Holiday notes...

The past couple weeks have been a ride. Many family holiday events, work events, getting over my yearly bout with getting sick around Christmas, planning bike tours, and getting a bunch of valuables stolen.

First off, it was great seeing family on both sides, the Hovde clan during the week of Christmas, then my family coming to visit here in STP this week. There was quite a mix of in-house holiday evenings and going out to many various eating establishments in the Twin Cities. Running, climbing, and snowbiking will have to be on quite a bit to cancel out all the gorging.

Work took me and the other ground instructors out for a "moral boosting event" this past week amidst all the doom and gloom the airline has been suffering. It was a good and bad day. The actual stuff planned for the day went great- going out for sushi/hibachi, snow tubing; drinks. The unplanned part sucked, and that was getting two of my bags stolen out of a coworkers car. Among the lost items were: my trusted Timbuk2 messenger bag that I essentially live out of, our new auto gps, my iPod touch, my airport security badge, my brand new prescription eyeglasses, patagonia merino wool sweater and brand new hat, smartwool balaclava, co2 bike pump, Brooks saddle cover, lock, first aid kit, nalgene, and other odds and ends. Big lose for me, good haul for some snowboard brat at Buck Hill "ski resort" in the south MSP metro. I've never been a fan of midwestern "ski resorts", and I like them even less now. And I'm sure whatever kid stole my stuff has a rich set of Minneapolis suburb parents that could easily buy them all the things they chose to steal from me. Whatever. Sometimes in life you get hosed, and Monday was one of those times.

Other hosings of note are more job losses. Another climbing friend of ours just got laid off from, guess what, a pilot job. Go figure. Out of the four of us that climb together regularly, I'm the only one who hasn't lost my job. This recession has been an absolute butthole. It needs to end now.

On a good note, there is still bike touring coming up, I hope. We're talking about 2 tours now, one in CA, the other in TX. The CA could happen very soon; we have to get some dates down on the calendar and pull the fun trigger. I can't wait. It's reached the clear skied sub-zero January pain weather here in MN, and CA via bike sounds great. I can handle the cold just fine, and the northern winters have some amazing experiences to offer, don't get me wrong, but if CA is one the same menu, sorry MN winter, you might not get ordered.

For now it's time to get cleaned up and head to REI, big surprise. Always prepping for future stories.

Every year...

I seem to be forming an additional tradition each Christmas season...getting sick. For the last four years I've become ill the week of Christmas, and it's getting irritating. It set in yesterday on the way back from Jay Cooke State Park, where friend Ty and I went for a winter day hike. On the drive home I noticed the sore throat setting in, and by 11pm I had full blown body aches and was burning up. Suck. So I slept on and off for 14 hours, and have spent today mostly laying around with the cat on my lap, watching tv and reading cycling blogs. I also finally got around to shopping online for a deal on a new crankset for my 29er. Found a good one on a Shimano SLX, and it should be here in a couple days. Good. It will be nice to replace the garbage-y Evolve XC that's been getting looser and looser.

I also spent some more time thinking about the next cycle-tour. Edward D and I have been cooking up ideas for one or two bike trips for 2010. Ideas of the CA coastline, Death Valley, Big Bend National Park, and other locales have been floating through our heads, and we just need to get things on the calendar. I'm looking forward to living off my touring bike again soon. Riding all day followed by camping, then doing it again is a good life.

I'll leave you today with a couple pix of Jay Cooke pre-sickness:

Status Quo

I was sitting in my chair tonight thinking about how I'd like to write a new blog entry, but had thoughts that there wasn't much to report on. Life has been going on pretty much as usual. But then I thought about what those usual things are, and realized even though they are "par for the course", they actually stand out as pretty interesting. Here's what's going on:

Gym climbing is picking up as usual as winter sets in with a tighter grip on the MN area. And since my frequency of going is increasing, so are the returns. I sent what was probably the hardest climb I've done in the gym yet the other day, and Alison did the same for herself in one night. Nice. And even though if you know me and have heard that I think grades are stupid, I'll oblige to give you the ratings- 5.11b for my send and 5.10a for Alison's. It's fairly arbitrary, as I've been up 5.11c's, and Alison has done well on 5.10c's, but the routes we accomplished recently were both bigger hurdles. It was a mean 5.11b due to the flexibility and control involved on my end, and Alison came a long way in understanding new movement techniques to send her project. Big progress. Good.

Winter biking has come to a halt recently, due to the need to replace the crankset I've been nursing for awhile. I'm not going to push it any further so as to not harm the actual bottom bracket shell of my frame. Yeah, the play in the crank got intense and I should have replaced it a while ago.

I was out for the first nordic ski of the year not too long ago. Not a lot of snow, but enough to get out on. Further southeastern sections of MN has the best snow in the state, but the Cities isn't doing too bad for being non-mountainous. I hope we get bombed with snow this year; the past couple years have been lackluster.

