City adventure

Biked around Minneapolis with my friend Stephen. It was our first really nice day this year - 50's and mostly sunny.

We started our adventure at Macy's flower show. It was beautiful. The theme is of India. The color coordination was magical.

From downtown we road across the river to St Anthony Main and Wilde Roast. I had a coffee and danish.

We then went 'deeper' into nordeast as it is called. We were looking for the 612 Brew Pub. In our search we found the even newer Indeed Brewer. We didn't stop but did get more directions.

This part if northeast Minneapolis has lots.of art galleries. We stopped at Roselux Gallery. Most of the oil paintings looked like bicycles to me. I guess I was influenced by our transportation.

We did finally find 612 nearly tucked under Broadway and Central. The place was packed. I tried a dark IPA that was quite tasty.

From Northeast we headed to Uptown. I was tired and Stephen had mire plans for the evening. On the Cedar-Isles bike path we passed the Minneapolis mayor and his wife also biking.

Grabbed a burger at While Foods the me to home and Stephen to back downtown.  It was a great bike day.

Up north adventures

Spent a great three-day weekend with Jenny at her and Andrews cabin in northern Minnesota.  It is a five hour drive from Minneapolis and I wanted to get up to the cabin early and especially in daylight. I woke up Friday at 3:30am and decided it was go now or fall asleep and end up leaving late in the morning. I called Jenny at 4am and asked if she'd be ready in half an hour. She agreed and we got started out of Minneapolis by 5am.  Best of all we made it to the cabin by 10am and had the entire day ahead of us.

There was a great deal of controversy about the plowing (or not) of the Gust Lake road where Jenny and Andrew's cabin is located. I won't go into all of that but Jeff, the plow guy, had just arrived the same time we did.  Jenny and I parked on the main road and started the trek down the un-plowed road to the cabin.

Jenny and I got the cabin open, fire started, solar panels turned on, and water pump on.  We headed back to the truck to load up our stuff on the sled to drag in. Plowman Jeff had a good portion of the road already cleared but we didn't want to wait. We got our supplies loaded and sledded back to the cabin.

Jenny prepared her tasty sopa de lima soup while we waited for Jeff to finish clearing the road.  Once Jeff finished we thanked him. Jenny offered him hot chocolate or a soda but he declined as he had other private roads to clear.

We put on snowshoes and trekked into the woods.  Jenny and Andrew keep a critter cam way back in their property. We headed up the hill to the camera to switch out the memory card and so we could look at what had been caught on it.

The snow was not super deep but it had been several weeks and snows since anyone had been on the trail. We were snowshoeing through all fresh snow. It was a good workout.

Back at the cabin we had the soup and some not so good red wine that I brought. It was still light out so we drove down to Lake Crescent for some more snowshoeing.  Even after a super early start and all the exercise, we were up until 10pm talking.

Saturday we went downhill skiing at Lutsen Ski Resort. It is just a few miles from the cabin. We dodged a speeding ticket on the Caribou Trail road.. There is more to that story.

On the way we saw an enormous bird in the distance. Using Jenny's telephoto camera we could see that it was a really big owl. We put on the snowshoes thinking we could get closer. The owl was long gone by the time we got the shoes on. We decided to trek in anyways.

The skiing was fantastic. We skied all the mountain trails. There were no long lines. The temperature was mid 20's and no wind. The sun came out near the end making the views of Lake Superior even more amazing.

From Lutsen we drove to Grand Marais. It was about 5pm and neither of us were that hungry. We had excellent hot chocolate and bread pudding at the Blue Cove Cafe. Then back to the cabin. We were hoping to see a moose. With our luck on the ticket and the fantastic skiing and the owl sighting, we were feeling pretty good about seeing a moose...we didn't. It was still such a wonderful day.

Sunday we did some more snowshoeing behind the cabin before heading home.   I cannot thank Jenny and Andrew enough for sharing their cabin with me.

The truck demonstrating the snowdrift height.

Jenny and I snowshoeing at Crescent Lake.

Jenny, the stylish snowshoer.

Happy Birthday, Frankie

Frankie turned 12 years old today. He is doing great for an old man.

His papa and sister, Uno, love him very much

Frozen tundra

That is the backyard after another blast of snow and today it is super cold again. Someone said spring starts tomorrow. Ain't gonna happen in Minnesota.

I guess it all works out though. Jenny and I are going up north to the cabin and we are planning on skiing at Lutsen. We should have real good conditions.

Roger Federer's in the house

I came home this morning from coffee to this greeting from Roger Federer thanks to Bunny and Amy.
Awesome friends!
And yes he is life size (or bigger) and super handsome.

Chili cook off

Michael invited us to his home brewing groups chili cook off. There were eleven different chili concoctions. From white bean and chicken to traditional beef with red beans and spicy.  End the end a white chili won...not the one I was voting for.
There was also plenty of home brewed beers, meads and ciders.  It was a lot if food and beer to taste.

Michael with the chili winner.

Jennifer and Amy enjoying home brew (Amy) and chili.

Another St. Patrick themed run

My trainer Kaitlin joined me for the Lucky7 7k in downtown Minneapolis.  It was in the low 20's and snowed last night. The course was icy and very slippery. Nonetheless I had a really good time.

I finished 15 out of 218 in my age group 50-59. That is top 7%. I'm really happy with that stat.  428 out of 9797 runners.

100% Irish for a Day 5k

It was wet but not raining. A lot of jumping over, around and through water puddles.
Tracy and I won prizes for our costumes which we owe to Trish.
Wonderful brunch followed with bloody mary's at Cafeteria.

March snow

Thought I better get this posted before the next storm arrives this weekend. We ended up with almost 8 inches according to the news.

This picture is of the cancer memorial in front of the office building where I work. It was a fairly wet snow that stuck to everything.

The weekend forecast is for a bit of everything -- rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, cats, dogs, locust...

Kay Winter Polar Plunge

My friend Kay participated in a polar plunge today to support Special Olympics. I was honored to be one of her supporters.  Amy and I walked over from first coffee at Gigi's Cafe to watch the plunge.  Somehow we missed her jump into the freezing Lake Calhoun.

It was a beautiful sunny day and even though it was in the 20's, the sun and no wind made it a comfortable day.

The George Washington's -- costume prize winners.

Amy and I in front of the pee wee plunge tent.

Kay after her plunge...dry and warm.