Mini-rok...

I've been eyeing the many gravel grinders that my area of the country puts on for a while now, but I usually don't get the chance to participate due to working weekends.  However, many of these events post GPS data covering the routes they follow, sharing some of the best gravel in the state (that riders have discovered and shared so far).  Southeast MN's bluff country, and the Arrowhead region are the areas I get the most excited to ride/explore.  The southeast is full of a mixture of lazy rivers flowing between bluffs, and country farm scenes, and the Arrowhead is just plain North-woods goodness, and gets you decidedly out of town.   

In the beginning of October, my friend Jonathan and I took an afternoon to ride a section of the Ragnarok 105.  We picked the southern section that followed along the Zumbro River.  It was a pretty drab, blustery day, but we had a good time.  

The event rides themselves usually see a mixture of bikes, from carbon cross racers, to Fargo/Karate Monkey types, to an occasional rider punishing themselves rolling a fat bike.  I'd sure like to try the light and fast cross version if I get the chance, but for now I roll on my heavy-ish Surly KM.  Jonathan was kind enough to leave his Kona Jake at home and ride his mountain bike to even the field.  

Through the day we rolled through riverside bluffs, open rolling farmland, and small country towns, all the while on gravel "highways", byways, and the best- the occasional minimum maintenance road.  

I can't even remember how many miles we got in, but that's often a sign you're paying more attention to having fun, so that's fine.  I would like to complete a full "dirty" (off pavement) century via one of these routes sometime.  Just need to put in on the calendar I suppose.  They would make a great overnight tour as well.   

Looking back on fall...

I don't usually post pictures involving my career of flying (too many of my coworkers are already geeking out in that arena :)  ), but I do have to post a few shots of a private flight I was able to take with my wife and her parents this past fall.  We flew a fall colors tour up the North Shore of Lake Superior here in MN in one of the aircraft from my father in law's flying club, Flywell.  

It was an opportunity to see most of our favorite North Shore sites from a different perspective, and at what I thought to be as maybe a few short days past peak colors (the next day heavy winds would come up and take down most leaves).  Unfortunately, some sites where covered in lake effect fog, so we missed a couple places such as the Split Rock area, and Palisade Head/Tettegouche, but the sites further up the shore opened up.  Things are a bit flatter looking from altitude, but still pretty.  Below are a few shots of some of the areas we spend time in while playing on the ground...

Temperance River/Carleton Peak Area...

Moose Mountain/Lutsen Area...

Grand Marais...

Devils Track River Gorge...

Bean and Bear Lake...

Flywell's Archer, taken at Sky Harbor Airport, Duluth...

Not seeing the SW sites just made us decide that we're going to do the trip again next year!  

Headwaters Recap...

Well, so, I boogered up the live tracking attempt if you were watching this year.  I figured out what the problem was, and it turns out I was just using the wrong resource from SPOT.  SPOT Adventures is a place to archive and display previously recorded tracks/messages/etc. from a SPOT.  What I should have done is make a live page from a different portion of my account website and then I could have shared live tracking with everyone via Googlemaps.  Next time I'll get it right and you can follow the ride.  But hopefully you weren't inside trying to watch a little icon of me riding and were instead out living it up in the outdoors anyhow.  It's fall, which of course is my favorite season in the North.
The Headwaters started like it usually does- sleep deprived and cold.  I don't mind the cold, but as I get older the sleep deprivation seems to get more difficult.  It started this time with a minimum rest international overnight at my job, followed by a full day of flying, then we left St Paul for Park Rapids at about 9pm, arriving at 1am.  We got to bed just before 2, and were up at 6 to head to the ride.  Rolling by 7:30am, it was a good early start for a century, as opposed to my normal lazy 8-9am shows which always cause me to linger at the back of the pack and finish late.  But it was a tiring way to begin.
Things went surprisingly well, however.  We actually got into a tempo group that fit our fitness pretty well, and enjoyed paceline efficiency for the first 33 miles.  And it wasn't the standard scarey century ride paceline where you find guys that think they know how to ride close and coordinated but then hit their brakes randomly and all crash wondering what happened, it was a pretty smooth group for the most part.  Never felt overly nervous with these guys.  We actually dropped a couple of them twice before regrouping, which I'm not used to.   But my ego didn't enjoy getting inflated- by the end of the ride I was getting smoked by the usual century going retired guys on feather weight carbon who don't do anything but ride all the time.  :)  Guess I'm the working schlub now who should be raising kids.
The weather overall wasn't that terrible for the North- it started overcast and in the upper 30's/low 40's, and brightened up as the day went on, with winds NNW gusting to the mid twenties.  Pretty regular fall stuff.  The cold headwinds slowed us a bit in some sections, but we hammered out the worst of it during the paceline cooperation.
I was very very pleased with one thing in particular with this edition of the Headwaters (I've ridden it 6 or 7 times now, I'm loosing track.)  All the centuries I've ever done in the past have had the standard high and low moments.  Times when you feel strong, and times you just grit through cause you know it'll turn around soon.  Times you'd define as "bonking".  I never felt close to bonking on this one.  I had a couple times where my energy level felt a bit low, but I never felt truly out of gas, and didn't have to push through anything uncomfortable.  And I'm pretty sure I know why.  Centuries are notorious for pretty low quality rest stop foods.  Cookies, corn-syrupy artificial drinks, candy, chips, hydrogenated peanut butter and so on.  Uh oh, I'm winding up for a food talk.  :)  I tried different food tactics this year.  I tried to get more green plant nourishment in me, and more fiber along with the sugars I was taking in to stretch out the time the sugar was absorbed/used.  The food stops usually have some fruit, so I ate as much of that as I felt, and I brought with some green plant supplements (called Amazing Meal if you care) to mix in with my drinks.  Now this drink stuff isn't whole foods, but it did a much nicer job of stabilizing my energy levels than Gatorade has ever done.  The energy bars I brought with were made of all plant foods, as whole as possible for this type of serving style save for a couple, concentrating on figs or dates, nuts, and other dried fruits.  I also had a couple saltier bars with lots of nuts to eat with the rest stop bananas for electrolytes.  So while it's pretty hard to bring the produce aisle with you on a century, I think I made a much better fueling routine on this ride than others in the past.  I felt much better despite being what I still consider to be less in shape than pre-surguries.  And it's not to say I didn't eat any of the rest stop cookies, there were a couple slipped in there, but I think focusing more on the better foods helped a lot.  I recently read Scott Jurek's book, Eat and Run, and it has strengthened my goals of eating smart (and plant based) in distance events. 
On to pictures- I wasn't taking many as we were enjoying the ride too much and wanting to keep our forward movement, but between my friend Jonathan and myself we manged to get a couple shots worth posting.  The fall colors are looking great up there right now- I suggest you all get out and enjoy them before they pass.  My schedule at work is getting obnoxious so I hope I can get out for some more, but if not I'm thankful for getting this years Headwaters ridden, and I'm stoked I finally rode a full 100 after all my surgery nonsense.   Should've happened earlier.  Enjoy the fall!

