Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

Both kids will be at camps next week so Owen and I have a whole week to ourselves. Instead of going on a relaxing vacation, however, we are going to load up our bikes and go on a bikepacking trip! We don't have a tent, sleeping bags or equipment to make food along the way so we are going to stay at hotels along our route. This sort of bike touring is commonly called "credit card travel" - as in you use your credit card to pay for accommodation and food along the way. That said, we will be packing clothes and other things so will get a taste for what it's like to carry things on our bikes. Our plan is to drop Ryan off at camp on Sunday in Shell Lake, Wisconsin. We'll leave our van at his camp and bike northwest to Siren where we'll pick up the Gandy Dancer bike trail that goes north along the Minnesota/Wisconsin border. We'll bike that to Superior then take another bike trail from Superior back down to Shell Lake. I figure we'll bike about 200 miles...

This post was also published on my Writing Space blog as X-Ray Follow up . I figured I should write a quick post to follow up on my  X is for X-Ray post  to let you all know what’s going on with my heel pain. I went to the podiatrist and have the official diagnosis of Plantar Fasciitis and Peroneal Tendon Injury in my left foot. The bone spur I have in my left heel has likely been growing for several years but probably isn’t contributing much to my heel pain. That said, I’ve been stretching that foot a lot and may have been irritating the tissue around the spur which would contribute to the pain. It’s likely that the root of the pain came from clipping in and out of my bike pedals so I have loosened the tension on my pedals a lot so that clipping in/out is much easier to do. Other than that, I’ve had a tendency to carry my left shoulder higher than my right. I’m not doing that so much now but that might have also caused me to be off balance and put undue pressu...

This post was published in a slightly different format on my Writing Space blog as X is for X-Ray . The information in X is for X-Ray pertains to my bicycling life so I am posting it here at Idyllwild as well.  Yeah, I know that writing about X-Rays for day “X” of an A to Z Blogging challenge is predictable because “x-ray” is the first thing people think of when they think of a word starting with X. Thing is, I really do have a reason to write about x-rays because I had two of them taken today. So, even though I was hoping to come up with something really swell for my “X” day it makes more sense for me to write about what is on my mind – and today that’s x-rays of my left heel. Here’s the deal – I’ve been struggling with ankle and heel pain on and off for, well, about a year now. I haven’t been too worried about it because the pain hasn’t been consistent or that bad. It started out with some muscle discomfort in my left ankle and I found that ankle to ...

This blog entry also appears on my Writing Space blog as R is for Riotgrrravel Reflections . Two weeks ago, on June 20th, I rode  Riotgrrravel , a gravel race/ride for women and am happy to say that I completed the 30 mile ride. Riotgrrravel is very well organized ride meant to introduce women to gravel racing. The ride is organized and put on by an awesome woman named Ellie and her family. Ellie started the ride just last year (I rode Riotgrrravel last year and  wrote about my experience on my Idyllwild blog ) and I’m so glad she did it again this year. Here we are at race start just about ready to go! From left to right: Lisa, Joy, Me & Katy.  Last year the weather was stellar but the route had to be changed practically moments before race start because of flooding in the days previous to the race. This year the roads weren’t flooded but the morning of the race thunderstorms moved in. We woke up that morning thinking the r...