another three weeks because the exams are backlogged after having been suspended for months in the spring due to the pandemic.

In the afternoon I went riding with Pete and wound up as usual at Imminent, where they can only allow about half as many customers as usual due to physical distancing, and where everyone has to wear a mask unless they’re seated at their table. Awkward but also so normal.

And all day, I saw homemade Trump signs, emblems of the cult that has only hardened as the pandemic has wound on. Beyond the run-of-the-mill handmade ones and the obnoxious campaign ones with the “Keep America Great” slogan, the capper was a massive two-sided “TRUMP 2020” sign on a flatbed trailer along US 52 – entirely ringed with barbed wire. Never has there been a more apt metaphor for Trump.

Plexiglas Separation

Plexiglas everywhere! Pretty much any business worth its salt has put up plexiglas barriers at the point of sale, a quarter-inch of clear plastic between the coughing customer and the besieged service worker: at the campus snack bar, at the sandwich joint, at the coffee shop, at the brewery, at the bookstore… At the bank, the barrier was at least three feet high and all the way around the desk. This slot was a little wider than a sheet of office paper and just high enough to slide a sheaf of account-opening paperwork through – but low enough that your last knuckles would catch.

COVID tents

As the new school year approaches for both the K-12 public schools and the private colleges here in town, tents are popping up all over town. Julia’s cross country meet was held today at one of the elementary schools, where several tents stood near the playground. Later, I drove past the girls’ old elementary school and saw two more, mixed into some trees far from the building. They create a strange end-of-the-carnival atmosphere.

Springmageddon II

Another day of snowstorm meant another good ride in the snowstorm, this time a ramble with my friend Michael on the gravel roads south of town. The ride was marvelous: two hours and 20 miles of extremely variable conditions, including a stiff headwind on the way back home. We encountered a bit of everything, from snowy descents and icy climbs

and greasy mud under the snow

to gorgeous tree-lined “trails”

and wildlife oddities like a woodcock in the roadside scrub. What a day.

Blizzard Ride

Expectation, or dread, had built for days here about a big spring blizzard due to arrive on Friday – my birthday – with wind, ice, sleet, and snow. The storm showed up a little late, but by late morning today had started fulfilling the forecast: horizontal snow, clattering ice pellets, a mounting drift in our backyard, a roaring wind, cancelled social plans, and above all gnashing of teeth on Facebook.

It’s been a while – at least a year – since I’ve been able to ride in a real blizzard, so I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity, and luckily both girls had engagements with friends. At one, shivering with excitement, I kitted up and headed over to the Carleton Arboretum (off-limits to fatbikers all winter) for an easy, fun ride in the snow and wind.

And, it turned out, some sleet, which fell for the first half of the ride. But the temperature was comfortable and the wind really only mattered in the open spots. I went slow, taking time to study the treetops for owls, which I am longing to see. I didn’t see any owls, but I did see several red-tailed hawks, including one stalking a red squirrel. I stood and watched for a few minutes, but the hawk couldn’t quite time a swoop to successful nab the squirrel, which eventually scampered into an impenetrable thicket.

Riding on, I admired the gorgeous wintry trees,

looked down at the oxbow in Spring Creek as well as numerous ducks, geese, and two herons

did a little hike-a-bike where the drifted snow was too heavy to pedal

and saw almost no humans – some college kids wandering around, a family sledding, another fatbiker, and a few people downtown at the brewery (including, impressively, a couple who had skied over with their baby and dog!). If this is the last ride of the winter, it might also have been the best one.

RIP, Mary

Today Shannon and I had the privilege of attending the funeral for our longtime neighbor, Mary Erickson, who died last Saturday at age 95.

As her obituary shows, Mary was a wonderful person, someone who exuded calm and quiet happiness. She was a devout Christian, and the sermon at her funeral made clear that she lived her faith in an exemplary way. We experienced that in her exceptional generosity. She stopped over frequently to drop off books for Shannon (though fortysomething stay-at-home moms don’t necessarily enjoy all the same books as octogenarian widows!), magazines for me (she loved National Geographic and knew I did too), and many gifts for the girls, from birthday and Christmas presents to random things she thought they’d enjoy – dolls, books, even an entire toy house that they indeed loved.

She was also an amazingly active and tough old woman. Well into her eighties, she was still gardening, filling bird feeders, and retrieving her own garbage bins. I fondly recall how she was a bit embarrassed when I or another neighbor would shovel her sidewalk. And even past 90, she’d come out to her driveway to watch the girls shoot baskets, clapping when they made an especially good shot.

After hearing that she’d died, I realized that Mary was our neighbor for longer than any other neighbor I’ve ever had – eight years. We’ll remember her beautiful kindness for much longer than that.

1 Week from Arrowhead 5

Monday, January 22, is the start of the last week before the fourteenth annual Arrowhead 135. This year’s race will be my fifth. So far I’ve completed all four of the Arrowheads I’ve entered, and I hope to earn finish number five this year.

Five years is half a decade, which seems like a long time to be invested in this event. As I finish my preparation for the 2018 race (checking the forecast, drinking a lot of water, checking the forecast, packing my gear, checking the forecast, getting good sleep), I am thinking about how naïve and lucky I was in 2014, my rookie year, when the race was run in -20° temperatures. I did the only thing I’m good at – not giving up – and finished seventh in 29:09.

That race hooked me on fatbike racing, and I’ve since raced in eight more long-distance fatbike races: three more Arrowheads (finishing each one faster than that first), three Fat Pursuits (one finish, two DNFs), and two Tuscobias (two finishes). At this year’s Tuscobia, I accumulated my 1,108th mile and 247th hour of fatbike ultra racing.

As those totals (and the many, many more miles and hours of training that lie underneath them) suggest, the winter ultras have become a very important part of my life. The races themselves are highlights of the last five years, and really of my current life. Racing has taken me to some amazing and beautiful and scary places, both literal (Mount Two Top outside West Yellowstone, Montana, or the endless midnight-forest hills before the third checkpoint at the Arrowhead) and figurative (the mind-bent existence of racing for 20, 30, 50 hours straight). The work of getting and staying ready for the races has become permanent – a way of living, I guess. Some of the people I’ve met at the races are now among my closest friends, and many more are great folks I enjoy knowing. (A few, I could do without!) And I probably cherish my fatbike, the Buffalo, more than any other possession I’ve ever had.

With seven days to go till the start of the 2018 Arrowhead, then, I’m reflecting on all this and trying to recapture some of the beginner’s mind that I didn’t know I had in 2014. I want to approach this race with less expectation than the last few, when I’ve aimed for particular results; some came to pass, some didn’t. Too, I want to approach this race with more gratitude than usual: gratitude for race officials and volunteers who stage these crazy events under very trying circumstances, for the fellow racers who make the training and competing fun even when it isn’t, for a body and mind that (partly by accident, partly by intention) match up well with the demands of the events, for a family that lets me engage in this pursuit, for non-racing friends who seem to enjoy following the events online, and yeah for that gorgeous bike.

This year, I’m racing the Arrowhead in the “unsupported” category again, meaning that I can’t use any of the services at the three race checkpoints (shelter, warmth, water, food). I tackled the race this way last year and everything went (mostly) fine. With colder temperatures forecast this year than last, staying hydrated will be a bigger task, since my spare water might freeze, but I’ll carry a lot to drink and be prepared to melt snow if needed. Having competed successfully in three very cold races, my kit and body should be fine at temperatures around 0° F. Even writing this out makes me feel more comfortable with the challenge, and eager to get after it again! Now it’s just the wait until the fireworks at the start at 7 a.m. on Monday the 29th.