Holiday Weekend

 Apparently the ice on the metro area lakes is thick enough to support a bike and rider. Saturday was spent hopping on and off the frozen swamps along the Minnesota River bottoms trail for about four hours. I was pretty nervous crossing the first swamp. I was intermittently following the tracks of a trapper and his sled along the edge of the reeds and cattails. The tracks looked pretty new but with the warm weather we are having lately I was on high alert for thin ice and open water. The couple times I've fallen through the ice have been in swamps. Most of the time the water is pretty shallow but it scares the hell out of you.

Summer/Winter

Not sure why this hole is here,but I was on the lookout for others like it.

 On Sunday after opening presents from Santa, Big "D" and I went out for a short ride around the Bass Ponds in Bloomington. It was really warm and a perfect day to get outside. I found a nice little spot of snow covered ice for him to try out on his bike.The snow frozen to the ice has a good amount of traction. He did well at not crashing so we made a little course about 100yards long that we rode back and forth several times. Riding the ice like this is really fun and unique, it doesn't happen very often and it's good to ride it while you can.

 Monday was another nice day,about 50 deg, but a little windy. "G" Man and I headed down to the Louisville Swamp for a short ride. I wasn't planning on riding the ice there, but we found a really shallow area that I'm sure was frozen solid to the ground. We played around there for a while, eyeing a small rock outcropping island about a quarter mile out in the middle of the swamp. We rode out a couple hundred yards when the inner voice of MOM got the best of me, so we turned back. We continued onward, riding a small loop out on the prairie past the Jab's Farm before one last spin on the ice,and calling it a day.