Ride,Fire,Lunch,Ride

Last Friday I put out the call for a fat-bike ride on the snowmobile trails headed out of Shakopee. I knew it was short notice but I figured a couple out of the 118 members of The Imperial fat-bike riders would show. I was wrong, the only one to join me was Best in Schow. I was cool with that, he and I have done many death marches down on these trails and it was a homecoming of sorts. Back in the day before fat-bikes a hand-full of us would gather in the late spring on our regular MTB's with the widest 2.1 tires we could find and proceed to destroy ourselves for hours on end.

  The ultimate goal....make it to Belle Plaine and back. I believe I only made it to Belle Plaine once...my first or second time, I can't really remember it was a good ten years ago. It was such a horrible experience I never made the whole thing again. Don't get me wrong I love to bring myself all the way down to the darkest place and crawl my way back out, but this is like smashing your hand with a hammer....   It's always bound to happen again , I just choose to let it happen in different places.

The kabob's were clearly a better choice than my "soup in a bag"

 The plot for the day's ride was not one of pain or suffering, instead we kept a pace that afforded conversation without pausing to take deep breaths. We also brought along lunch and planned for a trail side campfire, approximately an hour in we did just that. It was cold day around 12-14 deg F, but still much warmer than we had been experiencing, so it was very enjoyable. There was no wind so the fire did a great job of keeping us warm and cooking B in S's kabob's..... I settled for soup. On the way back we took a little longer route with a side trip and ended the day a little shy of 25 miles.