Tempus Fugit

It is looking like there will be a second trip to do some mountain biking on the MDH trail in 2010! A tentative date of Sept 18-19 has been suggested and this also might be the largest group ever. I hope the Ranch is up for this.

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Eric & Doug chomping at the bit
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo

It’s early. Some are still trying to sleep. But the keeners in the room next door are up and revving up the bikes in the parking lot. I think they slept in their cycling gear. As the ranch is not fully open for the season yet, there is nobody in the restaurant so breakfast is a combination of bars, fruit and miscellaneous snack food left over from yesterday, a truly healthy way to start the day.

With everybody roused out of bed, bikes checked, water loaded we’re off, heading north on the Buffalo Gap Trail. Our goal, to see how close we can get to where the BGT intersects the MDH. A couple of miles down the trail, I’m having mechanical problems with my bike. After a consult with Daniel, our senior bike mechanic on the trip, he diagnosis it as a chain link that is damaged and sticking. After a quick repair were once again roaring down the trail.

By Big Dadoo

It seems rather quickly we’ve crossed the creek that marked our farthest distance on the Sunday 2009 trip and it seems lake a good time to stop for a mid-morning snack. We power on after the break and enjoy the new scenery and are having great fun on the trail. Well, I am any way. I couple of guys are feeling the pain that was inflicted yesterday and are taking a more “relaxed” approach to the day. If you look very closely at this picture you can see them while some of us are further up the trail. We need to get on the road back to Winnipeg so we’re watching our ride time and have planned a 2 hours out, and 2 hours back, but we stretched that a bit because everybody kept on saying “lets just go over there to that next marker”.

By Big Dadoo

Eventually, we call it quits and turn around an head back to the Ranch. Doug is off trying to catch Josh and Elijah who have at least a 3-4 mile head start, Danial and Scott set a fast and steady pace, and Eric and I enjoy the ride back together stopping to take pictures and enjoy the scenery and a beautiful afternoon. At one point on the ride back I had a very clear and special thought as I watched the riders ahead, that this is “the best of days”. I hope to hold on to that memory for a very long time.

Back at the ranch, so to speak, we shower up, pack up,  and enjoy another round of steak dinners while discussing the days ride. In another 9 hours more or less with a few stops for gas and food, where back in Winnipeg. I think everybody is looking forward to possible the first ever 2nd trip to the MDH and the same year this fall. In fact, we may have booked that ranch already. 

In just under a week I’ll be heading off to ride the MDH trail in North Dakota with the boys. For many years we made an annual trip to ride this outstanding single track trail, but this will be the first time since 2005.

I’ve been taking with some of the guys and everybody is getting pretty excited about the trip. Its quite the action packed weekend with a 9 hour drive thru the night, breakfast at 4am, a brief nap in the vehicles until the sun comes up and then all day riding!
I think we’ll be riding the northern section and taking in some near by trails on Saturday. Sunday we’ll ride for half a day in the Buffalo Gap area. As some would say, it should be GTs. I’m looking forward to it.

Decked out
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo

Friday night we picked up a U Haul trailer and loaded up a king size bed and some other stuff for a quick delivery trip to the lake. Strangely, the U-Haul folks we not to willing to rent the trailer for two days, so we compressed the trip down to 24 hours of extreme trailering.

By the time we were ready to go it was 8pm. After picking up some dinner at A&W where their lightning fast service didn’t exactly help us get underway any faster. The drive down was a little sketchy from time to time as it was snowing and the temperature was around -1° so there was some snow in the passing lane and a little ice from time to time. It had to be a little bad because we came up behind several different semi-trailers that were doing 60kph. Oh yeah, and then there was the big buck that crossed the highway right in front of us. No biggie, he made it and so did we.

After arriving we lit a fire in the fireplace and huddled under a blanket while watching a couple of episodes of House. The next morning it was quite white outside. Winter has arrived and only a few short days ago it was much warmer.

Towing the trailer really put a hit on the gas mileage but on the way home we tanked up a .884/l the lowest price in many many months.

After breakfast we unloaded the new king size bed and loaded up two ancient singles destined for the dump later in the day. Then we quickly tidied up the cottage, antifreeze the plumbing and hit the road again as we needed to get the trailer back by 6pm.  After a quick stop for gas in Falcon and again at Prawda (did I mention pulling the trailer is hard on gas?) we’re back in Winnipeg picking up some stuff from the house for a trip to the dump. After the dump, Windsor Plywood to pick up some 14′ baseboards, bending them to fit in the trailer. That’s right after 8 years, we’re getting baseboards. Drop the baseboards off at home, drop some stuff off at Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and drop the trailer back at U-Haul. Phey, having the trailer off the truck is quite a relief. Then back home for a quiet night. That’s enought driving for one day.

