5 to 1

Thought I would try something a little different with this post. It is this weeks rides combined into this one, which turned out to be a mumble jumble of photos and a video at the end. Not sure about this idea. 

Monday this week had me spending about 3 hours on the Kona.  The wind was fierce.  They said 20mph and they were not lying. I went out against the wind and rode the wind home, which is the way I like to do wind when I can. 

A cabin I rode by.

 Did I mention the wind?  I passed by here on a slight downhill with the wind at my back. Moving I was. I rolled on by and then went on back and cleaned it up.

  This week in biking has had me once again seen me splitting my time between the Kona Jake and 9:ZERO:7.  The 9:ZERO:7 was used on Sun, Tues, Wed, Thur and Friday with the Kona ride on Monday.  ummm 5 to 1. It's funny because I seriously looked at the road bike and the mountain bike thinking that there was not much chance of riding those left this year, but once the fat bug bites it is hard to shake it. With that being said, tomorrow will be my favorite ride of the week. I say that because the tandem is loaded on the truck and ready for Saturday morning.  Yeehaw!!

 Freshly graded trail.  That seems to always loosen it up some.

 One of the little trails I rode on Thursday. This one ended up to be a dead end. I then threw the fatty on my shoulder and made a hike-a-bike to the next trail. Turned out to be further than I thought through some very thick woods.  Have you ever hiked a fatty? Not my brightest moment of the week. 

 An old deer stand I rolled by.

 These trails are sweeeeeettt!! I saw a Grey wolf (aka, timber wolf) on Fridays ride. It was a small one. I have seen much bigger. It wasn't grey, root beer is the color I would say. But, it was timber wolf. It crossed the trail a short way in front of me.

 This is the trail the video on the end of the post was made.  That video will explain this trail.

One of the side trails ended at this bear bait.  There were fresh tracks there. 

The above is a video I shot on Friday.  It is a trail that brought back good memories. 

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!

Thanks for watching and any comments you may have!

RL

Fall Fatty

SO, I know it has been a while since I have loaded anything up on the blog.  I have been riding, and most times with the camera, but I don't stop and shoot pics. The blog has taken a hit on my radar screen.  Please forgive me!  On this particular fall day, I was out on the bicycle for a couple hours and took the time for some photos.  I was on the fat-tire today and it felt good to be back on that.  I have been riding the Kona Jake mostly, but the recent snow we had put the fat bug in me. That and this last weekend we watched some of a gravel ride/race in Duluth MN. It is called the Heck of the North.(linked) There is a nice video part down their home page.  We spent 3.5 hours watching the riders come in at about the 67 mile mark. It was looking like a tough ride this year.  I am glad we went, as I learned a lot from watching. That sealed the deal on getting the fat! I added a video of Sundays fatty ride at the end of this post.

The ride today took me by this local lake.

This lake is said to be 102 feet deep, although when I have been out fishing I have registered more than on my sonar until. Very clear and deep! It will be the last of the lakes to freeze in our area.

This little pond will be one of the first.  I enjoy having lunch here because it is on a little path a quite a ways from a road.  Nice and quiet.

Almost two hours of stuff like this on this day out.

We have had a lot of moisture lately...well really since the summer of 2013.

This is another of my favorite lunch spots.

These trails are used mostly by the locals.  The mapped ATV/snowmobile trails are much wider. Almost like dirt highways...at least some of them.

After riding on this day, Janice needed some steps for her Fitbit. So, we went for a hike on the North Country Trail (linked).

It was a 3.5 mile hike and the time was just past lunch, so we packed a couple sandwiches and had a mini picnic on the shore of the St. Croix River.

This was near our finishing spot.  We chased many ducks from here. All around, this was another great day to be here in the northwoods of WI.

This is a little video from Sundays ride. I shot a small video form the hike...very small, as the battery went dead on the camera. Reached for the other battery and remembered I left it in the pannier on the bike.

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Thanks for reading, watching and any comments you may have.

Great Times!!

Great Times!!

 Well, another dry spell with the blog.  I had planned on loading up a recent canoe trip we made and then some La Crosse, WI stuff we did, but never got to it.  That being said, I will combine some things on this post.  The people that follow Face Book have already had the opportunity to watch the canoe trip video we uploaded to YouTube.  I will load those here for anybody that is interested.

These are the videos I loaded to YouTube and Face Book..

This is part two

 We spend three days on the Namekagon/St.Croix Rivers. 