Headwaters 100 Live Tracking...

Well, I finally broke down and bought a SPOT tracker.  I've been meaning to pick one up for quite some time, seeing as I'm always dragging my poor wife out into the woods where are phones are useless, and if we ever needed to call for help we'd be stuck.  So I bought one.  And it's not just for emergencies, it can be used for regular check in messages, and live tracking.  I'm going to give it a test run day by using the live tracking feature during this saturdays Headwaters 100 up in Park Rapids, MN.  I set up a SPOT Adventures page here for anyone who cares to watch my progress.  It'll be my first full century since my chest surgeries assuming I finish.  I've had to scratch at the past couple distance events I've tried during my long healing process.  I think this one should go well though.  Follow along if you feel like it, and better yet- come ride!

Rainy fatbike afternoon..

The weather in STP has been a roller-coaster this week.  September usually brings fall and an end to the summer heat, which I look forward to being a Northerner.  Well, last year's hot winter lead to this year's  hot summer, and tuesday was in the 90's with 40mph wind gusts.  Gross.  I did get out anyway that day on my Long Haul Trucker for a jaunt around town, and it was simply biking for the sake of biking- not particularly enjoyable however.  So when it finally cooled of yesterday and started raining, I at last felt some fall in the air and brought the fatbike down off it's garage hangers to get out into the Minnesota River Bottoms.  I had no real plans for mileage or goals of any kind other than enjoying the kind of riding the big tires bring.  Floating over miles of sandy trail, beach, flood plain, and muck is a good time if you ask me (and an ever growing number of cyclists in MN).  

I started out at the Sibley House historical site in Mendota Heights, which is a popular meeting place for river rambles.  The trail started out downright clean for rainy fall weather, and as the day went on and the sections of trail thinned, I got the broad range of conditions the area can throw at you.  Anywhere from stuff that could be handled on a cyclocross bike, to muck and sand that only the fat machine likes.  

Large bird that stayed put just until I took this picture- so it's the white blur taking off.  :)

Getting thinner and weedier...

OK, getting sticky and heavy...(still fine with a fatbike however)

Where is the trail?  Wait, who cares.  

I'm pretty excited for the upcoming fall and winter seasons, as I think the fatbiking scene is pretty stacked this year.  More and more people are starting to ride big tires, and more events are showing up all the time.  Plus, maybe it will actually snow and get cold this year.  :)  We'll see.  But I think there will be more people to adventure with either way, and I'm planning some good stuff.  Hopefully ideas meet reality.

Route here.

Finally getting into the BWCAW...

Kiwishiwi Lake at sunset...

Once and a while you get lucky with your schedule at work.  Usually I don't, as I'm a bottom of the seniority list regional airline pilot, and it's pretty hard to get what I bid for, (I know- complain, complain after taking tons of trips, sorry- I should shut up), but this month ended up pretty sweet due to a mistake in our bidding process.  Long story short, I got to name my days off this month, and it just so happened that Alison had a stretch of days off between flying trips herself, so we got 6 days off together.  Nice.  Seeing as we just bought our first canoe this year, it was time to get out into the BWCAW in Northern MN.  

