Soup's On

The day before the ride I chopped up some turkey, carrots, celery and various other soup-making ingredients with the idea that I'd ride out into the National Forest, make myself a campfire and cook the soup.  To that end I brought a knife, folding saw, chunks of rope (for making a tripod to hang the soup pot, as well to suspend said pot), extra clothes to keep warm while not exercising.  I rode out a ways until I saw a good spot - out of the wind and two oak trees down nearby, hauled my bike through the trees and snow to a good spot.  Only then did I realize that I had forgotten matches or a lighter.

Happily in the handle of my knife is a ferrocerium rod (which is a rod that when you scrape it gives off sparks).  I gathered everything I needed to coax a spark into an actual fire.  Birchbark, small twigs, finger-sized twigs, and finally some larger fuel.

I even split down some dead/standing maple to get to some nice, dry wood in the middle.

I had lashed a simple tripod but needed a fire to cook.  After a bit (OK, a lot) of scraping and swearing (that little ferro rod in my knife handle isn't really meant to be the go-to method for starting fire and as such is kinda tricky to use) I finally managed to get a spark to land just right on some birch bark and it caught.  I quickly threw on the fire-building materials that I had collected and it took off - and I breathed a sigh of relief. 

They say (and I agree) that everything tastes better when cooked over the campfire and eaten outside, and the soup was delicious but I think it would have held it's own in most kitchens - it's delicious-ness wasn't only because of the campfire setting (hell, even ramen noodles taste good cooked over a fire and eaten in a beautiful setting)...it was just good soup.  I think.  Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.  I'm sorry to toot my own horn I'm just sayin' that I enjoyed my soup.  

It was kind of a huge serving of soup and when I first saw it I didn't know if I could finish it - maybe I'd have to leave some for the forest critters, but as the contents of the pot got lower my belly didn't get as stuffed as I thought it might.  

Soup eaten and hot cocoa drunk and dishes "washed" it was time to pack up and head home, but not before watching the sunset through the trees.  

Pine Lake Bikepacking

Pete parked in our driveway and we worked on getting ready to bikepack up to Pine Lake.  Pine Lake is a little lake in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest maybe 13 miles from our place.  While we were getting ready a cloudburst let loose.  It was a mostly clear day and no rain had been predicted.  We just stayed under the porch and continued getting ready.  After a bit we had everything on our bikes and were ready to take off - thankfully the rain had quit and things were sunny again.

About 5 minutes down the trail it started to rain again.  So we hunkered underneath a pavilion for a few minutes - and then kept riding under blue skies.

Both of us were riding Surly Krampugs.  Both of us also hate wearing too much on your back.  Pete had a small camera bag on his back (he'd taken it off during this picture) and I was wearing this kind of oversized waist pack thing.

Another cloudburst rolls to the south of us.  Thankfully it missed us because 1) from here on out we had no more shelters to hide under and 2) I had gone like a moron and not put any of my gear in dry bags.

The ~400 foot climb in the CNNF starts

Nearing our campsite at Pine Lake

Home for the night.  

Post-sunset light on Pine Lake 

I set up just off of the clearing where Pete had set up his tent

A time lapse of taking down my hammock and putting all of my gear on the bike.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see the maker of the tracks.  This is bear hunting country (which, I gotta say, I have mixed feeling about especially because they use dogs) and that means that the vast majority of bears around here are terrified of humans - the few I've seen I've mostly come upon and surprised them (if they knew I was there they would have made themselves scarce before I could see them) and have all but turned themselves inside out to put distance between us.   I admit that I kinda like bears being scared of me.

The last several miles were on the Tri-County Corridor.

Hot Cocoa Video

You may remember that last year I made a New Year's Resolution to drink less Hot Cocoa.  I was only to have it while out on a bike ride, heated over my woodstove (none of this heat-it-at-home-and-stick-it-in-a-thermos crap).  

We mix up all of our hot cocoa mix here at home.  It's roughly a 2:1 mix of sugar and cocoa powder.  (and I've found that adding a little milk makes it about 10 times as tasty).  It's appalling just how much sugar it takes to make a mug of cocoa, and since back in 2016 I was having a few mugs a day it was really adding up.  Plus it was getting expensive.

This year I've been less strict with myself than last but I still have most of my Hot Cocoa out on rides.  

I've taken some snippets of video out on those "Hot Cocoa Rides" and a few days back I edited them into a video I put on my Youtube channel.

Mayday, Deadfall Lifts, Fire, and Blueberries

For various reasons I hadn't ridden since the first of May when I went out for a ride yesterday.  The weather back on Mayday was a mix of snow and rain - snain for short.

Snain is the worst.  If it's cold, dry snow it doesn't stick much and brushes off when it does - and so a -10* ride is more comfortable than on one 45* warmer.  A warm rain is no problem, Captain Obvious has this to say about that, "you'll be wet but warm."  30-something degree rain is a whole different beast: if it's coming down hard you better put on your rain coat - but anything that's waterproof doesn't breath anywhere near fast enough to keep up with the sweat you're putting out even if you cut back on intensity alot.  So you're soaked - it's sorta warm from body heat but you also lose heat fast.  That sounds like no fun but if you don't put a raincoat on you already know what happens - you get soaked by the cold rain.  Body heat may keep you warm while you're riding but you lose heat fast.  I haven't yet found a good solution.  I'm curious to try a rain cape - anyone used one?  They look a bit dorky but if they keep you dry then that's worth it.  