 We eat breakfast in the early mornings, canoe up through the middle of the day and set up camp early afternoon.  Then it is time to relax. Set back in lawn chairs, read and most importantly...Relax!!

During our vacation, we also spent time on the tandem bicycle.  We have two tandems. One road tandem and one mountain. This mountain one is slower of the two, but is by far my favorite of the tandems. We have it outfitted with some good touring tires, as we do not ride the trails on the tandem. It still moves right along with two people pedaling. :-) 

Fall is in the air, as they say. The leaves have already started changing and this Tamarack will not be far behind.  I think the older a person gets the faster time goes by.  It seems like summer just started and it is already getting ready to walk out the door.

A video we made while riding the tandem.

It has been a lot of fun to be able to ride the tandem again.  I realize they are not for everyone, but we sure enjoy them. 

Thank You for watching and I appreciate any comments you may have!

As always,

Lets get outdoors and have some FUN!!

Ummmmm

 Ummmm, yep still here!  Still riding!  I admit I have failed this semester of blogging.   I could sit here and try to make excuses, but there are no excuses.  I also could say I will make it up at summer school, but summer has about run it course and we will soon be moving on to fall.  I want to thank all of you that have taken the time to check in with me and see that things are still good.  They are! 

 Although the last few rides have seen me riding the fatty, I have put miles on the touring bike, the plastic bike, my normal road bike and I have had the mountain bike out also. .

 The title of this blog entry was of what...ummmmm!?!?!?!  No shyness here. Just nature at its finest. They rode along for miles. 

 This was one of the lunch spots today...today's ride had two lunch spots...hehe

 The flowers are full out!  Lots of them.

 Fall is in the air around these parts of the world.

 The flowers were glowing today.

 Ummmmm!  I noticed a lot of flowers being pollinated today.  I took several pictures but this one I thought this one showed it best.

 A nice little pond on a quite road.

 This was a great spot for the second half of the sandwich today. I do eat here quit often though.

Again, I want to give a BIG THANK YOU to those who have recently inquired about me.  

As some of you may know, I have been uploading some YouTube videos lately.  If you like them, subscribe to the channel to keep in touch.

Thank You for reading

and 

I appreciate any comments you may have.

Lets get outdoors and have some FUN!! 

Yum Yumm

 Thought I would stop by the blog and load up a couple pictures from the last few days.  The above picture was from this last Sunday riding across the bird sanctuary located near Gordon, WI.

 This was from Saturdays ride taken near the Moose River.

 This picture was taken on Sundays ride looking upstream on the Moose.

 AND...the above picture is in the same place as the one above this one.  Does that make sense?  I hope so.  It is another Moose picture.  Sunday to Tuesday...big difference. Spring is on its way.

 The Sheosh. 

Tuesdays ride had me sitting and having lunch along Douglas County highway M.   With the temp near 50, the southern facing bank made it feel much warmer.  I could have easily taken a nap.  What was for lunch?  I am glad you ask, because it was delicious.  Natural organic peanut butter, homemade cranberry jelly and multi grain bread...yum yum!! 

If you get a chance, please check out The Biking Barb at Midwest Chronicles-Alaska to Wisconsin.  I do have a link on the righthand side, but to make it easier, I will link this whole paragraph to her blog.  She is riding the 30 day of April pledge.  She has some great pictures along with interesting narratives.

Lets get outdoors and have FUN!!!

Fantastic!

 Just some pictures and a quick blog. 

 Three pairs of critters in this picture...that we can see.

 Yep speed bump ahead and I kid you not, at the end of this row of trees, I took a digger. The only one of the day fortunately. I blame the speed bump! Even if it is under a couple feet of snow.

 This is the island below the Gordon Dam. There is a video of this on my facebook page.

 Upstream from the dam.  

 I rode a lot of snowmobile trail today.

 The recreational trails had a lot of ruts and under the recent little snow event was ice. SO, that made it for some sketchy riding today.  I stopped to let out some air.  I had recently had them pumped to 15lbs riding the back roads. I dropped them to 8 and that helped a lot, but probably should have gone lower.     

 Great day and no one on the trails...but me!

 It was nice to see some bare ground on a southern facing bank.  I decided to eat up half my lunch here.

 Man...what great fun!

 It is getting on to about 12:30 and the trails are starting to get a little soft in spots.

 Anyone who has been around Gordon as a youngster knows this spot!!

A couple Whitetails.  I think there were more a little farther back in the bush. I was out for 3 hours 35 minutes and it was fantastic!

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!