We’re safe and sound back at the hotel packing up for the trip back to Winnipeg but the hike yesterday was an adventure of a life time. While I didn’t make it to the summit by choice, it was still an amazing day as I climbed to about 10,000 vertical feet from a start in about 5,000. We experienced a great climb up the trail, some very scary scrambling up some very steep loose rock, a 20′ vertical climb without ropes, touched snow in August, watched a helicopter rescuce, sat out a rain and hail storm at 10,000, belayed down a 40′ vertical face assisted by Brian, a mountain rescue worker, and the group who made the summit were walking around in an electrically charged cloud getting shocked and dumping all their metal gear like ice axes and trekking poles and everybody hiked out for several hours in a very close thunderstorm getting quite soaked. Other that that it was a rather uneventful day.

It was quite a crazy experience with a lot of exciting memories and lessons learned. More later with photos of the rescue and some great scenic shots of the mountains and our group.

I’m at the Toronto airport enjoying a little free wi-fi courtesy of Cisco, unlike the Toronto Sheraton who is charging outrageous daily rates for internet access. They should really get with the program. Many lower end hotels all over North America have free wi-fi and yet many of the upscale hotels think they can still gouge the consumer. If it wasn’t the conference hotel, I’d have stayed elsewhere.

Speaking of the conference, this years IBM blueHorizon’s 2 day educational event was one of the best I’ve attended in some time. THere were better sessions and more choices that ever. I hears someone say that there were 21 simultaneous presentations going on over the last two days across multiple streams. It was a great learning event.

I’ve almost recovered from the sunburn gained while walking along the harbour front for all day on Sunday, and my calves have almost recovered as well. The true test will be on the next bike ride to see how well the legs hold up. The long walk had an alternate purpose as the beginning of training for a couple of days of mountain hiking in Banff this summer. The main hike will start at an elevation of 5,000 feet and climb to a mountain summit at 11,000 feet. Hey, don’t you need oxygen at over 10,000? While I will have had a solid 2+ months of cycling by that time I think I’ll throw in some extending walking to get the rest of the muscle groups ready to go. I hear they leave the injured and stragglers behind, and it is grizzly country.

I’m looking forward to being home, see you soon.

So much for the intention of blogging something every day. What happened to Day 2?

Not much to report from TO., except a warning about taxi drivers. Since we don’t have a car on this trip we’ve been cabbing it the short trip from the hotel to the Agfa office. The trip can be anywhere from $7.25 to $10.00. Why the discrepancy? It’s cell phones. The guy with the high price ride was so busy talking on the radio and the cell phone and oh yeah, and spending a few brain cycles on driving in heavy rush hour traffic, that he forgot where we were going and had to be reminded several timers, especially after he made a couple of wrong turns. Hey there are only 3 turns between the office and hotel.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in Toronto on business but this afternoon I flew in for four days of education with Agfa for a project I’m working on with two other team members.  The flight down on Westjet was uneventful except for the guy in the middle seat who thought he owned the armrest and couldn’t figure out why the TV control buttons were not doing anything for his screen, while mine was flipping channels like a bandit. He even tried it twice, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him what was wrong. Guys that technically challenged probably shouldn’t watch any more TV. I slept off and on and listened to a couple of podcasts to pass the time.

After a long wait in a taxi line and a short ride we’re at the hotel. We’re staying at the Radisson Airport and the rooms are quite nice and we hit the local Kelsey’s for dinner. Over dinner I got to know my team mates a little better as they are both new on the project and work on different areas that I do. Now I’m back in the room watching a little TV, without any help from my seat mate! It’s warmer that Winnipeg at +4, but raining. No matter, we’re stuck at the hotel without a car, so It will most likely be work and sleep for most of the week.

Radisson’s have sleep number beds, so I’ll get to check it out for a few days. Since we’re looking at a new bed for home and I know somebody who can get me a great deal on a bed!

It’s interesting how memory works.

When I was about 12 my parents took my sister and I on a fabulous road trip to New York City and Washington, D.C.  It was quite a memorable experience. Lately I’ve been thinking about one of the stops we made on this epic trip.

As part of the trip we spend several days on Mackinac Island. This portion of the trip was a GWL convention location for my dad and as kids we were all over the place with pretty much unlimited access to food & fun. The strange part is that all these years I thought the island was in Canada! Well, not so. Its an island in the Great Lakes but clearly in U.S. waters close to where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron join, and the Mackinac bridge spans the water with the worlds third longest suspension bridge.

We stayed at The Grand Hotel and had a great time. After looking at some of the website and remembering the fun I had as a child, I think I’ll put this on our “must visit” destination list. I’m not sure we’ll be staying at The Grand at $330+ US/night, but somewhere on the island. And for sure we’ll being the bikes, as no cars are allowed, very cool. Just bikes, hourses & walking. That will slow you right down.

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