Wisconsin wrap-up

Long ice beard in Weyerhauser with Blue Hills I had just ridden through in the background. The beard is frozen breath, whereas the mustache is frozen snot (I had nasal congestion issues all week).
Kristine caught up to me near the very end of the ride and got this pic as we were pulling into Weyerhauser.

We’ve been back in Alabama for a couple weeks now, but I still have photos and videos from one last ride in Wisconsin. Perfect timing for me to finish up this post as we are under a winter storm warning today for a couple inches of snow and ice here in Birmingham. Back up in Wisconsin on January 2nd, my first ride of 2013, I left Kristine’s parents’ house in Shell Lake and rode about 65 mile southeast down to Weyerhauser, Wisconsin through the Blue Hills outside of Rice Lake. This was the coldest ride of the trip with an average temperature of 10 degF. I started pretty early in the day, and it snowed the whole time with most of the ride into a stiff headwind. The snow was just beautiful as it was falling, and especially up on top of Meteor Hill – the high point in the Blue Hills. See this video I took of the snow shortly before descending off of Meteor Hill.

Even though the temp had warmed up a bit by the top of Meteor Hill — maybe 12 degrees or so – this was still the coldest part of the trip because I stopped for a while at the top and took too long of a video (the one above) with my gloves off. Then once I started again, I was on really deep, rutted snow on a long gradual downhill. This meant that I spent a lot of time braking instead of pedaling and generating body heat. Plus, the area was really rural so it would not have been good to have any kind of accident so I was especially slow and careful, which meant my heartrate stayed around 100bpm for 9 miles on the long gradual descent. This meant I was VERY, VERY cold by the bottom. Fortunately, this dumped me out onto a good hilly Co Rd F right through the heart of the Blue Hills where I could warm back up again by going hard. All-in-all I think this was the best ride of the trip.

Here are some of the bikecam videos I got — ordered with my favorite ones first.

Frozen lake adventures and snow bike sledding

Yesterday was our last day at the cabin, so Kristine, Papa Dale, and the kids went for one last ski/skate on the lake. They were following a huge eagle around the lake, and I got pictures of his footprints later when I went out to check out the ice fishing with Kristine. I was planning on a good ride back home to Shell Lake, but first I wanted to do some more snow bike sled racing with the kids, and I also wanted to ride on the lake. Here’s a short bikecam video of me biking up the sled hill:

I’ve got another bikecam video riding across the frozen lake and then snow bike sled racing with the kids. It’s taking forever to upload so I will link to it here later.

After the kids were ready to go, I headed out the back way out of the resort area and ended up on Co Rd F. Good hills on the way out to F and then on F itself. I took F to Co Rd K, which also had some good long hills. Down at Co Rd A, I turned right to climb up and over the Spooner High School hill. On my way back over the hill, I saw a huge eagle glide across the road up in the distance. Later in the ride, I saw two more eagles and wild turkeys.

I ended the ride reversing a route I took back in 2005 when I got lost in the fog on the lake. That was quite an adventure, although even on a perfectly clear cold day with foot thick ice and pick-up trucks driving out onto the ice, it is still disconcerting to ride across sections of bare ice looking into deep dark frozen water so far from the shore. Check out the map zoomed in of my route up at the cabin and then also across Shell Lake.

Here’s a short iphone video from the middle of the lake:

Frozen lake riding and snow bike sled racing at the beginning of the ride

Long route across a frozen Shell Lake at the end of my ride

Two Garmin screenshots pieced together to get my route through the lake

Annotated ski tracks – Josiah’s ice skates, “Boots the dog” dog tracks, Kristine’s ski tracks, and Analise’s ski tracks

Auger for drilling ice fishing holes

Keeping an ice fishing hole open (simply scoop out some water every few minutes)

Eagle tracks around and inside ice fishing hole

Nasty large snotcicle and beardcicles

Frozen snotcicle and beardcicles from the side

Lake 26 road to Minnesota

Today’s ride was really great … lots of fast snow and rolling hills. Frog Lake Road was perhaps the most rural road with some long stretches of untouched snow. But the highlight road was Lake 26 road which basically paralleled WI-77 for a good 15 miles heading west towards Minnesota. There was a good steady light snowfall throughout the day, but only a couple sketchy spots where a layer of ice covered the road. I’m still learning how to use my new contour camera, but I got some videos that I was really happy with — only have time to post one … see it below the brief pic gallery.

Beautiful snowy frog lake rd

At the intersection of Lake 26 and Loon Creek

Long beardcicles – no frozen snot

Long beardcicles including frozen snot

Sweet Home Alabama

Slushy road and huge snow drifts - can you tell which way the wind is blowing from?

