closed side of the parkway

It's a tough ride but totally worth it.

pick your own

Blueberries! Last year I was introduced to the goodness of fresh picked blueberries, which in no way resemble those mushy, tasteless things you get in the store for about a million dollars a pint. This year, mom and I headed to Blueberry Hill Farm (right next to Norris, so take your bike) and picked until our fingers turned blue.

Green Thumb

guttertree, originally uploaded by girlysteiner.

I have to assume that it is a bad thing to have little baby trees growing in the gutter. Sorry, little baby trees; you're gettin' the boot!

view from the road

And now, a view OF the road...

Uhhh. Take that people driving in your cars, trying to get somewhere. Ain't happenin' today.
For the record, we walked right through and continued on our ride in the hilliest place on earth...Powell.

Lumberjack'd

4 laps of a 25 mile twisty, sandy, not so technical trail looked a little something like this:
lap 1 : 2hrs 22min - feelin' good
lap 2 : 2hrs 24min - feelin' good
lap 3 : 2hrs 36min - gettin' tired, starting to cramp a bit, where'd my water go?
lap 4 : 3hrs 9min - first 17 gettin' by, cramping at times. last 8 miles - DEATH

I'm pretty sure the death was caused by two things: 1) the decision to ride the single speed that hangs in the garage and never gets to see the light of day and 2) my profuse amount of sweating had caused me to turn into a salt-sicle by the end of the third lap.

If you don't consider that whole death thing, the weekend was actually pretty nice. The weather was good, the trails were good, the drive up wasn't bad, nobody had to go to the hospital, and we weren't eaten alive by skeeters. (To ensure the skeeters stayed at bay, we picked up the most potent bug spray we could find at the local K-mart.)

and just for fun, a list of all of the body parts that cramped during the race:
1) Calves
2) weird little muscle that runs along the outside of the lower leg near the ankle
3) both forearms
4) lower back
5) left shoulder
6) hands
7) right adductor (owww)

So that's the official end to big, long, painful races for the year. Will I do any of these next year? Hmmm. We'll see.

manistee, mi

One week until the Lumberjack 100 and we have not secured a place to stay. Problem? Yeah, probably. Maybe the mosquitoes have some extra room.

blooms

Hello pretty flowers in my yard

From mccalley.blogspot.com