Aebleskiver Ride Update - TIME CHANGE!

The annual Aebleskiver Ride is on for this Saturday (July 18th)!

We will leave my house in Wakonda at 7:30am (a half hour later than originally posted).

For those riding from Vermillion, we will plan to meet on the corner of Highway 19 and 302nd Street at 8:00am. Let me know if your leaving from Vermillion and I'll give you my cell phone number so we don't miss each other on the road.

We'll have a quick stop in Centerville at the Cennex Convenience Store where Sue and friends will join us. We should be there by 8:30am. (Please note, if anyone from Sioux Falls wants to join us and 7:30 from Wakonda is too early for you, you have the option of starting and ending in Centerville.)

Then on to Viborg (10 miles from Centerville) for the Aebleskiver breakfast at the Methodist Church. The plan is to be there by 9:45am. The church ladies have been alerted but we need to make sure we don't hold them up so they miss the 10:30am parade.

Then on to Irene or if you prefer route option #2 - the scenic route which will take you past the hills near Marindahl Lake area, a herd of buffalo and a rusting tug boat on the prairie.

Final stop, my house in Wakonda for lunch and refreshments!

Here are the maps:

Aebleskiver Route; 42 miles

Aebleskiver Scenic Ride; 52 miles (no stop in Irene)

Aebleskiver Ride 2009

It is time for the 4th annual Aebleskiver Ride!
Saturday, July 18th
Leave my house at 7:00am sharp. 42 mile ride through Centerville, Viborg - where we'll have an aebleskiver breakfast, Irene, and back to Wakonda where we'll have post-ride food and refreshments at my house.
Everyone welcomed!
Here is a recap of the Aebleskiver Ride 2007 recap on Biking Brady's blog.

Commuting to Work by Bike - 25 Miles Each Way

First of all, I’m not a huge bike commuter, but for the last 3 years my goal has been to try to bike to work at least 5 times. Not a huge goal, but seems like the stars all have to be in perfect alignment in order for this to happen. With a little planning it is getting easier so I thought I would share how it works for me:

• Number one, I usually wait until the weather gets warm enough for the morning commute AND I have enough daylight.
• To contradict number one, it occured to me this year that there are ways around this. If it is too cold in the morning or too dark, I do have the option of riding the bike home from work. I drive to work in the morning with my bike on the bike rack and ride home. The next morning I catch a ride to work with someone. This is possible since it seems half the population of Wakonda works at USD. This year we had a snap of warm weather in March so I used that chance to ride my new Bike Friday home. I usually don’t get any commuting miles in that early!
• If I wait until there is a day when the weather forecast is perfect, the bike commute will never happen. My philosophy now is if the weather looks good in the morning, go for it. Those forecast of scattered thunderstorms are so hit and miss that I’ll take the chance and ride anyway. If it is looking stormy about the time I leave work or if the wind is gusting over 20 mph and I don’t want to deal with it, again, I call someone who works at USD and lives in Wakonda for a ride home.
• Have an extra gym bag at work with work clothes, hairdryer, make-up, etc. I am very fortunate to have a locker room in our new building with showers. But before that I would have baby wipes in my bag and they were okay for cleaning up after a morning commute. Unless I have something special going on, I skip the make-up and blow drying my hair when I get to work.
• The time goes much faster on the 1 1/2 hour commute if I have some music. I have the iHome bike speaker for my iPod that goes into a water bottle cage that I love. Or sometimes I like to listen to the news on my way to work, I have a cheap mp3 player with a radio band, I just put in one ear bud and listen to that.

My personal reasons for bike commuting:
• Besides the typical reasons of doing something good for the planet, etc., one of the main reasons I bike commute is because it is a great way to get in some decent miles of riding in on a weekday while being able to hangout with my husband in the evening.

Okay, now I’m wondering why I don’t commute more often by bike!

