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.

Markville via lots of snowy roads and snowmobile trails

This was my longest and fastest ride so far this year up in Wisconsin. It needed to be fast because I got a late start after sleeping in a bit and then having fun out on the frozen lake with Josiah ice/snow astronaut skating and Analise snow skiing. After warming up a bit, I left by about 1:00 with an anticipated 4 hour loop over to Mankville, Minnesota. This ride was different than yesterday’s because I headed north for nearly an hour first before heading west. There was a strong tailwind from the south — presumably why the temp was about 5 degF warmer than yesterday even though there is a strong blast of arctic air moving in with low temps tonight heading down into the double digits below zero.

Josiah the astronaut ice/snow skating

Analise and Kristine snow skiing on the lake

Right on snowmobile trail

Long beardcicles and frozen snot after four hour ride with an average temp of 16 degF.

Quite cold and dark by the end of the ride

I got lots of bikecam videos sorted by the best first. The snowmobile video (the second video) is bookmarked on youtube if you want to jump straight to the interesting parts. The others are not bookmarked. The first is only about 2 minutes long and shows some good snow biking on perfect snow leaving the cabin.

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

Quick ride report, pics, and videos – Heartwood

Yesterday’s ride from Shell Lake to Heartwood was much colder than I anticipated mainly because of the constant light snowfall that combined with salted county roads meant wet, cold, cold, cold feet. Fortunately, I had a chemical warmer pack and was able to put that into my shoe about halfway through the ride. Unfortunately, I also took the opportunity to drink about half of my gatorade bottle which had turned to slush by this point. Stopping and consuming that much frozen slush dropped my core body temp a ton and I never really got warm the rest of the ride. Still, in comparison to the Cullman ride in the rain where I could not stop shivering for a good solid ten minutes after the ride was over, this was like riding in short sleeves weather. I even had enough warmth to go “bike sledding” with the kids over on the frisbee golf course. These are the first two videos below. The third video is a cool one of frozen rapids and tunnel water on the Namekagon River. The fourth video I took while I was stopped and got really cold after I got the chemical warmer put into my shoe.

Bike setup – note the new contour roam2 camera I got for Christmas

Lower Mackenzie road looking back south

Frozen beardcicles on lower mackenzie road

Frozen rapids on the Namekagon River

Heartwood entrance – still a couple miles of a fast snowy road left

Snowmobile and ATV route directional signs

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.