Sunday, April 22, 2012

Nice mellow ride

Cool, grey Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis. John and I stopped by the new Hollywood Cycles location then meandered down the river road to Fort Snelling. Despite the less than ideal weather the trails were busy. After being spoiled by a March that had previously unheard of weather conditions, we are now reduced to "Damn, it isn't raining! Outside! Now!"

Monday, April 2, 2012

When given lemons...yada yada yada

While packing up the car to come home on Sunday I noticed that what I thought had been just a low tire that needed filling the day before was completely flat. Being that it was early Sunday evening and my car only has one of those next to worthless short range spares, I was kinda screwed. I let the boss know I was going to be late and started planning on getting the tire fixed in the morning,

Monday morning saw me pumping up my car's tire with a bicycle pump. That was the first time I have had the pleasure of doing that. It wasn't quite as time consuming as I expected. A quick drive to a repair place in Deerwood resulted in me learning that the tire was not repairable AND they didn't have that size in stock. Next stop, Crosby. No luck with a replacement there either. They could not get one until the next day. I decided to head back to the cabin to come up with plan B. The folks at Tire One in Crosby were kind enough to fill my already low tire with air.

Back at the cabin I used the old Googles to find some Tire places in Brainerd. I topped the tire off again and headed out. A hundred bucks later-Great success! By the time I got home it was almost one o'clock. No point in trying to make it back to the cities to go to work for MAYBE an hour.

So what is a poor guy to do with an extra half day off? Oh, twist my arm-head back over to Cuyuna to do some more riding on the best trails in the state. What a drag.

This time I stuck to the dirt-no paved shortcuts between sections. I rode hard enough that by the time I was on the last stretch of trail heading back to the car my legs felt like lead. I went back to the cabin to grab some food and chill out for a bit, then packed up and headed home. The drive seemed longer than the regular two hours-probably because I was wiped out. Oh well-it was worth it.