Running has been going well. Continuing work on the treadmill at the gym every time I'm done climbing. Still rocking the Vibrams. Getting stronger.

We have quite a bit of family holiday visiting coming up. It will be great to see everyone again. The Hovde clan is meeting several times the week of Christmas, and the Jensen's will be arriving in St Paul the week after to party. Mullet's got his dancin' shoes on and is ready for it.

Work is sucking bad. Wish I didn't have to say it but to be cliche, it is what it is. Terrible. If you think of any stories you've heard about airlines on the news in the past year, just try to think of one that has been positive. My bet is that you probably can't. Suckville. Alison is being furloughed Jan 7. My boss "resigned" today. It's walking through a minefield right now. At least we still have our travel benefits. I don't see any flying in either Alison's or my future in the next year or two, but we'll see. If you are young and looking for a career field, the only way I'd suggest being a pilot is if you absolutely love it and are willing for tons of disappointment due to a wickedly unstable industry amidst the satisfaction you get from the actual flying part. You will have issues. But I don't know that many other career fields are exactly thriving in our craptastic economy right now. Just go on a very long bicycle tour/climbing trip and wait for the country to turn around for now. :)

That's the update.

OK, I don't watch daytime TV, but I'm off today (a Tuesday) since I taught ground school over the weekend, and the Ellen Show showed up as I flipped channels eating a late breakfast. Just before I turned the TV off, I was impressed to see she was giving everyone in the audience a Specialized Globe bicycle as a Christmas gift. That's pretty cool. One point for silly talk shows I guess.

It hits every year...at least here.

The North is cold again. Woke up below zero, with wind chills in the region as low as -30. The ambient temperature in Grand Forks, ND last night was -22. Glad I live somewhere a little warmer now (but not much). I don't miss GF in the winter.

We had our first snowstorm of the year here in STP in the last couple days. Not epic by any means, but I got out for a ski afterward, and before there was nothing but rock-hard dirt, so it was a successful snow. I didn't ski long, as I'm having boot-issues (blisters, and the need to return my boots), so I headed to our climbing gym with Alison for some steep fun and a short treadmill run in the Vibrams. I think that's the only place I can really stay interested in running on a treadmill, due to the fact that there is enough good music, live climbing to watch, and high energy in general around. It takes a certain amount of distraction for me to take part in any form of stationary simulation of real fun. Bikes are made to go places, and so are feet, but sometimes inside is the only option due to weather and time (time, really).

This morning, while waiting for Alison to wake up, I'm brainstorming a mixture of winter biking adventures, and places to fly off to to avoid being in the cold 100 percent of the time. MN is offering a lot of good cold weather 2 wheel exploration this time of year, resulting in finding out more of what you're capable of, and at the same time, it's sure nice to thaw out in CA and HI. Alison got a furlough notice at work last week, so we're planning on using some of the transitional time (to who knows what) to travel a bit on the cheap. If work lets you down after all you've put in, you leave and go have fun somewhere. Travel therapy. Work sucks anyway.

Where to??

I am trying to figure out the details of a newly thought up trip this Spring, and would like to propose a question:

If you had a week (maybe a little longer) of time around March-ish this coming Spring and wanted to plan a bicycle tour (probably in the U.S.), where would you go??

Keep in mind that I am ok with some pain and suffering. :) Suggest away!

Thanksgiving ride.

I decided to earn my Thanksgiving dinner this year by biking to it. I wasn't interested in the standard guilt of having over-indulged in food on a day spent on sedentary activities. And since the weather has been incredible for November in MN (payback for a horrible October filled with cold and rain and gloom), biking to dinner seemed like an idea that would be silly to pass up.

Coon Rapids was the destination this year (yes I know my bike ride would have been way more epic if I was traveling home to ND :) ). My route took me down Summit Ave in STP, then pretty much followed the Mississippi River the entire way to the Hovde home. It passed through the U of M area, industrial gross-ness by I-94, then through a few suburban river park areas, finishing by crossing the Coon Rapids Dam and rolling into my in-laws place just in time for a shower, then dinner. Alison met me there with our pickup for the return home. If I had packed my bike light, I would have actually considered riding home at night fall too. Next year I guess. All in all it came out to be just over 25 miles; considerable less than I'd estimated, but still a haul considering I was riding the fat-tired Karate Monkey into a northern headwind the entire time. I really need to invest in a pair of cross tires to make that bike more commute-friendly and efficient. I tend to ride bikes that weigh a million pounds. I guess we'll call it training.

We'll see if I ride to Christmas Dinner too. Don't know where it's gonna be yet.

Leaving STP...

Passing through MPLS...

