Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

Meet my new bike! "Kermit" is an Advocate Lorax that found his way to my house in late February. Why the new bike? Well, my Vaya, Zippy, has been a good bike for me yet I was still tweaking some fit issues and with it's extra small frame I was running out of options for adding height to my handlebars etc. Also, due to the 26" tires,  I discovered my options were limited for getting better tires for riding gravel. So, even though I loved little Zippy and he served me well, I started considering a new bike. I talked to my favorite bike guru from Angry Catfish Bicycles , James, about what to get and quickly decided a new Vaya one size bigger than Zippy would do the trick. Sadly, my size was sold out at Angry Catfish and at Salsa Cycles. So James and I talked options. And I rode a couple of bikes and they were okay. Then I rode a demo model of the Advocate Lorax and knew within, oh, the first 20 feet of my ride that the Lorax was the bike for me. It's hard to s...

We've had amazingly warm temperatures here in Minnesota as of late. It was 60 some degrees last weekend so I simply had to get out and ride some gravel on my Vaya on Sunday. Owen joined me on his Mukluk. We didn't go far (about 5.5 miles) and we didn't go fast (about 8.5 mph) but we went and that's what matters. Riding on a sunny Sunday I've been thinking about my bike goals for 2017. I have decided that I'd like to bike 50 miles on my 50th Birthday but I guess I haven't 100% committed to that goal as of yet. I need to decide soon as March 25th is just over a month away! Other than that, I have plans to join two friends from high school and Owen and ride from north of Minneapolis to Canada in three days with an average of 85 miles a day. We've got that on the schedule for late July. The road ahead Not sure what other bicycling goals I will set for 2017. Whatever they are, I will be logging my milage on a cool little chart I made i...

It's been ages since I've blogged about bicycling or anything else. That's mostly due to the fact that I haven't been riding my bikes much and also because my father was very sick and then passed away in early July. That said, I didn't quit blogging entirely in this time. My husband, Owen, took off in early June to ride the Tour Divide from Canada to Mexico and while he was away I posted blog entries for him at his blog Owens Epic Rides. Some of blog posts were Owen's words alone but much of the time I added content of my own as well. To start reading about Owen's Tour Divide ride, click on Arrived in Banff and start reading! Move forward through the posts by clicking on "Next -->" in the upper right hand corner of each blog post. If you are a bikepacking enthusiast, you will likely want to read the post detailing Owen's gear list. Read it at Packing for the Tour Divide . For a sneak peek at the riding conditions on the Tour Divi...

Inspired by  Pedal Hub's recent podcast , "The roundtable reunites!" in which Patrick, Amber and Gene discuss their top 5 bike moments of 2015, I decided to reflect back on 2015 and write about my five best bike moments of the year. Here are mine, in chronological order: My Vaya - post ride and still full of mud Box of Frogs  was a 60 mile bike ride adventure on gravel, tar and through the mud that I did back on June 7th. I set out to do the ride on my own but was lucky enough to ride along with my friends Kate and Victoria. Finishing that ride taught me that I can do things that seem impossible - like trek through flooded bike trails and ride all day long. The ride was long, hot, muddy, windy, rainy and wonderful! Click  HERE for my blog write up on the Box of Frogs  Adventure At the beginning of the Gandy Dancer Trail My Bikepacking Adventure  happened in early August and involved four days of biking in Wisconsin, most of it on the Gandy ...

On Saturday, I completed a goal I've had for quite some time - I completed a century ride on my Salsa Vaya! 100 miles - Done! I'm proud of what I did - I'm getting kinda teary-eyed thinking about that moment when I realized I rode my bike for 100 miles! You see, a century ride is something that I never though I could do when I started bicycling six years ago. It's not something I thought I could do earlier this summer, even. But rides like the Box of Frogs , Riotgrravel and my bike packing trip have made me feel stronger both physically and mentally. As the summer progressed, my century ride thinking morphed from " Hey, I think I can do a century " to " When I do a century I'll ride my Vaya " (it's my most comfortable bike) to " I'm going to do a century this fall ." I rode my bike to train but I think the most important thing I did to get ready for this century ride is this - I told myself I could do it and started to...

