Another ride and other pics of things I like

The trail we tried to ride on Tuesday evening was flooded out so we decided to ride on top of the Chaska levee.    The water is high enough that what is usually forest off to the right in the top pic is now a temporary mangrove with large fish jumping for bugs in and around the trees.

The girls said they wanted to try to ride out to a hidden beach so I said "ok" thinking they would not make it more than a hundred yards or so.  They of course rode the whole way out and back.  The only time they fussed was the few times Ella rode into the back of Maya's bike.  Each time Maya had a bunch of mosquitoes eating her alive causing her to skid to a stop to "itch them."  Glad I had extra bug spray along.    

 I was a little sad to find the beach did not exist that day with the high water.  They were troopers about the bad news even after they braved bugs and plants trying to eat them during the ride to get to it.   

Maya has gotten really good at ridding off road in no time at all.  I think they could both do well along the Minnesota river in spots without too much sand.

On a side note I am pleasantly surprised to find that I cold easily get three bikes  in my car with just the front wheels off of my Moonlander and Ella's bike.

Maya wanted to show me she could hold the cat like a baby now.   Looks like she can.

We went to the open streets event last weekend.  It is fun to walk down the middle of Lyndale Ave with all the people walking and riding on their bikes.   I like bike people.  During the event we walked by Flanders bike shop.    I did not see any sign they were helping promote, participate in or sponsor this great event that happens in front of their store.   A constant stream of bikes going by the store on a sunny weekend day and they were closed.   It is too bad they suck so bad.  I really want to like that shop with its racing history in the area.   Great newer shops like One on One and Hollywood's really expose how little Flanders has to offer.

Found a great little basket at a thrift store for Maya's puppy and water bottle to ride in.  Big crash the next day crunched it.  Good thing we bought a spare.

A nice ride/smores event with Maya

Maya and I rode from from Chaska towards Shakopee last night. As we drove the 2 miles from Chanhassen
into Chaska for our ride Maya says, " Oh! I like it here! What language do they speak in Chaska."  Me, "Maya, we live right up there. They speak just like we do." Maya, "yea, but if we talk would they understand what we were saying?"

Maya is 5 and ready for a bigger bike I think.  

She was a little sad that I would not bring the turtle home with us.  

My supercat stove worked great for roasting the marshmallows.  Maya carved her own stick for roasting and did a great job.  

We rode to the old brewery ruins which was about 4 miles total.  

Oddly my right crank arm loosened and fell off on the way back.  Keeping up with Maya is harder than it looks.  

Random internet show and tell

Borealis is a new bike company and their fat bike is the  nicest looking full carbon fat bike I have seen.  Interesting collaboration of people who know fat bikes making this happen.  190 mm hub fits 100mm clown shoes with Bud and lou on a symmetrical rear end.  Fat-bike link for more info.

In other news the Tour Divide race starts next Friday 6-14-13.  Banff Canada to Mexico 2700 miles, riding unsupported mostly off road, along the continental divide.  Record is about 16 days.  

Starting at about 25 seconds into this video there are a bunch of tour divide rigs.  Nice way to see how people are packing for off road racing/touring.

A story with some Morels.

 Mazy and I spent a couple hours exploring in the big woods on Sunday.  Mazy was able to find a stinky patch of decaying muck to roll in but was unable to detect a big young buck sitting down watching us walk by.  Terrible pic I know but the deer seemed so comfortable I didn't want to get closer and make him get up from what was likely his sleep time.

Above is a pic of the woods.  About 300 yards per side.  I think I may need an App or to figure out my google maps/google earth settings better to mark with GPS the big maple trees I find but maybe not.  The dot above is from a pic of a tree I took with the location option on my phone camera turned on.  So if I want to know where a tree is I look at the pic and then hit show on map.  Seems to work but sometimes it goes to a location near by rather than the exact spot.

I really want it to work so I can come back to the 4 or so spots I found morels.  At this point I would not have a clue how to find them again.  