It was an awesome trip to the midwest to visit Kristine’s family and enjoy a brief winter vacation, but now it’s back home to sweet home Alabama. Our long road back home started with a 9 hour drive from Shell Lake, WI to La Porte, IN. We went right by Madison, WI where cyclocross nationals is currently being held. It felt weird to be simply driving by such a major cycling event without stopping, but we had to get the kids back for school. There was no snow at all in Madison or anywhere in southern Wisconsin even though we had just left an 8 inch snowstorm in northern Wisconsin. There was also no snow in Illinois, but shortly after crossing the border into Indiana we ran into a pretty big lake effect snowstorm.

We finished the drive pretty slowly on snow covered roads, but made it safely to Kristine’s grandmother’s house in La Porte. It was 11PM and the kids had been sleeping for a while so Kristine went in with Analise first while I took a few pictures of the snow with Josiah still asleep in the car. It was very cold so I only took pictures for a minute and by then Josiah had woken up. So I helped him get his coat and boots on and told him to run to the front door while I got the suitcase we needed. A few seconds later I entered the house and Kristine asked where Josiah was? I thought she was joking at first and then thought he must have gone straight into the bedroom or bathroom. We looked briefly in the house and after not finding him ran back outside calling out for him. I ended up following his footprints in the snow to find him standing in front of the door of the house two doors down from Grandma Vivian’s. It gave us all a big scare for a minute because it was really cold and the wind was blowing 20+mph steady with higher gusts. I guess Josiah was still half asleep!

The next morning we had a 12 hour drive in front of us. I started about 2 hours early on my bike heading south hoping to make it 60 or 70 miles with a nice tailwind, but during the night the wind had changed direction so that is was a nasty side/headwind. I averaged 15mph on very flat roads to give you an idea of the nastiness of the wind. When I left La Porte, I had to negotiate about 1/2 mile of unplowed roads before making it to the state highway which was still slushy and wet, but at least had two clear tracks between the snow. I knew that this wouldn’t last long so I rode my road bike fishtailing through the snow for that first half-mile. Then it was just really wet with an air temp of 15 degF and a constant 15+mph sidewind. This was by far the coldest ride I did during our trip. Also, because of the slow speed I was traveling I didn’t get a chance to make it through the flatlands to the nice hills around the Wabash river basin. Instead, I took Kristine on a drive through those same roads that I would have been riding. There was some really fun hills and drop-offs in the car. The kids loved it!

Here are a couple Garmin screenshots that illustrate how flat the ride was that I did.

Side by side comparison of a flat ride through the farmlands south of La Porte and a small portion of my commute into work yesterday back here in Birmingham. Note the 15.5 degF temp on the left, 7.85 miles into the ride with only 81' of climbing. On the right, I already had 699' of climbing only 3.9 miles into the ride, which was almost the total amount of climbing in my 43 mile ride in Indiana (710').

Lake effect snowstorm in La Porte, IN

Josiah footprints heading the wrong way in the lake effect snowstorm.

Deep snow in the backyard

The front yard after snowblowing the sidewalk.

Snowplow dump truck – the lake effect snow and salt made for some really slushy roads

Deep snow in one of the forests just south of La Porte before hitting the really flat farmlands

Slushy road and huge snow drifts – can you tell which way the wind is blowing from?

Ice surrounding trees – there was one section where the ice spread out pretty wide and the wind had blown away most of the snow so that it looked like you could have a fun game of ice skating trying to avoid all the trees.

A bike path alongside the railroad tracks near North Judson, IN. This is about 20 miles south of La Porte, and note that there is no snow here at all.

No snow, but a pretty landscape wherever the land hasn’t been cleared for farming.

I made the mistake of filling up my bottles with cold gatorade when I left La Porte. They had both frozen into gatorade ice by the time I made it to North Judson about 20 miles into the ride. So at this gas station, I filled up my bottle with a coffee/hot chocolate mix. It started out hot, but 20 miles later it was like drinking an iced mocha.

Kristine snapped this picture of me when she caught up to me about 43 miles south of La Porte. She had given me a 2 hour head start, but I was moving pretty slow with the nasty sidewind.

Dirty bike covered in salt and mud.

It took some creative arranging to get everything into the back of the escape. For a minute, I thought I might be riding home to Alabama!

Here is a round barn that we passed on our rural drive south towards the interstate.

Cold and Icy Double Oak Mountain

Great ride today – very cold though! I climbed up Double Oak Mountain to see if there was more snow and ice up near the top because of the elevation difference. I was surprised to find trees sagging under the weight of a lot of ice. I think we dodged a bullet here in Birmingham with what could have been a terrible ice storm!

Double Oak loop icy ride

Cold temperature – look at the temperature dip because of the elevation and ice/snow cover on top of Double Oak Mountain

Garmin statistics – small problem with regards to daylight

Beautiful icy sunset from the top of Double Oak Mountain

The Double Oak roller coaster section with icy roads and bent over trees from the weight of the ice