Brother David is Hometown Hero, Patriot. Young Man Brings Pride to Waconia. Do you want to read about the time little Dave added a motor to his skateboard? Take a look at "Beyond the Breaking Point", the Waconia Patriot's nearly 3,000 word story about Dave and his Arrowhead adventure. http://www.waconiapatriot.com/articles/2007/03/14/waconia_patriot/news/news03.txt In other news it was 81 degrees here yesterday. The handling on my road ride has been really sketchy since I put on a new stem and handlebar a couple weeks back. I was starting to think that I had lost any semblance of handling skills over the long winter.…

I'd love to take a week off every month and go camping somewhere, but it's not possible with my work and family responsibilities. I have, however, found a way to keep my out-of-doors skills sharp and use some of my camping gear....The bike-camping overnighter. On Saturday, I rode 36km to the Arrowhead 135 Survivors Party in White Bear Lake, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Not wanting to ride home after the gathering because of the forecast of impending thundershowers, I packed to camp out after the shindig instead of riding all the way home in the rain and stream…

Surly vs. Godzilla You might have heard we were in Japan for the past couple of weeks. Or you might have thought we were dead, as the blog was not maintained while we were away. Anyway, we went to Japan, thought about kicking Godzilla's ass, but in the end were won over by the sadness in his misunderstood gaze. We damn fell in love with the little guy, truth be told. There will be long blog reports posted in the coming week(s), but we are all now trying to catch up on all the stuff we didn't get done while…

I decided to work from home yesterday, because a snow storm was looming large over my 'hood. I've done plenty of 2+ hour, 16-mile snowy slogs to and from the office over the years. It can be fun, but I wasn't in the mood to play that game. Shoveling snow, alone, would be enough exercise for the day. Today was a different story, however. Most of the storm has passed, many of the roads and paths have been plowed, and most of the metro-area schools are closed...meaning breeders are at home taking care of their kids, instead of being on…

As you may also be experiencing, Minnesota is getting knocked up side the head with a blast of snow. Big, heavy snow -and lots of it- falling, or more properly, being blown at us from big, heavy clouds, the northern part of a system producing killer tornadoes down in the southern U.S. The really big stuff came down yesterday afternoon and after a short respite picked up again in the evening. Many people rode bicycles in this because it still beats being in a car. One of them was our big friendly bearded hippie lawyer Matt Moore, who sends this…