Adventure is my Middle Name: cycling

Any serious cyclist can answer this question, judging from what I've been reading online and hearing in person. The answer of course is n+1, where n is the number of bikes you own right now. I love my Kona Sutra, and have put several hundred miles on it over the last couple months. My latest upgrade had been a set of clipless pedals and shoes, courtesy of REI scratch and dent. Then my buddy Aaron took me to Lebanon Hills on a recent weekend, and let me ride his brothers mountain bike...

We did the beginner and intermediate loop (and a couple sections of the black stuff, holy crap!) and it was exhilarating, terrifying, exhausting, and addictive. My hands ached afterward from the death grip I'd had on the handlebars, and although I didn't crash (except for once on the skills course trying to get fancy), I was sore all over when we finished. I was also craving more!

It didn't take me long, looking online, discovering Mtbproject.com, realizing how many trails were right here in the Twin Cities, and right near various areas I already visit regularly for work. I got the itch to get a mountain bike, and I got it bad. Craigslist, a local bike selling group on Facebook, and checking out various closeouts and sales at local bike shops. I knew my budget was going to be limited, but figured I didn't need the top-of-the-line, since it was pretty clear my skills would have a long ways to go before I caught up to any half-decent bike. I ended up finding a great deal on a Novara Matador, a 29" mountain bike at REI. I tried it out on the little trail there at the store, swiped the credit card, and headed straight down to the Minnesota River, to try it out on some trails in the River Bottoms area.

The River Bottoms border the Minnesota River, and it's an area that floods frequently, so it could be more than a little sandy in places. The fall colors were in full swing though, and between the trees and river it was just a beautiful place. I managed about 4.5 miles before getting fed up with the deep deep sand, and returned to the car to go find another trail (Strava here).

The handy MTBproject app informed me there was another trail only about 10 minutes away, so I headed to Terrace Oaks East Park, to try out some more man-made singletrack. Terrace Oaks seemed quite a bit tighter than most of Lebanon Hills, but I managed pretty well, at least until I decided to try out the smaller "advanced" loop. I figured I could just go around anything that looked TOO gnarly, and I'd just take it slow and at least get a look at what sort of features made up the harder stuff. That plan went just fine until the last 30 feet or so, where there was a large staircase like thing made of railroad ties and rock fill. I approached nice and slow, and dropped down the first step, applying the brakes as I did (don't want to get going too fast now!). As my front wheel took the next drop, I don't know if I accidentally mashed the brakes or what, but I took a header over the handlebars, flying over the steps and into a bush and small tree! All told it took me less than an hour to crash after buying the bike. Luckily, I was only scratched up, and the bike was fine, so I finished my ride and headed home (Strava here).

So far I've also checked out the trails at Theodore Wirth Park, and plan to check out Elm Creek and Battle Creek in the next couple of weeks. I also need to revisit Lebanon Hills on my own bike now! There's plenty of options for next year too, with the downhill runs at Spirit Mountain in Duluth, and the scuba diving AND mountain biking mecca at Cuyuna Lakes about 2 hours north of the cities. I'm psyched about adding yet another hobby to my quiver. It definitely feels like something I should have been doing for ages now, even more so than road biking/touring. Do you mountain bike? Where are your favorite trails? If you're in the Twin Cities, any hidden gems I should check out?

I think I'm done buying bikes for a while now. As much as I'd love a fat bike for winter, they are WAY out of my price range for now. Maybe next year! Winter will hopefully see me getting on cross country skis for the first time, and trying out skijoring with Dozer!

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IT IS THE YEAR 2314. The city of Minneapolis is abandoned and covered in dust. Teams of explorers brave the harsh conditions to dig the ruins, searching for answers.

WHICH DEADLY PROBLEM RUINED THE CITY? This is the mystery you must solve.

This is the challenge that faced myself and six friends last weekend, near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis. City of Dust was a bike adventure/puzzle/game put on by Northern Lights, a local arts agency. They are best known for an all-night arts festival held along the river every summer, but this was the first other event of theirs I'd been to.

Adam, Kristen, and Elizabeth from my recent orienteering adventure reenlisted for City of Dust, and we were joined by Molly, Brenda, and Kelly, some other local climbers. We would be tasked with discovering which of six serious environmental problems had caused the downfall of Minneapolis. We'd figure it out by visiting five dig sites around the area, each excavating a different portion of the cities past. When I signed us up, I didn't even know all that. All I knew was that it was supposed to be a beautiful day, it involved bikes, and that I like games and puzzles.

At the start we were given our map, depicting a sort of post-apocalyptic version of the Minnehaha Creek/Lake Nokomis area. It showed the five dig sites, and had a handy scrawled overlay to relate some important real-world locations to the game world.

Our first stop wasn't far from the orientation. At each location we'd watch a short video found by the excavators, each one depicting a resident of the time period in question. The video would give us hints, helping us assemble a timeline of the various cataclysms that befell the area. After we watched the video, there was a challenge to complete, which would net us some vials of pure water, and a vial unique to each era, full of water polluted with various materials. After that we'd get an "echo trace", which was a small map with directions to a hidden artifact (depicted above). The artifact would give us a code, which we could enter in to the echo trace hotline on a phone to get more clues.

The challenges at each dig site had great variety, although weren't ever very difficult. My favorites were cleaning up a chemical spill (chasing bouncy balls around a tennis court with tongs and oven mitts), and navigating a power plant taken over by giant mutant dung beetles (using pool noodles to fend off giant balls representing dung balls of doom, with a time limit!). Another awesome challenge had us all hopping in a "dust rover" (huge canoe courtesy of Wilderness Inquiry), paddling out into the "Nokomis dust basin" (Lake Nokomis) to try and count a floating mass of plastic bottles and bags.

After we'd visited our fifth site, we were rewarded with a new location added to our map (the blue dot in the 2nd picture of the post). This would lead us to the undercity, if we were able to figure out which of the six deadlies had been unfixed, and was still affecting the city. We entered a blue tent and met with two VERY stoic researcher-types, who asked us if we'd determined the cause. We didn't have a CLUE! We'd taken notes and debated a bunch on the timeline (although it didn't help that we got two of the videos at the wrong stops in time, which did confuse things a little), and we had 5 water samples, one from each point in time. What we HADN'T done was pay attention to the colors of the pollutant beads in each sample...

The scientists helped us out, graphing out the colors of each sample along the timeline. When we figured out what environmental issue each color represented, that clued us in that the problem that hadn't been cured was the Rainsheet Drains (water runoff). With that discovered, they gave us the secret knock we'd need to enter the haven deep underground.

Underground we were greeted by a sight like something out of the game Fallout, or the Walking Dead. A small city had been constructed, around a well of pure clean water. Here we could spend the vials we'd been awarded for various challenges to get advice, paint postcards, and sample honey or various spices. We all shared a toast of water in celebration of our achievement.

All told the adventure took us about 4 hours, and we covered about 8 miles getting between the various dig sites (route and stats here). At just $15 for our entire team, it was an inexpensive and fun way to spend a day enjoying the fall Minnesota weather with a bunch of friends. I think that the people at Northern Lights did a great job putting on the event, and it managed to be a good time and also draw awareness to some of the biggest environmental concerns we're facing here in the Twin Cities. The rest of the photos are below, I hope you enjoyed my little review/account, and will consider checking out Northern Lights to see what else they've got coming up!