Hometown Tour of '09

This weekend Cale and I went West, young man, to do a little training. The Hell of the South, or HOTS, is next weekend on the trails around Madison, so for a little prep work we rode the crushed limestone trails around Mineral Point. Specifically, the Cheese Country Trail. They were freshly graded, and some spots were pretty mushy... perfect! Last year for the HOTS (last year, named the H8ter) the trails were similarly saturated and soft, so slogging along the trail yesterday was good preparation for just about anything that might be slung at ussss. SSssss!




But the real and super secret reason for the trip was to drop of my dad's new bike.



When Cale and I got back from our ride, I showed Dad how to use the gears, and I'm confident that one day, he might figure it out. As bikes go, it's nothing too special, but I think it'll be a good bike to start with, and it's got all of the features I was looking for for him; wide tires but not too knobby, step-through-able, upright position. It may not be the cock of the walk, but it'll be a good bike for Dad. As always, the guys at Ben's helped me find something and made it tip-top.

After all this fun and excitement, it was on to the next appointment in the Hometown Tour of '09. My neighbors, Bev and Mike, have a girl who's a talented young artist who's also convinced that she can't make a living by drawing. So we stopped by to give her a little pep talk on our way to the evening appointment. We drove over to my original hometown of Highland, WI (don't worry, no one else has heard of it, either!) to have dinner at my oldest and bestest friend's place with her and her fiancé Ben. Ben's quite the chef, as it turns out, and we spent a nice night catching up.

Just as we were leaving, Abbie got all serious on me, and said she needed to ask me a question. I didn't have to say yes, and it was ok if I said no. Really it was. At this point, I was trying to imagine what on earth she would ask me. I started thinking that when it came down to it, I would gently inform her that I couldn't donate my right arm, or smuggle any weapons to different continents. As luck would have it, I only had to say yes to being a bridesmaid! I think it'll be pretty cool.

This morning we planned on going out to Gunnar's place to help with a few projects, but the weather scared us into running for home instead of heading for Prairie du Chien. We went to church with the parents...



and then hit up the pancake breakfast at another church to support the youth group that I was a part of in my younger, wilder days. It's kind of cool that kids from all of the churches in Mineral Point are in one youth group. MP had it going on with unity- the high school has a few sports teams under the Dodge-Point (Dodgeville and Mineral Point) name, too. Historically huge rivals (we stole their courthouse's cannon in 18-odd-something), Dodgeville and Mineral Point got together to form larger sports teams with more resources.

Well, that concludes this post. The More You Know.