I tried to teach Mazy to find the morels for me but failed.  I bet with some treat rewards I could get her to be  a shrooming dog.  Or maybe she would prefer to just roll in stinky crap.  

 Great quality morels.  No cleaning necessary.  Just some salt, pepper and butter.  If it looks like a morel and has a hollow stem you can be pretty confident it is a morel and not poisonous.

So good.  I have some left that I am thinking of making a homemade morel ravioli with them but need some filler ideas to go with the morels inside the ravioli.  A cheese that is mild enough to not over power the mushroom perhaps.

 Even with my mushroom book I find that confidently identifying mushrooms other than morels is surprisingly difficult.

 Three Maples to remember.  The foreground one has a big arm torn off.  Behind it is the arm wrestler and if you could see through the trees the tree below that looks like it has a lazy arm is just a bit further.  After that is the rhinoceros looking tree (not a maple).   To get to this set go in a third of the way from the south west corner to the rhino tree or lazy arm.

I got lucky last winter

Over Memorial day weekend Ella, Maya and I went out to the big woods by our house with my Samuel Thayer foraging books to see what kind of plants we could identify and eat.  I need more foraging practice because we would have died of starvation or poisoning if dependent on my foraging skills to eat.  We also surveyed the woods I got my maple sap out of early this spring.  The survey goal was to identify maple trees to tap next year and to figure out how I did last winter trying to identify sugar maples without leaves.

Out in the woods I have to refer to the girls as deer.  If it gets them out learning in the woods I will call them anything they want.  

After searching every big tree in the woods over a couple hours Ella got surprisingly good at telling ash, elm, oak and Maple trees apart.  Ash and elm were still confusing until we talked to Heath and he pointed out an alternating leave on the elm versus the opposite pattern on the ash.   The tree on the left above is a big sugar maple and is the same tree in the pic just below.  It is in this group of four other big trees about 75 feet south and a little west of big sweetie on the south side of the wet part of that section of woods.  I know descriptions of where trees are is not great blogging but part of what I use this blog for is remembering things and by next spring I will not remember these trees if I don't write it down.    

The Maple below is called the arm wrestler and is on the west side in about 50 feet between the two little meadows by the big bone pile (Edit not sure of this location see next post).

Next is big sweetie.  She is found by going in on the North side in the middle with the neighborhood to your back.  When you see the widow tree holding her dead husband go left about 50 feet to big sweetie. 

 I am amazed that I happened to tap this tree because after all of our survey  efforts last weekend we only found these three sugar maples in the large portion of the forest we searched.  Lots of little ones but of the big trees this was it.  The trees I was sure were sugar maples with my winter identification efforts were all ash trees.  No wonder I didn't get any sap from them.  I taped big sweetie in a fit of desparation after weeks of no sap from my other trees.  What are the chances I would find one of the three?

  The girls spontaneously ran up to her and gave her a big hug.  I guess that makes them tree huggers.

 For some reason Ella and Maya  kept laughing when we discovered this tree .

A Maya kind of Weekend

The rain kept us mostly inside this weekend.   Bluff Creek got a bit bigger.  Wetlands are a good thing.

Ella was with  friends much of the weekend so Maya made most of my pics.  Here she is drying some dill.  

She got a stuffed dog from her grandparents.  Named it Loona and sets it facing her room door to keep her safe at night from things like a fox.  

With a dog who loves to scratch at sheet rock and 5 years in our house we had a bunch of dog damage, small dents, holes and a few screw heads to take care of with joint compound.  Maya was surprisingly good at this somewhat tricky task and filled a bunch of holes by herself not to mention all of the sanding after it dried.  I am a big fan of my Maya.

I found a new home for the Wei Wu Wei bike

 I have not had need or been riding this bike for a few years and have been wanting to give this bike to a person who will use it, love it and need it.  This is much more appealing than keeping it (which means storing it) or selling it for a small amount of money.

