It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like …

When I woke this morning I only had a partial plan for the day. I had a general route but not a destination. I needed to figure that out in a hurry. The figuring out of things came through a process of elimination. I had sent out a Warm Showers request to someone who lived near Clearwater, MN. About 120 km away. Certainly a doable distance, even though I haven’t been doing such distances very often this year. Plus, there were reports of a tailwind so I wasn’t at all concerned – although those reports turned out to be more than a little inaccurate. Either way, concerns didn’t really matter as the host in question wasn’t available. In fact, he had broken his leg and was having surgery today. The crazy part is that he sounded genuinely sorry that he couldn’t help out with hosting. Just another example of how generous the Warm Showers community is.

My backup plan was a somewhat less conventional Warm Showers host in Ramsey, MN but it offered washrooms, water, electricity, and a place to setup a tent. As homes on the road go, that sounded like a good one. Plus, it was only about 70 km away which would end up being a pretty important factor as the day played out.

After some morning conversation with my hosts and a delicious omelette by Becky, it was time to hit the road again. David rode out with me to the main road which made navigation much easier (and more trustworthy) than Google and Garmin. But from there I was on my own.

My route for the day would take me through St. Paul and Minneapolis. It had been a while since I’d pedalled through a big city and I really can’t say I miss it. Fortunately, The Twin Cities are pretty bike friendly and there were trails that got me through with minimal navigational challenges. Minneapolis actually has a LOT of trails through the city. It was certainly easier than getting through Detroit. Side note: I was actually a bit surprised at the friendliness (or lack thereof) of other people on the trails through the city. I mean, no one was mean or anything like that but I typically wave, nod, or in someway acknowledge other cyclists I pass along the way and there was a noticeable lack of response from the vast majority of them. Even glare-like looks. Many of the pedestrians also seemed to be offering that same glare rather than a more positive look. Oh well. I couldn’t concern myself with such things. I just pedalled on. And continued to wave.

When I first hit the road with David, the day was beautifully sunny. However, that changed as I worked my way towards Ramsey. Clouds moved in. For a while, I actually didn’t really notice. I just remember at one point thinking, “What happened to the sun?” Well, what happened to the sun was it got drowned out by a sea of clouds. Clouds that looked desperate to rain upon the earth below. I’ll admit, I really didn’t want to get caught in that while on the road. As such, I focused on the goal and didn’t really stop other than to confirm navigational instructions were still on track. It was to be a race against nature.

Thanks to the short distance scheduled for the day, it was a race against nature that I actually won and I arrived at my destination shortly after 1:00 PM. The location in question was Hansen’s Tree Farm. Yup, I was going to be camping at a Xmas tree farm. Add it to the list of things I never thought I’d be doing.

My host, also named Mark, was not around (and I never actually met him) but his brother Dave happened to be working there that afternoon so he welcomed me to the farm and showed me around. And the farm was great. There were all the aforementioned amenities plus there was an Adirondack shelter which would provide ample cover if it did end up raining. And it did. A lot. And it did so about an hour after I moved all my gear under the shelter. It even waited until after I had my lunch at one of the many picnic tables on site. Timing is everything. There is no doubt I would never have made it to my originally proposed destination of Clearwater without getting soaked.

While the farm had everything I needed, it didn’t have much in the way of “office” furniture. Yes, there were plenty of picnic tables which I would’ve very happily used but none were sheltered from the rain. As such, I improvised. It would seem the bench in the shelter and an overturned garbage bin worked together very nicely. Yup, living the dream.

The rain started somewhat mildly. More of a steady (maybe sometimes heavy) drizzle. But that was just the warmup act. Eventually, the skies opened and I was VERY happy to be under the shelter.

The shelter allowed me to get caught up a bit on some blog entries which had once again fallen behind. There was no WiFi access so I wasn’t able to actually post any of those updates but at least I’d have the bulk of the work done for when I was once again connected to the internet.

By the time I was finished writing, the rains had stopped and there were patches of blue sky making an appearance. It was shaping up to be a nice and quiet afternoon/evening. While I said “I was finished writing”, in reality I still had a couple entries to go. However, I find that I can only do three updates in a day before my brain becomes mush – well, mushier than usual, anyway.

With the rain gone and still plenty of time left in the day, I decided to get the drone out for a few aerial shots of my home among the trees. Of course, that was only minimally successful because my home wasn’t particularly visible because of, well … all the trees. It was still fun to get the drone out again though.

As days go, this one turned out to be pretty great. I managed to avoid the rain. I was productive in doing some writing. I didn’t crash the drone. And I was even able to get a campfire going. The biggest downside of the day? No ice cream. Yup, when a lack of ice cream is the day’s biggest problem then it’s probably been a pretty good day. But seriously, I could really go for some ice cream.

Today’s totals:
Distance: 72.99 km
Ride time: 3:32:30
Average speed: 20.60 km/h
Maximum speed: 39.96 km/h