I am still squeaking by with Friday's off and with no races on my schedule for this weekend every single minute of the three days off were used to its fullest capacity.

Friday morning Kriston and I took off for Jamestown for the first cross country meet of the season.  Matt was not eligible to compete due to not having enough practices under his belt.  You need 9 to compete and he had only 5 on account of our Colorado trip.  Ben however was good to go and was 1 of 5 kids from FN that ran the 4k JV race.  I could tell Ben was a bit nervous, but he went out of the starting line like he knew what he was doing and raced a strong race.  Ben was the 2nd guy in for FN with a time of 17:28 - way to go Ben!  Next meet is this coming Thursday in North Moorhead, I will post photos for sure.

Saturday we were invited down to Al Kraft's lake place on Little Cormorant.  Al and Robyn are great hosts and we could not pass it up.  Ben was at the lake with friends and Matt was working so the window was wide open.

The weather was perfect, really!  Sunny skies, warm and light wind.  Kriston enjoyed the sun for sure.

I will never pass up the opportunity to drive something.

Aldo Kraft.

Al and Tom Clow solving the worlds problems on the dock.

It was a good day with friends.  It was nice to roll out of town with no bikes or running shoes in tow.  Relax time was the only priority.

Sunday morning was a different story.  Kriston's family from Pelican Rapids were having a family reunion at Maplewood State Park.  Ben was still at the lake with friends.  Matt and I were planning on a long gravel road bike ride, but decided to ride to Maplewood instead and have Kriston drive us home.

I checked the weather last night and knew it was going to be hot with the wind blasting from the SE, but I did not have a problem with it.  I figured we would be in lake country before the wind really picked up.  I was wrong.  From the minute Matt and I left the driveway we were pushing the wind.  There were a couple of times that I looked over at Matt and said are we dumb asses for doing this?  Matt did not complain even once.

We made it to Sabin over an hour later.  Sabin is only 14 miles from home so our hourly mph average was SLOW.  In addition, the Google map that I printed off for our route included gravel roads that were not going to work in the wind.  I need to find the button on Google Maps that switches the names of roads from streets and avenues to highway and county road names.  Luckily Matt had is phone that was giving proper information.

Anyway, Matt and I were stubborn enough to keep on pushing the wind.  We told ourselves that there are no major hills in our area so the wind was our hill.  Overall, we managed only a 12 mph average.  5 hours to ride 60 miles.  Needless to say, the reunion was almost over when we arrived all sweaty and stinky.  Kriston took it all in stride as usual and took care of us when we arrived, thanks KGW!

The boys start school on Wednesday, the summer is closing fast.