 I have a 5'7" female coworker who is both car free and in need of a ride for her urban pursuits.

 Lao Tzu has the answer.  I wasn't sure if I could scrunch the bike down to her size but it fits her great and with the fenders, light and upright position I think it will be a great tool to get her around town.

 Conti Top touring 2000 tires make it roll super fast.

 This was my first real bike back in 1989 or was it 1990.  It started as a Specialized Stumpjumper.  Only original part on it is the frame itself.  Even the fork got changed out in the early 90's after a failed attempt to ride down the Highland park ski jump landing hill.  Most of the places I ride off road in the twin cities area were first discovered and explored on this bike.

I will miss it and at the same time am very happy to find a good home where it will likely be ridden often.  

Moonlander's summer clothes

Ruins near Louisville swamp tonight. New Moonlander highlights include a 36 tooth 29r cassette, EA 70 90mm 17deg rise stem, Easton Haven carbon bar, esi grips and xt pedals.

  Other switches from winter include 65mm Marge lite rims rather than 100mm clown shoe rims, husker du rather than bud and lou tires, bags taken off for now.

Tarptent

First blog post from my phone in a while.   Hope it helps increase how often I do it.   Playing around with some tarptent ideas. Started with the 7 foot per side pentagon like the mld trailstar.   

Chanhassen Syrup

 Chanhassen is a Dakota Sioux name meaning "the tree with the sweet sap" in other words the sugar maple tree.   I have been meaning to tap some sweet trees ever since moving to Chanhassen.  This year by chance I found some Maple Syrup making supplies at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and decided this was the year.     After getting the spiles, a book on how to do it and the bags and holders I spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to identify a Sugar Maple tree in in the winter when you have no leaves.   An education session about taping sugar maples at the Landscape Arboretum gave me the confidence to give it a shot.

 Around March 24 I went out and did my best to identify and tap 4 sugar maple trees in a near by forest.  The bag holder things were cheap and work well.

 My trusty Duluth pack has worked great to carry the large items for my trips to the woods each day.

 Mazy has had a great time sprinting both to the woods and around the woods while I work.

 After a couple of weeks of no sap I tapped another big tree and monkey rigged a bucket collection system.  I was pretty sad with some crushed hope after going to see empty bags for two weeks straight.   The season was ending and my brother Heath had long ago gotten sap from his South St. Paul trees.

 Then we got that weird late snow on about 4-5-13 and I found three and a half gallons of sap from the big tree in my monkey rigged bucket.  I have since gotten about 6 more gallons from this one tree and none from the others I tapped so long ago.

 To get a cup of syrup you need about 30 cups of sap.  That is a lot of boiling down.  I tried boiling down this first three and a half gallons on the stove, in various shaped pans, on the grill and on my propane turkey fryer kind of set up in the picture above.  The big pot on the turkey fryer set up worked the best.  Tons of power to evaporate fast.   Maya says the boiling sap "smells like pancakes!"

 Once I got it down to about 4 cups I filtered it with a coffee filter and finished it inside the house on the stove ending with about 2 1/2 cups of syrup.   Not sure why the pic above looks a little cloudy but in person it was clear and beautiful.    It is syrup at 7 degrees above what pure water boils at on that day and location.  I went 9 degrees over and still think it could be a little more thick.  Things change fast at the end however and I didn't want to end up with maple sugar so I killed the boil and am very happy with the results.  Compared to store bought grade A pure Anderson brand maple syrup mine not surprisingly has a more fresh and full maple flavor.   Not to get sappy but almost a floral hint.  Since it all came from one big tree I like to think of it as "single origin" maple syrup.   My girls and I have named this tree big sweetie because I got a 20/1 sap to syrup ratio rather than a more standard 30/1.

The pancakes we used this first batch of syrup on have never tasted better.   Definitely worth the $50 or so in start up gear and 2 and a half weeks of trips to the woods.