I'm not particularly proud of it but I have to admit a little smugness in situations like these.  You can see in the bottom of the picture some tracks where an ATV had to turn around, unlike a bike, you can't just lift an ATV over a fallen tree.  Not that I'm too smug about it, there are many things ATVs do that bikes can't, but in a society that largely sees the limitation of bikes and not their potential, I'll take my victories where I can - even if I have to reach a bit.     

 The ride started off rather dreary (weatherwise) and so I decided before I left that this would be a hot cocoa ride - so I brought all the stuff for that - or thought I did.  I left the fuel for my stove on the kitchen table.  Whoops.  I do stuff like that.  Luckily for my hot cocoa consumption I had a woodburning stove and I was able to find a stick or two.

It has been rainy here for days or otherwise I could just use dry twigs - but since everything was wet I had to split the wood to get at the dry insides.  Perhaps I had subconsciously "forgotten" the wood to burn on purpose because I had inexplicably remembered to bring a knife and a saw - which is all I need to process wood for this stove.   

The stick that the knife is leaning against was my baton that I used the hit the back of the knife to force it through and split the wood.  

Batoning 

When I finished with drinking the hot cocoa I left my stove and setup to cool and hiked off up the hill to the north.  The trees here were fairly big and the walking was open and easy.  I hiked to the top of the hill, meaning to turn around there, but when I got there something a little farther on looked curious.  So I kept going and then when I got there there was something that looked curious a little farther on - and so on.  I ended up hiking a ways and took a few pictures on the way.  But mostly I just walked and appreciated the gorgeous spring day which had gone from dreary to sunny and beautiful.

These flowers mean that there will be blueberries here this summer.

Anyone know what this is?

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Another boring hot cocoa ride

"And I, for one, have this idea that constant exposure to the ordinary is good for the soul."

John Gierach

Most bike rides taken by anyone are run-of-the-mill.  Hell when it really comes down to it most of everything is run-of-the-mill.  In the above quote John Gierach was talking about fly-fishing.  And, as I see it, his point was this: There are the famous, big-name fly-fishing rivers - and while he talks about fishing those, the kind of fishing he loves best is the everyday stuff.  You can spend half a day (or much more) getting to a really hot river but if you're really into fishing like he is you've gotta scratch that itch much more often than you can if you were to only fish in the "good" places.  If you only have time to fish on your lunch break or a couple of hours Saturday morning you go to the place nearby.

He's talking about fishing but, of course, he could very easily be talking about biking, or hiking, actually he could be talking about a lot of stuff.

For the last 7 years we have been collecting and boiling our own maple syrup.  We've had an odd winter (remember the warm spell back in January that melted my bike trails?) and I have been keeping an eye on a couple of things: the weather, and if more experienced syrupers are talking about tapping their trees.  People were saying they had tapped some trees and they were running so I decided to put in 10 taps myself.  It was forecast to get above freezing this afternoon and I wanted to have the taps in before then.  But I knew the trails were probably going to be rock-hard and wanted to go for a ride before they thawed out (oh, and by the way - I had a hankering for some hot cocoa).  So I had a couple of hours window this morning.  So I had a short ride that was virtually all on the rail-trail Tri-County Corridor, set up my woodstove, boiled water, drank cocoa, and headed back home to work on getting taps in.

Was today's ride an epic ride that I will remember when I'm old and gray?  Of course not - truth be told not much happened and it was kind of "blah."  But it was a quick, enjoyable, ride that got fresh air in my lungs, and hot cocoa in my belly.  If I didn't think this was a good time I think I'd need therapy.  This was a hop-on-your-bike-and-ride-even-if-you-only-have-time-for-a-quickie ride.  This was an ordinary ride that was "good for the soul".  

Ever heard the saying, "I ride my bike to burn off the crazy"?  That might be a little extreme, I haven't been able to ride for extended times (nearly three years) and haven't gone crazy (unless you count Arrowhead, which, now that I think about it, is nudging crazy).  But the world just seems to spin truer when I ride.

Porcupine-chewed limbs of a sumac.

Melting, Freezing and Hot Cocoa

It was above freezing yesterday and it got got down below freezing last night.  So that meant that this morning the snowmobile trails were nice and solid and fast (or in my case you can go slow and look around and not work too hard) It's supposed to get into the mid 40s this afternoon.    So in the morning was the time to hop on the Krampug and roll.  I'm not exactly a morning person by nature but it was my turn (Jenny and I alternate days) to get our kid our kid on the bus - so I was actually up before the sun was fully up (not exactly a big feat this time of year).

I loaded up stuff for hot cocoa, snarfed down a few biscuits and hit the trail.

I've said it before: rail-trails are yawners but I'm not on this trail very long before turning off onto some more interesting trails.

From looking at today's forecast I saw that it was supposed to get into the mid 40's today, and so didn't want to go smoking' out on the rock solid trails only to have them melt and then struggle all the way home.  So I rode out maybe 45 mins and then turned around and went back to the stream crossing where it's nice for relaxing and drinking hot cocoa (and protected from the wind).

As before I parked my bike under the nice big white pine.

Look close at the base of the tree and you can see my bike peeking around

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