Home from the 2011 WI Road Trip

By the middle of last week everything worked out well for me to hit the road to visit some new places and some old friends. I spent the day last Thursday in Decorah, IA. My plan was to ride the trails in the bluffs north of the Upper Iowa River. It had rained Wednesday night. I did some paved road/trails riding early that Thursday. I found some interesting sites like the Ice Cave and ...

...Dunning's Spring.


Decorah has great paved trails that I used to visit the local fish hatchery. There are several canoe/kayak services in the area so I spent a couple hours exploring the Upper Iowa River on a 10’ Kayak. I found a huge eagle nest.


I'm "shooting the rapids" here...





















By midafternoon the dirt trails were "tacky fast". I found some trails that were just too challenging and some that were well groomed and fun. Pictured here is a creek crossing where the water flows right into the river. Bottom line is that it was good to get familiar with Decorah, IA. I'm sure I'll be back.





DECORAH HUMAN POWERED TRAILS does the building and trail maintenance.


Thursday evening and the next few days were spent fishing, biking and hanging out with Chris and Denny north of Lacrosse WI. We had lots of laughs and new adventures in Wisconsin. Thanks for having me up for another great weekend!

Emma's bike got stolen today.

Emma's bike got stolen today. Let me know if you see it. It's a Dark Blue - Raleigh C30 with a black rear rack. S/N: 7C9504264
I will add more details as I get them. Thanks for being on the lookout.

Kayaking Dodge Street...

...well, not really but close. I've kayaked a few local lakes with Doug. Today was my first time on the water at Lawrence Youngman Lake. It's located just north of Dodge on 192nd Street. This lake has only been open for a few weeks. There were several fisherman. We are 99.8% sure that one of them was local weatherman Jim Flowers. The backwater at this lake is nice and full of trees to paddle around. One of the advantages of being low and maneuverable on the water is picking up snagged lures.

Dodge St - scraped our paddles on the bottom of a 6 lane freeway while kayaking north.

Then we came to a hard stop and had to turn around.

Here you can see the cars behind on Dodge St. attempting to pass me.



Nice afternoon paddle and I can feel the strength slowly coming back from last fall. Won't be long and we'll be heading upstream on the Elkhorn!

Cruising Sandbars

Yesterday I saw a video on The Biking Fools blog that reminded me of something we would do back when mountain bikes were just getting popular in the late 80's. This photo is from Two Rivers State Park in late August of 89. When the river got low we would ride from sandbar to sandbar.

My buddy Chris and I had way fewer cares and gray hairs back then.

I found this post that has some good photos of what my Bianchi Super Grizzly looked like back in the day.

Dodging worms

I love the smell of worms in the morning. It's the aroma of fishing at the edge of a good pond. The ground is saturated and we got more rain last night. I rode my bike to work on wet pavement this morning dodging worms on the sides of the streets. Fortunately it's not home and business debris that I'm dodging. Our cities and towns close by are not so lucky. Thanks Red Cross for the shelter and aid during this very severe weather season.

Busy Sunday

If you are going to ride your bike 50 miles, a morning like yesterday's was perfect for it. The temp was cool but we didn't really need jackets. The wind out of the West-Southwest was a challenge. But the tailwind heading back to Springfield was fantastic. We started the ride in Springfield and rode though, South Bend, and Murdock. At Elmwood, NE. we turned around. It was great to ride with friends to urge each other on. The last 30 miles of the ride were nice. I felt like my body and my bike were working great. However, the first 20 were making me wonder why I do this stuff. Heading into the wind into South Bend made me feel like this ride was going to take all day. Somehow after leaving Murdock everything felt just right. The ride ended up taking about 4 and a half hours.

I had a couple last minute donors and you guys are great! Thanks to my family and friends that supported this ride and for the help for those with diabetes.

In the afternoon we celebrated my youngest daughter Emma's High School Graduation with a family party. Nice day for a cookout, visiting with the family and seeing the kids playing in the backyard.

Wind at our backs!

Tomorrow at this time I'll be getting ready to ride with some friends on at 25 mile ride from Springfield to Elmwood, Nebraska. Oh yeah, then we have to ride back but that's only another 25 miles. Looks like we'll have the wind to our backs so that will be nice.

There is still time to donate and I'm a little short on my commitment. Just click the link if you want to pitch in. Paul's Tour de Cure Link

TNR at Tranq - May 19, 2011

There was a threat of rain all day this Thursday so the TNR was lucky to happen. The clouds and wind didn't scare these riders off. My level of participation was merely to ride around and take a couple pictures and a video. It's always fun to see the reaction from riders on the Ridgeline for the first time.

Great to see some familiar faces out riding on a blustery Thursday.


I hear Dale and some others have plans for trail work tomorrow. I hope the conditions are good for that and your weekend ahead will be good!