See a water tower; find a town

Outside of Avon

Fresh from seeing the walking play, Nature at the Arboretum we headed out to the Lake Wobegon Trail leaving from St. Joseph to Freeport.  It was a perfect (almost) summer day with sunny skies, winds from the South at 20-25 mph (gusts of 30 mph), and temperatures in the high 80s. The sides of the trail were covered with summer wildflowers.  We rode through clouds of dragon flies, grasshoppers and at one point a flock of tree swifts.  Just before Avon we spied three sand hill cranes who took flight as soon as I got off the bike to take a photo.  Hawks were soaring in the stiff breezes; we had a cooper hawk, eagle and vulture glide just feet above our bike.  As Thoreau said in the play Friday night, "I must draw my vigor from a wild source".  We were inspired and excited to be out on this awesome day.

The Lake Wobegon trail follows tracks that once went through each of the small towns.  The landmark of note is the distinctive water towers that are usually located at a high point in the town.  As we approach they are frequently the first thing we see.  Water towers serve a practical purpose.  Although you might think they hold all the water supply, they actually only hold a day's worth of water.  It's a back up for peak usage.  The water tower supplies pressure for all the homes in its vicinity.  We rode through four towns during this ride:  St. Joseph, Avon, Albany and Freeport.  Each has a unique water tower that stands over the community.

The color of wildflowers this time of year is yellow but along the Lake Wobegon trail we were treated with the occasional cluster of purple coneflowers which is in the aster family.  This are native, perennial plants and favor dry conditions especially along roads and ditches.  I can vouch for the fact that goldfinches love their seed heads.  I don't trim my coneflowers back in the fall; in winter our goldfinches who stay all year will pull seed from the heads.  It's my favorite flower. 

The journey back to St. Joe was a major effort.  The wind became more of a headwind because the Freeport to Albany trail bends to the Southeast.  We're a high profile vehicle so each gust was an obstacle to ride through.  I was definitely thinking about my feet by the time we got back to St. Joe's.  One hint:  I wear a neckerchief around my neck and keep it damp - cools one down. 

We ate at Kay's Kitchen in St. Joe's.  It's been a fixture in St. Josephs since 1972.   Kay's is just what you would expect for a small town cafe:  great service, lots of refills, and homemade pie!  The perfect end to a  great day of nature and riding. 

Can you meditate while biking?

After a weekend off due to the Irish Fair (Will) and Mindful Leadership Conference (Linda) we got back on the bike this Saturday.  The morning dawned in thick fog and an overcast sky.  This proved to be our salvation since the dew point was high.  Sun would have been fatal.

We haven't been to Cannon Falls for a while and hadn't ridden the entire trail yet this year.  The parking lot at Welch was packed so we headed to the overflow lot.  This seemed ominous:  were we going to encounter boatloads of people on the trail??  Then I thought back to what I learned at the Mindful Leadership Conference and focused instead on the happiness that I feel when we're biking.  Can I pass on that happiness to others we meet on the trail?  I decided to look happy on the bike (Smile), say hello or wave at people and not react to the occasional road hog. 

Last week was my first encounter with meditation.  Although I practice yoga, I have never tried meditation.  There were a number of opportunities to do this at the conference under the guidance of Mingur Rinpoche of the Tergar Community.   Rinpoche encouraged us to meditate anywhere:  at work, at home, on the bus, on an airplane.  So could someone meditate on a bike?  Being the second person on a tandem I am in a unique position of actually having some contemplation time available.  If you trust in the person as Captain; you have some opportunities to explore other avenues of contemplation on the back.  True, it is best to do this when you are on a lonely stretch of road or trail with not obstacles to deal with.  The stoker could rest their hands on their handlebars or thighs, close their eyes and focus internally.  I tried this and found it restful but the fact that you continue to pedal might not bring a very profound meditation.

There are definite zones that you feel while riding.  These are my definitions of my own experience and subject to argument.  They may also be unique to tandem riding since we exist in a partnership on the bike.  The stoker may be able to have more time to enjoy the zones than the captain.  First is the creative zone:  this is me thinking about what topic I can blog about on this particular ride.  I find this particularly satisfying although it can detract from the "seeing" part of your ride.  You are in the thought process ergo you don't see what's in front of you.  The second is the pondering/thinking zone.  This can be a positive or negative depending upon where your thoughts go.  If you are inspired and think of some brilliant way to resolve an issue at work it's good; if you are making a long list of items you need to get done it's bad.  My personal favorite is the speed zone:  you have climbed the final ridge out of the river valley going into Cannon Falls and you know that the way back to Welch will have some great downhills.  The exhilaration of the speed, wind and views makes you want to raise your hands in the air and yell some ancient Celtic battle cry.  The worst zone is fatigue:  you're hot, it's late, you've got a few miles to go to the end and you're only focusing on your feet telling them to pedal.  I know that when I'm thinking about my feet I'm ready for a break or the end of the ride.

The Cannon Valley Trail was in bloom with the last flowers of summer.  I'll focus on the Jewelweed for this blog. It's from the Touch-me-not family or Impatiens pallida.  It grows in shade and likes wet.  Along the Cannon Valley Trail there are literally walls of Jewelweed.  The name comes from water droplets on its leaves that look like tiny jewels.  Supposedly the juice from its stems can soothe the sting from poison ivy.  It attracts hummingbirds.  Although the prominent color of late summer flowers was yellow we did see some brilliant splashes of purple from the Rough Blazing Star (Aster).

