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...

This time last year I was gearing up for my first ever century ride . I was feeling pretty fit and had done a ton of biking throughout the season including the super awesome and challenging Box of Frogs ride and a bikepacking adventure . This year I got off to a great start with some winter riding and another round of 30 Days of Biking in April. I was working on a milage challenge and had several organized rides on my calendar. Then my Dad, who had already been dealing with issues from Parkinson's and Lewy Body Dementia, took a bad turn and life changed in more ways than I could have ever imagined. Even before Dad passed away in early July, I realized that bike riding would not be a priority and that I needed to focus on my family instead. So, save for a few rides and a three session mountain biking class in late July/early August, I really didn't ride bike all summer long. Well, life is setting down somewhat and I'm happy to say I've managed to get out on my bike ...

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 ...

I'm on a writing retreat at the Anderson Center in Red Wing and took a break from my writing yesterday and this morning to get out and ride the Cannon Valley Trail . The CVT parallels the Anderson Center's property and to get to the trail I only need to bike a few blocks down a hill. I simply can't resist  riding the trail when I'm here! The CVT is my favorite bike trail and although I've ridden it many, many times, I never get tired of riding the trail or the beauty that surrounds it. With the leaves gone from the trees, I expected the scenery along the trail would be somewhat bland. But I was wrong. I spent most of my rides simply taking in the beauty along the trail. The sun shining through the bare trees. The green moss on rocks and fallen logs. The brown leaves covering the hillsides and carpeting the woodsy floor. On my ride to the Welch trailhead this morning, I noticed a newly constructed Marshall Memorial Rest Area alongside the trail. On my way ...

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...

It's been a goal of mine for quite some time to actually have an "adventure coffee" bike ride. Many of my bicycling friends post pictures on Instagram with the hash tags of #coffeeoutside and #adventurecoffee and it always looked like a fun thing to do but I didn't even have a suitable pot in which to boil water let alone know the first thing about what sort of equipment I might need. So, I talked to some of my bicycling friends, most notably Michael L. and Christopher T., to ask them what I needed to get set up to make coffee outside and come up with some suitable gravel bike routes to ideal coffee break locations. I discovered that the little Esbit pocket stove my son Ryan has would work well enough for a stove. I still needed a pot and a coffee making system of some sort so I went to Milltown Cycles last week and talked to Curtis about getting set up to make coffee outside. Curtis was very helpful and I ended up purchasing a nice little GSI Outdoors Pinnacle ...

Tomorrow Owen and I take off on our bike packing adventure. We are mostly packed but will finish up in the morning. We have some time as we are not due to drop our son off at camp until 1:30 p.m. at the earliest. It's likely we'll leave our home for Shell Lake, Wisconsin around 10 a.m. and be biking by mid-afternoon. At present, our plan is to bike 30 miles to Siren on Sunday afternoon and overnight there. We talked about biking to Danbury, another 10 miles further north, but I could not find a non-smoking hotel room open (at a reasonable price) at the local casino hotels. It's not that we are really picky about non-smoking vs. smoking rooms but that combined with the fact that we have just a few hours to get anywhere on Sunday made us decide we'd bike a shorter distance on our first day. Seems less stressful. On Monday we plan to bike about 70 miles all the way to Superior. We'd make it a shorter day except that hotels appear to be scarce along the Gandy Dancer...

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 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 ...

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...