Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

My family recently returned home from a huge vacation to Saratoga Springs, NY with a quick visit to New York City adding in. Our plan was to fly our little Pacer to Saratoga Springs for our 11th Short Wing Piper Club convention. I wrote about the start of our trip in a recent post, The Airplane Notebook . In that post I mentioned we had taken off for NY in our Pacer but were waiting out the weather in Rushford, MN. Guess what? The weather never got better so we flew the Pacer back home and decided to drive to New York. It took us 22 hours to drive to Saratoga Springs - that's a whole lot of driving! After the convention we drove to Yonkers, NY where we left our car with Short Wing friends, Andy and Gloria, then took the train to NYC. We spent a day and a half in NYC then it was train back to car and car back to home. We drove the return trip without stopping to sleep at a hotel. I don't think we'll do that again though, I will admit, it was nice to get back home earlier...

Yesterday I went on a one day road trip to Hackensack, MN, with my daughter, Rose, my mom, Char, and my son, Ryan.  Why so much driving in one day? Because we dropped off Rose at Lago del Bosco - Concordia Language Villages Italian Language Camp - where she will spend two weeks immersed in Italian language and cultural activities. Rose attended Italian camp for one week last summer and had a great experience. Last year was Rose's first ever summer camp experience - and I was a bit worried about her. I wrote about my worries and Rose's experience in my blog last year (Concordia Language Villages even posted the blog on the Lago del Bosco Village Pages !) You can read that blog if you click  HERE : This year, dropping Rose off at camp was a much less worrisome experience because she had such a great time last year and we knew what to expect. Things that were overwhelming last year were much easier to deal with. We knew where to park and unload Rose's gear. We u...

With our trip to the Short Wing Piper Club convention in Saratoga Springs, New York right on the horizon, I realized it was past time for me to write down hotel reservation information and the like. I set off in search of a nice little notebook to write things in and discovered what I call The Airplane Notebook. It's a smallish, spiral bound, blue notebook with lined pages. The cover has a cut out with a little silver airplane in the window. I picked it up in about 2005 to use as a travel journal for our SWPC trip to Vancouver, Washington. I haven't taken The Airplane Notebook on every trip to the SWPC Convention but it has gone with us to most of them. It's also traveled with us on other trips, too, like a flying trip to Custer, South Dakota one October, as well as a trip I took via commercial airline back to Washington State to write about Stewart Systems, a environmentally friendly airplane paint system. The Airplane Notebook turned out to be more of a place to jo...

We're gearing up to go on our annual vacation to the Short Wing Piper Club convention. There's always a lot to do before heading out of town and this year we're feeling a little more behind than usual.    The Pacer's annual just got signed off tonight. Owen and I both have to get current in the plane before we head out on our big trip with the family to Saratoga Springs, NY. We have to pack, of course. We have to deliver Rocket the dog to the kennel, George Lucas the Guinea Pig to my parents' house and Zelda the Leopard Gecko to the reptile sitter. Owen's been busy with work and I have been, too. So we're all kind of running around doing our best to get ready to go and feeling more than a bit frazzled. Well, that's all the more reason to look for some Vacation State of Mind moments in our days! I snapped this shot of Ryan a couple of days ago because I realized that I was in a perfect Vacation State right at home. Here are the perfect little ...

I went out and bought a gravel bike a week and a half ago - a really cool Salsa Vaya 2 - and now I have it in my head that I can do a 50 or even a 100 mile gravel race/ride. Seems reasonable, I tell myself. All I have to do is get out and ride gravel, tackle lots and lots of gravel hills and build up my endurance and milage bit by bit. Zippy So today I planned to go on a gravel ride of some length, maybe 10 miles. Turned out that lawn mowing,  helping my 11 year old son drive the lawn tractor, gardening, and sending my almost 14 year old daughter off on a week-long youth mission trip filled up most of my day. By 8:30 I realized it was a short ride or no ride so I decided to go. I didn't even change out of my gardening clothes. I just put on my helmet, gloves and bicycling shoes, grabbed a water bottle and headed out on Zippy (that's my Vaya's name) for a short spin. I thought I would just go down the flattish gravel by my house and call it a day but I decided I w...

Here I am riding Bear following Ben in the RBNC. Photo ©Marty Larson Last night I went on a super fun bike ride. I think it's safe to say it was my best bike ride ever. And by best bike ride I don't mean that I went a ton of miles, set a speed record or did anything that would be considered extraordinary among "good" bicyclists. By best I mean I laughed and smiled more than any other bike ride I've been on. By best I mean funnest. And I know funnest is not a real word but I don't really care because "funnest bike ride ever" seems to be the best way to sum up my ride last night. What did I do on this funnest bike ride ever? Well Owen and I loaded up our fat bikes (Owen's Mukluk  2 and my Beargrease named Bear) and drove on down to Milltown Cycles in Faribault and joined in on a Tuesday Night Ride. Milltown has these rides on most Tuesdays. Sometimes they ride gravel. Sometimes roads. Sometimes they ride mountain and fat bikes in River Bend...

Way back in January I set a biking milage goal for the year - 1,407 miles. Why the odd number? Well, my friend from high school, Kate, wanted to keep bicycling this year so decided to set a goal for herself to bike enough miles to equal riding from her current home town of Poulsbo, Washington to our childhood home town of Richfield, Minnesota. I saw her post her goal on Facebook and made a comment. Kate encouraged me to do the same challenge - except I would "bike" from Richfield to Poulsbo so we could virtually meet somewhere about half way. Well the year has gotten off to a slow start for me. I rode my fat bike through the winter but fat bike miles are slow to add up, especially fat bike miles on the icy snow! I got in a good number of miles during April for 30 Days of Biking . And then it snowed. And rained. And rained. And rained. And I really didn't get out on my bike much. So here I am almost to mid-June with only 241 miles logged and am virtually just over th...