It's raining this afternoon so my mind is going back to last week when the weather was perfect and I went on a perfect bike ride adventure. Last Wednesday, my friend Katy and I headed out for a bike ride from Northfield to Caron Park. Caron Park is a county park located about 8 miles south of Northfield. The route to Caron started out with a killer hill (called Question Mark Hill by the locals) and there are a lot of other hilly portions on the route as well. We managed to ride them all, though, and found our way to Caron Park. Crushing gravel on the way to Caron Park Zippy, my Salsa Vaya leaning on the Caron park sign One of our plans for the ride was to have an adventure coffee like we did on our Coffee Outside Ride . I was out of fuel for my little Esbit pocket stove so Katy packed a one burner camping stove in a backpack so we could have coffee outside. First, though, we had to find an ideal location. Katy knew of a waterfall in the park so we set off on some s...

About a month ago when Owen and I were on our bike packing trip , I decided I'd like to do a century ride. I've long wanted to do a century ride but have been somewhat intimidated by, well, riding 100 miles all at once. On top of that, a lot of the organized century rides are pretty challenging. But Owen came up with a century ride idea that sounded good to me so I'm going to give it a go! Owen came up with a hundred mile route that is all on bike trails, most of them crushed limestone. I'll ride my comfortable Salsa Vaya and Owen will ride his Salsa Mukluk. Owen has done a half a dozen century rides before (he completed one yesterday as part of his ten ride personal road biking challenge ) but he's never ridden a century on a fat bike. So we'll both be doing something new - I'll do my first century and Owen will do his first fat bike century. The route will be fairly easy to ride and I plan to stop a lot along the way to rest and drink coffee (I do that...

Today I am thankful for gravel girlfriends and meandering bike rides. I met up with Katy and Joy this morning at about 9:00 for a gravel ride. Katy had not had coffee because her husband, who was camping with their two kids, had the French press. So our ride started with a short hop to downtown Northfield where we enjoyed a cup of coffee at Goodbye Blue Monday.  After coffee, we headed out on a Strava bike route that we had ridden before. Even though we had a set route, we were liberal with how we followed it and made a detour within the first few miles to take a picture of our bikes on Waterford Bridge. Waterford Bridge It's important to take pictures of your bike leaning up against things. It really is. Then we rode on and meandered around the country on a perfect Sunday morning. We rode with speed at times and at a slower pace at other times. We took pictures, especially of Joy and her new bike - Pixie Duster. Joy on her new bike, a Twin Six named "Pixie...

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...

Back in April, I signed up for the 60 mile Box of Frogs bike ride (there was also a 100 mile route). I knew the ride would be a huge challenge as I have only been on one 60 mile ride ever before (and that was back in 2012) and the longest ride I've done so far this year was 35 miles (actually made up of two rides with an hour break after 20 miles). Uh, now that I look at those stats I realize that it was a bit more than crazy for me to sign up for the Box of Frogs . What was I thinking? Well, I guess I wasn't really thinking. I just saw the bike ride on Facebook and was intrigued by the fact that the ride was multi-surface (tar, paved bike trails, river bottoms trails, gravel and dirt) and was set up so that the riders all end at about the same time. I like that end at the same time idea and I just felt like I had to sign up for the ride. 60 miles seemed reasonable to me at that moment in time. "I can do this!" I thought. So, without thinking much about wheth...

I envy my friends who live in town who can hop on their bikes and quickly pedal to the grocery store for, say, a red bell pepper needed in order to finish dinner or ride to the library to return books. I also envy my friends who commute to work via bike paths in the cities or by road in Northfield. It seems so ideal, replacing a car trip with a bike trip and it has long been my goal to ride my bike instead of driving my van on a trip to town. The thing is, I live 7 miles from the nearest town and about 14 miles from Northfield, the town in which I work and run most of my errands. A ride to Northfield would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes. A lot of the route is on busy roads and I don't like riding them alone and don't have panniers to haul stuff and wasn't comfortable riding on gravel and....well,  I haven't managed to complete my go somewhere goal. Until today, that is. Today I rode my bike home from work. True, I have to go back to town now to pick...

I got out on my gravel bike for a bit of gravel riding this morning. The ride, though short, was lovely. I saw three pheasants, a bunny on the run (I scared it), a dog and heard a bunch of birds singing. The gravel was wet but solid and fairly easy to ride. I'm doing 30 Days of Biking once again (for the 6th time with a couple of bonus rounds thrown in) so getting on my bike this morning was motivated by knowing that I needed to get my ride in for the day. I usually end up riding later on in the day, sometimes I even ride in after dark, so it felt especially good to check "ride bike" of my list of things to do early in the day. My rides for 30 Days of Biking thus far have been short ones - I let myself get all soft, squishy and out of shape over the winter and have been dealing with some medical limitations so I'm taking things slow. That said, I'll be stepping things up as the month goes on and really picking up the pace come May. You see, I've signed...