Wet cold monkey.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I really haven't commuting to work via bicycle like "normal" for a while. I've been tied up with after work climbing, running, late work, or being hurt from running. I also mentioned that my coworkers had been razzing me for riding through the butt of last winter and then taken off a good deal of the nicer part of the year from commuting. So I decided today's forecast in STP was fitting to return to it. It was 38 degrees, windy, and the ride home included a steady soaking rainfall. And it was dark, cuz it's MN in November. Why not right? It's actually quite comfortable in the right clothing, as I've always said. People are just to close minded to try it. I rode in a lightweight longsleeve wool shirt over another lightweight shortsleeve wool shirt, with a Marmot Precip jacket over it all. Not much, but when you're riding you actually get pretty warm. And since nothing (yes nothing) on the market is truly waterproof and breathable, you get condensation inside. So thus the wool that insulates when wet. It didn't get very wet, just a few drops here and there...very comfortable. More people should ride when it sucks out. They think they would be worse off but I think they would be happier for it if they could just shake their preconceived ideas.

Arriving home.....

Dry enough, and plenty warm the whole trip home. I definitely advocate biking in garbage-y weather.

On another note...running has slowed down for the last week. I didn't follow the advice I blogged last entry, and I went to far to soon with the barefoot style running and ended up with a very sore right achilles tendon that got all swollen. It's starting to feel better again, but I'm going to wait a bit longer before easing back into it. I'd rather miss a few days than get hurt. Listen to the barefoot gurus, they advocate starting very very slowly. Guess I better take the hint.

Changing up my running.

Frustrated with the pain and suffering I described a couple posts ago regarding the running I've been doing, I read Born to Run, a book recommended by several friends of mine. Great read; I'm now also recommending it. One of the things the book highlights is a hotly debated topic of whether or not modern running shoes have done anything to actually help runners avoid injury. It suggests that they have instead caused more injuries than prevented them. This is supposedly because our feet are not able to react and function in the way they do naturally when not encased in a "protective" shoe. Instead of landing softly on the forefoot with a short stride when barefoot, the running-shoe-shod foot lands hard on the heel are rotates forward to the forefoot after a long high impact stride. And while the cushioning in a running shoe is designed to absorb some of this impact, it cannot possibly protect our bodies from the force generated by that kind of impact. Think about how much you weigh, then factor in the force of your foot's acceleration and landing, and it is rather silly to think an inch of rubber/cushioning will dissipate it all when landing directly on the heel. That's supposedly why we get injured more often now that running shoes have become so prevalent in the past 30-some years. Running barefoot, or close to it, allows the body to react correctly, and we run like we evolved to do. I won't regurgitate the book to you, but I'd totally recommend it. And don't think it's a boring comparative article either, it's actually a very entertaining true story of the author's seeking out of the Taramuhara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons to learn how they run into old age in sandles over harsh terrain injury free while dining on corn mush. :) In they end they even put on a 50 mile foot race between the Taramuhara and a few very tough American ultra marathon runners- I won't tell you who wins. :)

By reading this book and several other accounts of barefoot-style running, I decided to try a pair of Vibram Fivefingers footwear, which leave you feeling barefoot, but provide protection against cuts and nicks and small stuff you run into while truly barefoot. It takes some time for your muscles to get used to them, as we've spent our whole lives in shoes, but I love them so far. I haven't felt any of the knee and hip pain that was experiencing while running in the expensive running shoes I got fitted for and started out in. The only thing I've dealt with is an expected soreness in certain muscles, such as my calves, as they are worked harder barefoot, but that's just the body getting stronger, not injured. Sweet. If you try them, follow the Vibram link above to several tips in their barefoot running section so as to not go overboard with it at the beggining. As mentioned, your body needs to adjust, and it might not be for everyone. So far I dig it. I'll keep you posted.

Hiking around Makapuu Point in Oahu in my new Vibram Fivefingers KSOs:

Oahu

Flight benefits have been good to the Jensen's for the past couple years. The latest trip happened last weekend: a quick getaway to the Island of Oahu in HI. It was our first time to Hawaii, and I can tell it wont be the last. November is supposedly a cold month in MN, so we thought we'd get out and enjoy some sun. In actuality, it ended up being 60 degrees and folks were climbing outside here, but I'm still glad we went. :) The weekend was spent hiking, eating, chilling on endless beaches, shopping (yeah, I actually did a little of that), and touring the island via a rented car. Two and a half days isn't anywhere enough time to see Oahu, but it was a start. It also got us riled up to see the other islands too. Oahu is pretty populated, so it would be great to put on a pack and hike around the other less inhabited islands sometime. We'll be going back.

Up above the Makapuu Point Light, where the Island of Molokai can be seen across the ocean (but not in this picture):

Somewhere on the North Shore of Oahu:

Near where Jurassic Park was filmed (and parts of Lost):

Waikiki as seen from the top of Diamond Head:

At Waikiki's Central Beach: