A very cold adventure

Welcome to Wisconsin – when we made a gas / food stop at the Wisconsin dells at 5 in the morning, the temp had fallen to 12 degF. Eventually it would bottom out at -2 degF.

We are in cold, snowy Wisconsin after twenty hours of driving. The temperature fell from 50s degF in Alabama when we left to -2 degF by the time we arrived in Shell Lake. But the coldest I felt all day was at the end of my six hour ride to Cullman where Kristine was picking me up on our way to Wisconsin. It had started to rain hard at the bottom of Skyball Mountain and never let up in the final 26 miles of the nearly 100 mile route I took from my house to downtown Cullman. When Kristine met me, I was shivering uncontrollably and huddled behind a pillar to block the wind, which had fortunately been mostly a tailwind while I was still riding but immediately sent my core body temp plummeting as soon as I stopped riding.

My day started out early leaving my house shortly after 7AM to put in my Strava Shoot-out KOM effort on Vestavia Dr. After a long week of riding and only one day of rest, I didn’t know how it would go, but I ended up setting a new power record in the process of setting the KOM. I held just under 360 watts for the 11.5 minute climb (see graph below).

The ride highlight for me, though, was discovering a super steep climb (possibly the steepest in Alabama) back in the Emerald Lakes neighborhood. It’s one of the only times I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it up a climb due to the severity of the gradient. Unfortunately, the GPS data from my Garmin was erased in the monsoon thunderstorm that hit at the bottom of Skyball mountain. The first video below documents one of the steep sections of the Emerald lake backside climb. The second video documents the status of my Garmin after it had unexpectedly powered down. I was able to power it back up, but the GPS data was gone for a majority of the ride.

Despite the GPS fail and the hypothermia at the end, it was still a great ride, and I’m super motivated to repeat the first part of the ride out to Skyball and back as soon as we make it back to Alabama so I can get the data on the Emerald Lakes backside climb. The kids were already skiing around the house this afternoon after we got a little bit of sleep, and they have a 1K kids ski race tomorrow in Spooner. Should be fun!

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.

83 miles of epic snow biking

Beautiful winter scene - Imagine 9 miles of riding on a snowy road through pristine winter wilderness. That was the first 9 miles of my ride!

Another amazing day of riding up here. This time I braved the snow-covered roads leaving the Telemark resort having gained confidence riding in the snow yesterday for a mile or so. It was well worth it to be in such a remote location on winding, hilly, beautiful roads and trails that pretty much paralleled the Birkie trail all the way to Hayward. If I had done the Seely fire tower climb, then I might have even crossed part of the trail. But, unfortunately, I had to turn around shortly into my ride because I had forgotten to upload the course to my Garmin. So, I turned around and headed back to meet Kristine just as she and the kids were driving out to head back to Shell Lake. Right there on the side of the Telemark entrance road, I connected my Garmin to the laptop and transferred the file. Then I set off again on what was an 83 mile, 5+ hour, mountain bike adventure.

I spent most of the morning with a good internet connection while the kids went skiing again with Kristine and Poppa Dale. I plotted out a course that would take me from Telemark back to the Cardwell house in Shell Lake over an hour away by car. The course took me onto 9 miles of untreated snow covered roads and trails behind Telemark that were just amazing and fun to ride. Spider Lake Fire Lane started out well packed from cars driving out to cabins along the road. But eventually, once I made it past the last cabin, the snow got really deep and loose since not very many cars had driven over it. Still, it was possible to go slow on the downhills with minimal fishtailing and then crush the uphills. I would imagine that my speed on some of the uphills was faster than the downhills. It’s amazing what the extra traction of a spinning tire will do. Theoretically, I suppose you could hammer the downhills and achieve the same effect but the consequences of a fall at 30+mph make me choose the more saner option of riding the rear brake gently down the hill at a comfortable 10-15mph.

For those of you who have ridden through sand, but never ridden through snow, think of packed snow the same way you would think of packed/wet sand. Loose snow, however, is just like riding through loose sand with the same fishtailing effects. The only difference is that you are expecting the fishtailing in the sand, but not on the snow when it has been hard packed and suddenly transitions to loose or when you lose the car track you were following. Also, turning on the snow is tricky. On one downhill, I was running out of room for the turn and ended up all the way on the side of the road – but it was pretty heavily banked and I ended up sliding through the turn with my wheel still pointed off to the side. This got to me to a straighter section where I could straighten out the wheel.

I only had one bike problem on the ride, when I couldn’t shift back into the big chainring. I spent a few minutes about an hour into my ride trying to figure out what was wrong and eventually just cranked the inside limiting screw until it would shift back up and that worked for the rest of the ride although I had quite a bit of chain rub on the front derailleur so that was a little annoying to have to put up with for four hours.

Here’s the ride map and interactive data from Strava -
http://app.strava.com/rides/2982931

And here is the super hi-res topocreator map -

Telemark to Shell Lake via Meteor Hill - click on the map for a super hi-res version (13MB)

Finally, enjoy the pics and Garmin screenshots that I took on the ride –

High school ski team – If you look through the trees near the center of the picture, you can see the red jackets of a high school team skiing during their winter camp.

New snow – We had about an inch of new snow fall while we were at the lodge.

All packed up and ready to head out – I helped Kristine load the car and waited for the kids to roll out their suitcases before I headed out on my mountain bike. Josiah wanted to pull his through the snow.

Spider Lake Fire Trail – I turned onto this road within half a mile of leaving Telemark. The snow was good and packed down from cars heading out to cabins. Once I made it past the last cabin, the snow became quite a bit looser and trickier (particularly on the downhills)

Well packed snow – For the cyclocross riders out there, imagine riding through a really hard sand where your wheel sinks down in but not completely. If you hit the snow ridges though, it is the same as riding through loose sand and your wheel immediately starts to fish tail. So the challenge is scanning far enough ahead to follow the path that has been driven on the most.

18.9 degF and 75.8 miles to go!

Warning cabin boobytrapped – I rode past this at a pretty good speed, but I had to turn around and come back and take a picture of this sign.

Bayfield county forest sign – This whole area was full of national forests, state forests, and even county forests?

Deep snow – Spider Lake eventually turned into Telemark Rd which was really rural. The snow was loose and deep because the road climbed up well over 1500′

Beautiful winter scene – Imagine 9 miles of riding on a snowy road through pristine winter wilderness. That was the first 9 miles of my ride!

Snowmobile trail – Towards the end of Telemark Rd, I ran into a snowmobile trail.

The end of Telemark Rd – Up ahead in the distance you could see where Telemark Rd turns into Co Rd O, which was plowed and paved. My old iphone 3g camera apparently couldn’t see it.

Lots of small rollers on Co Rd O

Self portrait – no ice stache – I’ve done three rides up here now, but the temperature has been too warm for a really good ice stache. The temps are supposed to plummet this weekend so maybe I’ll get one before the end of the trip. Iphone 3G with only one camera lens are really difficult to get a self portrait.

Co Rd C long climb to Meteor Hill – This is the initial climb on Co Rd C towards Meteor Hill. The climb gains over 600′ spread out over 5 miles with lots of ups and downs along the way.

Co Rd C rollers – some of the ups and downs on Co Rd C

Lots of snow at 1800′ – Elevation makes a really big difference in total snowfall, especially in years like this when it is warmer and the snow sometimes mixes with rain. I imagine at this elevation it stays all snow.

Hills across the top – There actually two 1800′ spots. This picture is taken looking down a hill before the road rises back up again.

Long descent – This is a really long rolling descent back down towards Rice Lake. I am sure that this is categorized climb coming back up the other way as the road gains nearly 600′ in just 3 miles. It might even be this area’s only Cat 3 climb.

No hands on the descent

Hungry and thirsty – Even in warmer temps (low 20s), water bottles are really tricky to keep from freezing. I had been “out” of gatorade (i.e., the rest of what I had left was frozen solid) for about 10 miles by the time I made it to this gas station. I also was very hungry so I enjoyed a rather large $1.50 cinnamon roll.

Co Rd D rollers – This is easily the best road to get from Rice Lake back up to Shell Lake. Very good pavement and tons of rollers and beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, today it was straight into a light headwind.

One of many small beaver lakes alongside Co Rd D

Chased by the light – It was a race to make it to Shell Lake before dark. Here I still had about 15 miles left to go.

Co Rd D downhill into Long Lake – if you missed the turn at the bottom you might end up in the lake

Not a bunny rabbit – When I first saw this in the lake, I thought it was a bunny rabbit. By the time I got close enough to take a picture, I realized it wasn’t even an animal – but I went ahead and took the picture to get another picture of Long Lake. It is really long and turns around the hills in the distance.

Still on Co Rd D – Altogether I was on Co Rd D for close to 30 miles. The large white hill in the center left of the picture is the county landfill.

Two to one climbing ratio

Another sunset picture

Shell Lake airport – the runway goes right up to the lake

Shell Lake, population 1308 – my wife is from a very small town.

Drive-through Christmas lights by the lakeshore

The Cardwell home – After more than 5 hours and 83 miles of riding, I made it to the Cardwell house just after sunset.

22.2 degF, cold, dark, and done!

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Kicking off a winter adventure with an epic

I left Birmingham, Alabama yesterday at 6:30AM and a little over 32 hours later we arrived at the Telemark ski resort in Cable, WI. To get here from Alabama involved an epic 123 mile bike ride and over 1000 miles of driving. Kristine started about 6 hours behind me in the car and caught up to me just south of Faulkville, AL north of Cullman. I started out doing a normal climbing route through Rocky Ridge, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, and Birmingham before merging in Gate City with the route that I had tried out last week on my way up to Smoke Rise.

This time I wanted to try out more climbs on the same ridge as Smoke Rise and Skyball so I diverted my route near Kimberly to head up through Trafford towards AL-160 and all the climbs that start on 160 and climb up the ridge. I had intended to do 4 different climbs and 4 different descents off the ridge, but on the way over on ??? rd which turned into ??? rd I was chased by numerous dogs. I decided since I was also running a bit behind to skip one of the climbs and only ended up doing Graves Gap, Co Rd 45, and Skyball.

I’ll let the pictures (and captions) tell the rest of the story. Clicking on a picture will take you to flickr where you can flip through all the pictures.

Trip to Wisconsin 2012, a set on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

Sunday Adventure

Summary
Wow, what a great adventure yesterday was! We had tickets for the Andrew Peterson Christmas concert “Behold the Lamb” last night at the Ryman Center in Nashville and went on a fun double date with my cousins in Nashville. I left right after my daughter sang in a trio at Lakeside in the morning church service and rode north to Smoke Rise, AL where Kristine picked me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville in time for the concert. The drive was highlighted by a u-turn on I-65 which had been blocked from an accident and then AWESOME rally car driving with Kristine as the navigator calling out distances to turns on very narrow country roads following my GPS set on bicycle directions. After a great dinner at Demos with Richard and Christy, an AMAZING concert, and a three hour drive back to Birmingham we were home by 2AM.

The Details
Analise was singing in a trio at the 10:30 church service at Lakeside so my original plans to ride from Birmingham to Huntsville and have Kristine pick me up got shortened to riding from Birmingham to Smoke Rise – a rural community south of Cullman atop the same ridge line as the finishing climb for the Tour de Cullman. I went ahead and rode to Lakeside so that I could leave straight from there after Analise finished singing and still make it to Smoke Rise in time for Kristine to pick me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville.

The route was amazing. Check out the annotated topocreator maps of the route below the picture gallery. Low traffic, lots of great climbing, nearly half the route on roads I have never ridden before, and some fun adventure to boot! Adventure highlights from the bike ride include:

• Exploring a neighborhood abandoned years ago after the streets were built but before any houses were built
• Getting stung by a wasp or yellow jacket on my head just above my ear
• Exploring new roads
• The cool boat landing climb up from the Warrior river
• And finally the Smoke Rise climb and descent

Probably the most adventuresome thing that happened on our drive up to Nashville was an accident that blocked the interstate causing us to do some rally car driving through the rural Tennessee countryside between exit 22 and exit 27. What I mean by rally car driving is that I set my GPS to biking directions and asked it to give us directions to the next exit, which it did by taking us on these really small, sometimes gravel roads. There were lots of sudden turns so I put the GPS on the screen which shows distances to the next turn, and Kristine counted down the distance to the next turn, which means we could drive fast without worrying about missing a turn. It was absolutely awesome because the terrain was really steep and there were a bunch of turns. I was careful though to slow down at any blind spots in case there were any cyclists, horses, people, or cars just around the corner. We saw nobody!