We have encountered all kinds of wildlife on the Cannon but yesterday was quiet.  The chipmunks and squirrels were busy buzzing back and forth across the trail.  We scared up a bevy of cardinals near Red Wing and goldfinches were very active.  At Welch the boxelder bugs had hatched.  As Bill Holm once wrote about the boxelder bug :
"I want so little
For so little time,
A south window,
A wall to climb..."

Bikes and Bands

It's Sunday and we're finally home after a three day weekend both on and off the bike.  It was a good use for my second furlough day (Friday) to pack up and go South to Faribault and the Sakatah Singing Hills Trail.  We cleverly planned to night in a bed and breakfast in town in order to spend Saturday listening to the Vintage Band Music Festival in Northfield.
Friday was the perfect summer biking day - sunny, not too humid, warm but not too hot.  We started out along Cannon Lake just outside of Faribault (to avoid nasty intersections in town) and decided to just ride until we wanted to turn around.  The Singing Hills nomenclature is so appropriate for this trail.  It's not the birds singing that is so deafening; it's the cicada.  From my office at home I can hear a cicada singing in our backyard.  Multiply that intensity by what seems thousands and you can image the "singing" by a grand chorus of cicada on the trail.

On other posts I've always focused on nature along the trails we ride but there is a striking amount of commerce going on.  Not far from Cannon Lake we ride past the Humphrey Manlift Co.  This name brings all kinds of interesting images to mind but it's a technology that moves people or things from floor to floor when you have limited space.  We also pass a very fragrant turkey farm where fans exhaust the wonderful turkey smell out to the trail.  Rumor has it the turkey dung has more value than the turkey.  I'll pass on that.  In Waterville we pedal past the Whitewater Grain and Feed elevator and the See-A-Cake company.  See-A-Cake is a leading manufacturer of bakery packing products.  Further along the trail we ride past Laska's Mercury Outboard sales and services.  That would be outboard motors for your boat which are displayed in the Laska's front yard.  Alley Scoops in Elysian sells ice cream (and hotdogs) right along the trail.  The Bear's Den is a restaurant in Elysian made from logs; we've eaten there after a ride.  Pro Fabrication, right on the trail in Madison Lake, fabricates metal.  Dale's Marine in Madison Lake sells boats but also provides snowmobile service in the off season.  And finally there's Prange's Heating and Airconditioning in Madison Lake; you can guess what they offer.  It's not all farm fields and wildflowers out there on the prairie.  Actually Faribault is a hub of manufacturing that has attracted a very diverse community. 

Back to nature which is really why we ride.Yellow is the prominent color of wildflowers on the Sakatah trail.  Our flower of choice this trip is the Woodland Sunflower or Helianthus divaricatus, member of the Aster family.  We find it usually in the woods along the trail.  At this time of year it can get fairly tall.  I braved an onslaught of mosquitoes to get this photo.  We also were looking at a goldfinch at the top of a stand of spruce in Madison lake when we looked up and saw a Northern Harrier hawk.  It's black wingtips are quite striking and the key to identification.

So you are wondering how far we ended up riding?  Our turn around point was Madison Lake (Mankato we'll see you on another trip) but it was a 50 mile endeavor.  We refreshed at the Alley Scoop with root beer floats on the way back and showed up at the Historic Hutchinson House B&B in our sweaty glory at close to the promised time of 5:30 pm.  Tami  Schluter, formerly of Eden Prairie, showed us to Dr. Hasseley's Suite where we showered, ran off to eat and headed to our first vintage band concert by the Newberry's Victorian Cornet Band at the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour in Faribault.  More bands and more music followed on Saturday and a second night but different room at the Hutchinson House.  In all the best of weekends, riding the bike, lots of music, two nights of hospitality at the Hutchinson House, a walk through historic Faribault and plenty of good food. 

Small Town Girl at Heart

Downtown Bowlus

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where everyone knew they would probably leave for somewhere else.  All of my adult life has been spent in one city or another. But deep down in my heart I want to live in every small town we visit.  Our bike ride this weekend took us out to the northern extension of the Lake Wobegon trail http://lakewobegontrail.com/ from the Blanchard Dam blancharddam.html to just outside Albany.  Many of the towns in this area of the state were named for or by the railroad men.  Bowlus, our starting point, was named by railroad officers but no one remembers who Bowlus was.  It's a small town with the bike trail running across its main street.  A grain elevator stands next to the railroad/bike trail.  The town would have had freight and passengers coming through on a daily basis.  Now it's off the main highway but has created a comfortable stopping point for cyclists.  A major activity for the town in the 1920s was the building of the Blanchard dam across the Mississippi.  It's worth the effort to ride there.

Downtown Holdingford

Seven miles further down the trail is the town of Holdingford which was named in honor of its first permanent settler, Randolph Holding.  He settled in the area in 1868.  Yesterday we watched truckloads of hay drive through town.  Haying was going on in many of the fields we rode past.  As in Bowlus, a grain elevator sits empty next to what would have been the rails.  The trail cuts right across the main street in Holdingford but traffic doesn't stop for us like it would have for trains.

We had another day of spectacular skies and fields of wildflowers.  Joe-pye weed is in full bloom.  It has spectacular pink clusters of flowers and stands 2-10 feet in height.  This flower favors wet areas; we saw it blossoming among the cattails.  There were entire meadows of Joe-pye weed outside of Bowlus.  Last blog I wrote about the common mullein.  This is another giant flower that favors dry conditions and sun.  It blooms alongside of roads and bike trails. 

Chipmunks were overrunning the trail yesterday.  We spied a red tail hawk sweeping low over the trail probably hoping to snatch one up for lunch.  Will sees more animals than me and reports a frog and a small garter snake on the trail.  On the way  home driving down lonely route 32 we saw wild turkeys.