Fall

Very busy the last couple of weeks.

One of the main reasons and long story short, my office switched operating software August 1st.  The last two months were rather stressful with the new software. In reality it was not working.  So, last weekend we switched back to our original software which resulted in working through the whole weekend.  Nice - two weeks in a row without a day off.  Last week things were a lot smoother and it is getting better every day.

Enough about work.

The following photos and comments are random stuff that I have seen or taken place the last couple of weeks.

Craig Lemieux and I went down town last week.  They had blocked off 4th Ave, set up a sound system and projected the movie "Fargo" on the outside of the Radisson Hotel.  At least 7 stories up and 3 stories tall.  I was seriously impressed.  Great movie and I hope they show another soon.

Mark Johnson, friend of mine that I work out with at the Y and ride bike with all summer doing a tough exercise routine around the walking track.  Mark is 53 years old and looks like he's in his 30's.  Goes to show that hard/consistent work pays off.

Nicely equipped old school Klein double squish locked up downtown.  This design did not stick around long.  I am not sure that the seat tube geometry was a well received concept.  None the less I like the bike which in my opinion was ahead of its time.

The start of the Varsity race at the Eagle Creek Golf course in Willmar, MN.  Kriston and I headed down Saturday morning to watch Matt and Ben run.  It was a beautiful day of racing.  All of the boys ran well individually and as a team.  I will never get tired of watching cross country races.  In fact when Matt and Ben are done with high school sports I see myself continuing to go and watch.

I have been trying to get to the new Cuyuna mountain bike specific trails outside of Ironton, MN all summer.  Sunday morning on a more or less spur of the weekend deal I made my way over with Linda Cooper and Matt Engen.  Good friend Newly Glasford met us at the trail head to show us the ropes.

The state of MN did a nice job utilizing the area.  I learned as much as I could about the topography before we got there.  Iron ore was the name of the game back in the early 1900's in which numerous mining pits were dug out to harvest the rock.  The results today are crystal clear lakes with the material left over from digging the pits being pushed up around the lake shores.  Things shut down completely 30 years ago.  Now the trees and foliage has grown into a unique area.
The bike trails were designed as more or less a "flow" track.  In short, the hills are used to exert minimum effort in using the downhills with the uphills and inserting berms and bumps in just the right places.

Nice bridge work.  Notice the red dirt, our bikes were covered in bright red dust from the iron ore.

We hit the Fall leave show just about perfect.  Beautiful.

The lakes are almost the same colors as what I have seen in the glacial lakes out west in the mountains.  We saw scuba divers in one lake which has me thinking.  Dive one day and ride one day.....

An example of some of that "flow" action.
There are about 25 miles of trails in total.  We hit about 13 miles riding for 2 hours with some of it being out and back.
My opinion???  I liked the riding a lot.  I am not too crazy about riding in such a confined area seeing numerous riders throughout the day.  The loops were short and a bit confusing but with time you would figure out the best way to work with it.
I also like it a bit more technical with more difficult climbing.
With that being said, I am glad we made the trip and I will be back.  This is good for mountain biking, is controlled and maintained.  Nice work to all involved in getting this off the ground.

Newly has not lost his bike technique.  Brought back good memories of our epic bike days up in Paul Bunyan State forest.  All good.

Cheers!