We couldn't be picky about where we entered, as most people reserve their entry permits sooner than a couple days before.  :)  Oh well.  We ended up entering at Kawishiwi Lake.  Most people were avoiding this area as it was on the far eastern tip of the big P.G. Fire from last year, so there is a stretch of burn zone you end up paddling through early on.  We thought it would be neat to see though, and it was.  A sea of blackened dead trees, surrounded by new growth and lots of wildflowers.  The portages were pretty.  Didn't get any portage pictures though; sorry, I guess I was carrying a boat.  :)

Portage point at the north end of Kawasachong Lake...

Paddling the burn...

If you care to see on a map where we were- we paddled from Kawishiwi Lake, to Square Lake, to Kawawschong Lake, then portaged through Townline Lake to Lake Polly, where we spent a couple days/nights.  The first night we were tired from the day's journey, and got the last campsite on the Lake.  Being that most of the route was burn area, it funnels everyone into Polly or further and camping gets tight.  It was funny being out in a wilderness area and having it feel just like the populated Superior Hiking Trail.  Whether we're bike touring, backpacking, or canoeing, it seems like we're always fighting to find a place to sleep.  There sure are a lot of people in the world.

First Polly campsite in the morning...

The second morning at Polly, we snagged what I think is the choicest campsite- a small island right in the middle of the lake.  We thought it would be a great spot to chill out for a day, so we did.  We swam, napped in our hammock, cooked, fished, and then did more of the same.  Good to relax in the woods once and a while.  

We also got out for some good twilight floats close to camp during the evenings.  Loons calling all over, and fish jumping and the smell of campfires...

Paddling back between Kawaschong and Square...

Beaver dams call for a bit of quick grunt work...

The last night we relaxed some more on Kawishiwi before exiting in the next morning.  Chopped wood, burnt wood, ate food, looked at stars...

I did quite a bit of fishing during the trip (yeah, I started dabbling in this MN pass-time while out in our boat this year), and I watched pretty much every other party we met catch a ton of various fish, with not much luck myself.  I'm much more of a REI type than a Gander Mtn. type, but I did catch, fillet, and eat one small northern pike while out there.  Alison and I have become close to vegetarian at most times, but this is one tasty bit of animal food I enjoy occasionally.   I brought out some seasoning in hopes that I'd find a fish worth cooking up, and it was pretty tasty.  Plus, I think you have to do this to earn you Northern MN badge, so to speak.  

We had a great time floating the water paths of the BWCAW this first time, and will definitely go back when we have the chance between balancing work and so many other types of outdoor obsessions.  I found it to be very much like bike touring and backpacking, being that you are self sufficient, traveling/exploring places you've never seen, and don't have to return home for at least a few nights.  These tend to be my favorite times outside.  It takes some time to unwind and a few nights "on the trail" does the trick.    

A little dose of gravel...

This post is a bit after-the-fact, but thought I'd put it up anyhow.  Sometime last month I took a day trip down to the Nerstand Bigwoods State Park area in southeastern MN to ride some gravel.  While I don't have a bike that is super efficient at throwing down big gravel routes quickly, both of my Surly's do just fine at traveling rough roads at a non-racers pace, which suites me well.  On this ride I chose the Karate Monkey with Kenda small block 8's.  Plenty of meat to roll very comfortably, and I wasn't worried about setting any speed records.

I didn't really have a route plan, and just wandered wherever the gravel went.  I like to explore with not much of an agenda.  I had heard talk of the small stretch of "Farmer Trail", and rode that.  It was nice, but short does describe it.  My favorite roads go on and on.  I'd like to put together a gravel tour somewhere where one can travel a good distance on the stuff and get out into seriously rural places.  I think the Dakotas are good land for this.  I just flew over the Badlands National Park area in SD a couple days ago, and saw so many options for "out-there" riding.  MN and WI do have their share of good local gravel though, and it's awesome to have it accessible from my home if I just get out of the Cities.  

A bit of grating getting done...

Superior Hiking Trail Overnight...

This past week Alison and I decided to dust off our backpacking backpacking gear and head up to the Superior Hiking Trail, as we hadn't done a trip on it since June of last year.  It was a grab your stuff and run out the door type trip, as we'd both just gotten off work and didn't have a lot of time to think about getting ready, but we made it happen.  We were up there for only a day and a half, but a quick trip is better than no trip, and it was nice to get out on the trail again.
We hiked an out and back from Gooseberry Falls State Park to the Split Rock River.  The weather was sweaty, and I have to say I'm in better biking shape than backpacking.  I am used to my Long Haul Trucker bearing the weight of all my gear, and not my own frame.  It was probably good for me to get out and huff and puff a bit. I should backpack more for strengths sake, but I have too many hobbies, and cycling really does take precedence in most situations.  I do enjoy a good trip out on the trail though, and had fun.
There were a few groups at the various sites along the Split Rock River, but we did find an open tent pad, and enjoyed a soaking in the water, a good dinner of Mexican food, and some needed sleep.
An early rise and hike back to the car in the morning brought us back to the Cities quick, and thinking of a return up North soon.  Glad to have had the chance to get out...