We broke the MCBR weekend into 4 parts. Friday night we rode to a Saint Paul establishment for dinner and drinks. I think there were around 15 of us at the start. There were at least two Rivs in attendance: Marc's gorgeous Hunq and Tim's first-year Riv Road. Lillian was riding a San Marcos. Hope I'm not forgetting anyone. The rest of the group was riding various other brands of "Country Bike".
Saturday morning, we tested several fat bike models on some dirt trails in Fort Snelling state park. Some park employees and other passersby came over to try the bikes. The new Surly Ice Cream Truck seemed to be a hit. Highlight for me: My wife's non-cycling 61yo aunt rode the XS ICT over some challenging off-trail terrain and smiled the whole time. Saturday afternoon, the group rode a section of the Minnesota River Bottoms. This is basically a mostly flat, non-technical dirt trail along the Minnesota River. The trail is unofficial and mostly maintained by volunteers. Unfortunately, the state park people recently "cleared" the portion of the trail that runs through the park. Their hearts were in the right place, but it looks like they used a bulldozer, and just pushed sand and trees around, leaving the trail worse for the wear in places. Most of us were on fat bikes or mountain bikes, but Sean showed up with a Hilsen and JB tires, which handled the dirt with ease, and made the rest of us feel kinda silly. Sunday was the pavement ride. We started from HC, and followed the Minnehaha Creek bike trail to the Minneapolis chain of lakes. One of the ride participants lost her wallet and phone the night before at an ice cream shop in Uptown, so we stopped there to ask if they'd found it. Luckily, they had, and everything seemed to be in order. We had a small conference on where to go next, and decided to head to a nearby coffee shop that features a gay leather/bondage theme. I restocked my supply of leather-scented body wash. So that was fun. From there, we hit the Bryant Ave bikeway, Loring Park, Downtown Minneapolis, Nicollet Mall, Hennepin Ave bridge, Saint Anthony Main, Stone Arch Bridge, University of Minnesota, the new Dinkytown greenway, U of MN transitway, Como Park, Frogtown, downtown Saint Paul, then across the river to climb the infamous Ohio St hill, Cherokee Park, followed by a thrilling descent on Hwy 13 into Mendota. I said my goodbyes and headed home from there, happy to have shown the riders such a broad cross-section of the Twin Cities amazing cycling opportunities. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
