June 12 - Albany, Minnesota - Bike Ride

It cleared overnight and the new day dawned sunny and warm. Our plan was to return to Albany to try out our new bikes on the section of the Lake Wobegone trail from Albany to Avon. The club had set up a Volksbike event for the Lake Wobegone hiker/biker trail, and we signed up for that at Don's BP station (and A&W and Subway and live bait and hunting licenses and pretty much anything else a reasonable person could want!). Driving over to the municipal parking lot at city hall, I hoisted the bikes off the truck, put the front tire on mine, and we drove off.

This was really the first time we had tried out these bicycles and we left in such a hurry that I forgot several basic items: helmets, tire repair kit, air pump. It is fascinating how easily the "hurry up" syndrome can supercede good sense and thorough preparation. I've actually studied errors like that in the aviation domain, so it was doubly ironic that despite being retired and having no fixed time schedule I fell into that trap yet again. As it turned out, nothing happened that would have required any of that equipment, but it was still quite stupid to leave without it.

The club sponsoring the Lake Wobegone Trail Volksbike lets you have a lot of flexibility about which route you take. We had walked the branch of the hiker/biker trail to Holdingford and liked it and certainly didn't want to take the branch northward that was just beside the freeway, so we took the southeast branch to Avon. We had the wind at our backs pedaling out and it was remarkably easy--too easy, in fact, and I suspect that this stretch was also downhill a bit. We met other bikers or roller bladers about every half a mile of the 6 mile stretch, so this part was much more populated than the stretch out to Holdingford. Along the way we also saw a couple of the 10,000 lakes Minnesota reputedly contains; kids were fishing in one lake and the water looked clear blue and cold.

We felt pretty good at the 3 mile point, so we decided to go the entire distance to Avon, and there we found a Lake Wobegone Park right beside the trail. The park was complete with picnic shelters, bathrooms, bike racks, and even a small look out tower from which you could view the town. We had our energy bar snack and let our butts recover a bit and then settled back into the saddle for the trip back.

We stopped twice along the way back, once to take a picture of a a very pretty blue flower that might be a "Ladyslipper" and once at a trailside shelter built by the local Girl Scouts just to rest and recover a bit. I know Boy Scouts do construction projects like this for the Eagle Scout award, but I was surprised that a Girl Scout troop would put up such a large, solid, and imposing structure as a community project.

We had ridden about 20 kilometers and were just starting to get really tired when the Kraft factory that adjoins the municipal parking lot hove into view. We really liked the route to Avon and certainly would recommend either that route or the one to Holdingford for other folks interested in walking or biking. My impression is that you would see more rural farmland on the route to Holdingford and more lake and swamp scenery on the route to Avon, but both were enjoyable in their own way. I felt particularly sorry that we were only participants number 2 and 3 for the Volksbike event--the club will probably stop offering it if so few folks take advantage of it, and that would be a real shame. So if you are in the area and have a bike, you might want to encourage the good folks who created this event by stopping off at Don's and signing up.

Our ride had revealed that we both needed longer seat posts and I also needed to raise and align my handlebars on my bike to sit a bit better. So after a relaxing lunch at Culvers (by this time we were "flavor of the day" addicts!), we hit three bicycle shops in St. Cloud to find seat posts, special tools, a bicycle water bottle that mounted to the frame, and a small storage bag that also mounted inside a bicycle frame. The rest of the afternoon, naturally enough, was occupied by installing all this new equipment and adjusting my bike to fit my orangutan-length arms and legs. Aside from being pestered by mosquitoes a bit, the work was fun but I was awfully glad I had thought to bring my tool bag from home as I needed both screwdrivers and the adjustable wrench in addition to my new bike tool to install and adjust everything.

For those of you wondering about why I had to do this adjusting, the basic issue is how you purchase a bicycle. If you buy from a full service bicycle shop (and pay full price!), they will adjust the bicycle components to fit your legs and arms and make certain everything works properly. If you are cheap (me) and buy a bicycle from a discount house (e.g. Costco), you will have to do most of the adjusting yourself. It is not hard and is in fact a good way to get to know a bike, so I really don't mind doing it especially on a new bike where everything is clean and shiny--breaking loose 20 year old rusted together pieces is just the pits! It is, of course, sensible to do all this adjustment BEFORE you take the bike on a two month camping trip, but we did not do it the sensible way.

Monika was helping with all this, so what with one thing and another that burned up the afternoon for both of us. After getting it all done and re-stowing the bikes, we celebrated with a shower. It felt so good to wash off sweat, sunscreen, and DEET residue that had combined to form some kind of sticky film on my skin. Truly it repelled the mosquitoes, but unfortunately it also repelled me. I also made a mental note not to get the "Bubble Gum" variety of sunscreen again, it really lived up to its name! After dinner we played dueling computers for a while before starting in on our new Elizabeth Peters' book.