There’s a lot more I could say about the ride, but I’ll just leave this post with a lot of pictures. Most of these were taken while riding, which is not easy with an iphone.

Analise and the children’s choir at Lakeside Baptist Church

Departing from Lakeside after stopping back at the car to drop off my clothes and shoes and reload my pockets with food.

An abandoned bridge near Whole Foods in Mountain Brook – this road helps avoid a short stretch of 280 and gives you about 35 extra feet of climbing

One of the many roller coaster hills in Mountain Brook, this one is near Whole Foods

You can see Bald Rock Mountain (the highest pt in Birmingham at just under 1600ft) and a number of the southeastern ridges from this descent off of N Woodridge Rd

This was how verified that what I was seeing really was Bald Rock. I was pretty sure on my ride but I wanted to double check using Google Maps.

Annotated view of four of the southeastern ridges .

Climbing back up after doing the South Brookwood roller coaster which is WAY too fast (45+mph) to try and take a picture with an iph

The roller coaster climb up different portion of N Woodridge which turns into Spring Valley Rd

This roller coaster picture didn’t turn out too well because this is on the descent looking down doesn’t give you the right perspective of how steep the climb coming out of the corner is. This was taken with no-hands on the bar descending at close to 25mph

Yes, I did make the turn onto the I-20 West on ramp, but it was only to take the cutover to Oporto Madrid Blvd which splits off the on ramp before reaching the interstate

The view of the Gate City / East Lake hill which Oporto-Madrid Blvd skirts around on its way to Ruffner Mountain. The route I created took me straight up and over the hill on a nice 26% one lane road

After crossing the Gate City hill and making it through East Lake, the road I was on went right by the Southern Museum of Flight, which is really cool for cyclists because so many of the planes are lined up along on the road outside the museum.

That is a large jet fighter!

Can you find the stealth bomber in this picture?

Can you see the stealth bomber now? This is the accidental usage of the “finger over the camera lens” cloaking technology

This army crane helicopter is really fascinating.

Mig 21 jet fighter – I wonder how we got it from the Russians – a jet exchange program?

Annotated view of the airport and downtown Birmingham

This plane had taken off from the airport and was flying right towards me before starting to turn.

Trying to take a picture of the bee/yellow jacket/wasp sting

For some reason I found this yield sign at the train tracks funny and ironic. I guess they realized that nobody would stop at a stop sign so they changed it to a yield sign to remind you that the train has the right-of-way? It reminded me of the sign you sometimes see at airports “yield to airplanes”.

View of the pointy mountains north of Trussville – Pine Mountain and Spring Mountain are back behind these front hills.

The Church St climb into warrior from the bridge crossing the Warrior River

View from the Warrior River bridge of the boat ramp climb

View of an abandoned railroad bridge to the southwest

You can start this climb from in the river. I did!

Ready, set, go! You want to make sure not to apply too much force and spin out with a wet rear tire.

Looking up the start of the boat ramp from directly underneath the bridge

A very peaceful looking Warrior river

It is amazing how many places were affected by small tornadoes during the April 27th storms. This is on the north end of the town of Warrior. Even if you have never ridden this stretch of road, you can tell that this is tornado damage because the tree ratio isn’t correct for the area (i.e., there should be a lot more trees) and that some of the trees are damaged and/or dead. Plus the blue tarps on the house behind the bus also indicate that a small tornado came through here.

The name of this road is Grandview Trail. This part overlooks the interstate which is too far down to be seen, but I could hear the cars. The ridge on the other side of valley is on the other side of the interstate.

This section here was the steepest part of the climb at right about 20% gradient.

One last roller to get to the top of the Smoke Rise climb.

Annotated view from the Smoke Rise high pt looking southeast

View from Smoke Rise high pt looking north towards Cullman and Hartselle

The intersection visible in this picture is Valley Trail. I was looking forward to this descent at the end of my ride, and it was really fast and fun – but shorter than I expected

Nearing the end of Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb” Christmas concert

Downtown Nashville after the concert

topocreator map of the route