Tour De Kota Dog Update

Remember that dog, a cross between a basset and a beagle, on the first day of TDK that seemed to show up at every rest stop on the last half of the ride? I first saw the dog between Dalesburg and Volin, a merry little hound running in the road ditches along side the riders. I thought it was odd since I ride in this area OFTEN, as we were only about 6 miles from my house at the time, and I have NEVER seen this dog. I thought I knew all the dogs by name within a 20 mile radius of Wakonda!

We get to Volin and are taking a break and the dog shows up and the same thing happens again at Mission Hill. Now we know the dog has probably wandered off far from home. We check for dog tags and there are none. Melissa being very conscientious is trying to think of what to do to get the dog back to his owner; she’s talking to the local 4-H group putting on the rest stop at Mission Hill about someone taking the dog so it doesn’t follow the riders all the way to Yankton, she’s wondering if we should call the Yankton dog pound, etc. Since the dog has no tags it made it very difficult to try to locate the owner and I was hoping the dog would tire of this game and eventually go home.

To tell you the truth I didn’t think much more about the dog until this weekend my daughter told me some friends of theirs lost their dog “Bagel,” a beagle/basset mix, when TDK came through the area. Bagel, being the hound he is, has had a history of occasionally taking off on a scent and staying away overnight. This time he was gone for a few days. But luckily this story has a happy ending, somehow the owners found out their dog was at the Yankton pound and he was safely returned home. Bagel had gone all the way to Yankton with the riders…..about a 20 mile trip for him. I’m still not sure how he connected with the riders since he lives 3 miles off of the TDK first day route, maybe he is part blood hound too! I hope Bagel’s owners get him some tags.

Tugboat and Buffalo Stampede

This post was inspired by Tez’s recent posting on her blog: Bonus Spotting of the Things You See Commuting. I wasn’t commuting but I saw some interesting things on my last bike ride that I thought I would share……you can guess what these things were by the title of my post but please allow me to explain.

I took Thursday off of work for a mini-family reunion of a couple of my aunts and uncles and cousins in Norfolk. I was riding there with my cousin’s wife and aunt and uncle from Sioux Falls and they planned to pick me up around 10am. So I thought I would get in an early morning bike ride before we left!

My route took me up Talmo Hill, a descent hill just 4 miles from my house. I've noticed that anytime the local people have given a hill a name, then be forewarned, it is a descent hill. Once I turned north the route continued with a climb broken up with a few rollers, but mainly a climb for about 5 miles. Once I reached a rural water tower in the middle of no-where I knew I had reached the highest elevation in this area! The rest of the ride was a lot of rollers and then a lovely downhill ride with a good west wind to my back for the last 3 miles back home to Wakonda.

The scenery on this ride is beautiful; hills generally make for great scenery. But my “bonus spottings,” as Tez would say, were the tugboat and the buffalo.

This route goes by a graveyard for old combines, farm machinery, and other junk, but front and center is a good sized tugboat rusting in the high prairie grass. The waves of grass blowing in the wind probably give the boat the sense that it is still on the water doing it’s job!

Since I haven’t ridden this route for awhile so I was wondering if I would see the buffalo again and yes I wan't disappointed! I came down a hill and the herd was huddled in the corner of the pasture nearest to the road. As I started riding up the hill that bordered their pasture I looked over at the buffalo and there was a moment when I made direct eye contact with the largest of the herd. The next thing I know they all start stampeding along the fence line! Crazy thoughts are flying through my head; How strong is that fence? Buffalo must not like eye contact? Buffalo like to race cyclists? I was worried about the farm with the dogs, I didn’t think I had to worry about a buffalo attack??? Will dog spray stop a buffalo? I don’t think I have enough dog spray!!!

I am quite sure that was my fastest sprint up a hill. I kept looking over to see if the buffalo were coming through the fence, I’m sure they could’ve if they really wanted to. Eventually I gained speed over the adult buffalo and only the calves continued the race and I started to relax.

It definitely wasn’t a boring ride! Next winter when I'm in spin class the instructor says "sprint like your being chased by a dog!" I'll be thinking to myself "sprint like you're being chased by a herd of buffalo!"

I will definitely ride the route again but next time I’m not going to give any eye contact when I go by the buffalo.