Frostbike 2013: Part 2

Mike's Bikes: Home of Real and Fictional characters.

Now it is time to back up and tell the story on the Frostbike adventure from the beginning. Friday normally is kicked off with the Mike's bikes events. But this year it was different.

Mrs. Guitar Ted and I went up during the day Friday to try and get me up to the Salsa Cycles 2014 dealer presentation by 1pm. The issue here was that we had gotten a fresh dump of about 7 inches of snow overnight. I had to clear that away, then we waited on the roads to clear up a bit, as we watched the D.O.T. updates.

We got off to a bit of a late start, after we were assured by direct reports that the roads were good. (The D.O.T. site said they were packed in yet!) Wish we would have gotten the good word earlier, but oh well!

The trip up was uneventful, and due to our late start, I was going to miss the first 45 minutes or so of the 3 hour presentation. No big deal, until we got to the fringes of the Twin Cities' suburban sprawl.This would have been around the Lakeville area. That's when we came up on three lanes of 20mph traffic. It took awhile to figure it out, but then I saw it.

John and his "beaver skinning gloves". Don't ask...

 The reason why was that there was an echelon of snow plows from ditch to ditch ahead of us, and no one could get by. This was really going to mess with my timing!

I waited until we crossed the Minnesota River, then I got off and took city arterials to get to the area where the motel was that had the Salsa presentation. I was really, really late now!

Funny thing was that almost immediately after getting inside I ran across Ben, I got updated, and got in to peer at some really cool machinery. Obviously, I didn't have long to stick around and when it was over, Curtis, Ben, myself, and a few others hit the motel bar. Initially the plan was to go to a Korean restaurant with Ben's wife and Mrs Guitar Ted later, but Ben's wife was a bit under the weather, so we determined that we were on our own. 

Ben coming in hot at the repair area

After a while we determined that we should head back to Northfield and get to Mike's Bikes. We picked up some "adult beverages", set course for Mike's, and got there a bit later than usual, but in fine shape.

There was the usual Greek pizza, beer, and riding shenanigans. I got to talk to Mike for a bit, which is always a highlight of the trip for me. Good stories about the early Marin scene at the birth time of mountain biking as we know it.

But while all that was good, it was all tempered by abit less excitement and a bit less craziness than previous years. Still- it was a good time. We stayed up fairly late, but this may have been the earliest end to a Mike's Bikes party yet. Ben and I headed back to his place, got settled, and hit the hay to rest before a big, long day of Frostbike.

So that was the day of Friday. Stay tuned for Saturday's saga and the rest of the Frostbike story coming tomorrow.