Yesterday was a banner day - went to a 6 am yoga class and then set up my other bike for my first ever century ride.  I figure, if I can comfortably do 100 miles, I can pretty much do anything :).  So I set off from my house in Bloomington, hit the Gateway Trail to Stillwater where I stopped at Nelsons Ice Cream house for the biggest and cheapest ice cream cone I've ever seen (check out the photo - and I'd already eaten 1/3 of the thing!) , then up halfway to Taylor's Falls, across to Forest Lake, down to Lino Lakes, in to Little Canada, back to the Gateway trail in St Paul, and finally home to Bloomington.

In total, I hit 104.9 miles (168.8 km).  And I felt really good when I was all done!  Not to mention there was someone trying to keep up with me at mile 95, but I wasn't going to have that, so I blasted off ahead and left him in the dust...  That wasn't very nice! Sorry guy!  Next time I'll ride with you for sure!

Once I got home and took off my socks I realized my skin wasn't actually changing color - I was just covered in a whole bunch of road grime!  I guess a layer of sunscreen and sweat doesn't work the same as the dry lube on my bike chain :) ...

And today is another wonderful day  of  sunshine in the Land of Lakes.

Peace out!

Yesterday I drove around the city looking for cardboard at various furniture and appliance stores to build a disposable box to ship my bike.  I went to four different stores with no luck and, on the way home, resigned to using my fancy bike suitcase (which I would then have to ship back), I thought - maybe the bike store (www.eriksbikeshop.com) has a box that would work - it was a "why didn't I think of that earlier" moment...  I went in to the store and the manager Demian, who knows me by name now, said "oh yah! give me a minute" - he went to the back and came out with the perfect box.  Then I went home and started packing - check out the pics of the disassembly and packing on my equipment page.  9 days and counting!

Whoa!  This month has flown by.  12 days until I set off for the other side of the continent.  Today I reorganized my gear, got a sweet box for shipping my bike from the bike store, picked up a few more bits and pieces of gear, updated my website, cut my grass and moved some dirt in the back yard.  A nice productive day. 

So far in the gear testing arena I've broken a chain and had three flat tires.  Longest ride so far with all of the gear was 66 miles.  Could have gone lots more, but had a meeting to go to.

The GPS system on my phone is really cool!  Real time position, speed, and altitude updates plus track logging.  Mom - you can know exactly where I am every bit of the way! :)