Givin' the seat a rest!

Hello again, this weekend was a long one because of fall break so we decided to change it up and take a break from biking and go hiking instead. So we loaded our gear and headed up North to the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT). Everything was set to be an exciting and relaxing weekend. It was a little cool but almost perfect hiking weather, about 50 degrees during the day and getting down to around 35 at night. We got off to kind of a late start the first day and only made it about 6 miles and set up camp and had a nice dinner in an amazing camp site under a clear star lit night. It began to sprinkle a couple of hours after we went to bed and the night got ugly about 3am. After about three hours of pounding rain our old tent began to leak and we were awoken by Kelly's scream "I'm wet, I just got rained on!" The rain finally leaked through the window and dropped on Kelly's face. We woke up and realized that the foot of our tent had a puddle in it and our sleeping bags were wet and so was our TP! After a short discussion and a look at the map we decide that we would finish the Split Rock loop and call it a day. We were beaten, unfortunately! We had come prepared knowing that there was a good chance of rain unfortunately we didn't anticipate that our old tent wouldn't hold up. I guess it's time to start looking for a replacement, there's no packing up and going home in May. On a good note we went down and visited family in the Twin Cities and went for a nice day hike through Afton State Park.

Just a little tour of the country side.

Last Friday Kelly and I woke up to a not so appetizing gloomy day with a good possibility of rain all day but decided to make the best of our day off and get some riding in. We set off on a two hour ride. We rode from St. Cloud over to Sauk Rapids and then had a nice little ride along the river to Sartell, were we crossed the river and made our way over to St. Joseph. From there we fought an awful head wind back through Waite Park to St. Cloud. With this trip we gained a little experience with adverse weather conditions, wet rodes and got a good leg work out bucking that head wind for 15+ miles. Over all another great ride!

The First Break Down

Well yesterday was our first break down. The game plan was to do between 40 an 60 miles on the Lake Wobegon Trail but that didn't go as planned. Kelly got in a thirty mile ride while I only got in a 15 mile ride and about a 3.5 mile walk in as we were about 15miles into our ride and my back tire blew out. It was beyond simple repair and patch it needed to be completely replaced and we didn't have an extra tube with. So Kelly made the 15mile ride back home got the car and picked me up in Saint Joseph, MN. During the walk back to the trail head a nice gentle man stopped and offered to fix it but he also only had a patch kit but he gave me some encouraging words since he had just recently road across Peru on his bike and was himself planning a cross county ride for 2010. It also goes to show how many nice people there are in the world and we look forward to meeting many more not only in our training but on our actual trip! One thing we learned is that we always need to be ready for anything! This has spurred us to continue adding to our gear and purchasing extra tubes along with a carrier. It's starting to come together very slowly, but we keep getting more and more excited with each ride and the increase in our gear!