Snow Day

Aged Skijourer

The much-anticipated blizzard finally hit, about 12 hours later than expected, but when she did she reminded us what a real MN Winter is all about.  Schools were cancelled and the Gov't businesses were shut down so you know it had to be bad.  I made it to work about the time it was heating up, my first couple patients made it in, but then all went quiet, and after the entire afternoon schedule either cancelled or rescheduled, I was out of there by noon.  I barely made it up the hill on the unplowed road home, and actually got stuck in a big drift in my driveway.  It was pretty nasty, snowing hard, 25-50 mph winds off the Lake, the real deal.  So I suited up and hopped on the Fatbike.

I rode my car tire track back down the hill and decided to turn straight into the wind to get that over with.  I was happy I wore my glasses as I got a free dermabrasion of my face riding into the sleet.  They iced up right away, but at least I'd still have corneas after my ride.  I soon came upon another Adventurous Spirit, skiing down the snowy Lakewalk trail, and with getting closer, actually turned out to be skijouring .  As I called out 'On your left' and passed the aged fella, I thought I actually recognized him as a previous training partner, and in fact he possibly even called out to me, but by then I was long past and any word recognition was mulled by the gusty winds.

Yikes!

I must admit I was quite happy to finally take a left turn and head uphill and out of Narure's Fury, finding a nice wide Monster Truck tread to peaceably spin up Lester Park towards the snomotrails.  My peace was suddenly slammed when a big gust busted the upper half of a pine tree off and dropped it not more than 10 yards in front of me, just about crushing someone out snowblowing.

As I came to the end of the traveled section of road, I was greeted to virgin snowy snomotrail singletrack.  I got about 3 feet in and came to a halt faster than in Trans Iowa mud.  The wet and heavy 9" of fresh snow sucked me in and was impossible to ride.  As I started my hike-a-bike session, I not only wondered if I would have to push my bike the whole 8 miles back home, but how the heck them Iditarodders are pushing their laden bikes thru over 2 feet of snow up in Alaska at this

Hike-a-bike

Beauty, eh?


minute.  I had pushed about a mile up the trail when I heard the familiar whining of some slednecks, and was saved by a couple high school kids that were actually taking advantage of their snowday and out ripping up the trails on their snomobiles rather than inside playing video games.  With the snow so wet and heavy, the trail packed down pretty well leaving me with a trail that was slow and twitchy, but about 90% rideable.  


A glorious 2 1/2 hour Snow Day bonus ride.