The Farm (Updated 9/28)

My family has a piece of property about a hour and a half north of the cities. I think that it has been in the family for a little over a hundred years now. My Great Grandfather bought 40 acres of land and began to farm it. He quickly realized that he was not making as much money as he would have liked and quit to pursue other endeavors. As time went on he bought surrounding properties and there is now 280 acres of land. There are two good sized fields, lots of woods, and a river that runs through. It is a good place to go deer hunting and that is about it right now... Everything else to do with the property is work. There is always something that needs to be fixed or updated, but it keeps my Grandpa and Dad busy so that is good.

1953(?) Farmall Super M

Today's project is building a large shed that will house the above tractor and some other odds and ends. Three years ago my Dad restored another old Farmall and enjoyed it so much he decided to do it again. He says that this one has "Live" hydraulics so you can use the hydraulics while you are driving rather than having to come to a stop. It also has a wide base on the front rather than the narrow base on his other tractor.



 

Two trusses up.

When I got up there in the morning the walls were already up and the trusses were built. We had to lift the trusses up on to the frame, stand them up and put the supports across from one to the other. My Grandpa being an old Honeywell engineer is very meticulous with how things must be done and in what order. There is no convincing him to deviate from his plan. Sometimes this proves to be frustrating, but today everything went together very smoothly. No CAD  needed, just a pencil and a few pieces of graphing paper.

Getting there.

After we had everything up it was time for me to go up top and start screwing down the roofing. This is where having a nice drill comes into play. I have a cordless Ryobi that is adequate for small projects around the house, but is heavy and the battery life isn't great. My Dad brought his DeWalt with and it worked great. It was light, powerful and the battery lasted. The only issue that we ran into was the metal getting too hot. My shoes started to slip and I couldn't put my hands down because it would burn. There was one point where I though I was stuck sitting down and started to slowly slip down. I wasn't real worried because it was only about an eight foot drop, but I managed to get up and back to the peak where I could put a foot on each side. I screwed in the top, and they screwed in the bottom for the remainder of the day. I need to go back there and finish screwing it down in the middle.

From the inside.




From the outside



Done for the day.



At the end of the day we got everything accomplished that we set out to do and no one got hurt! It is fun working on projects where things are planned out properly and everything goes the way it should.





59 Cadillac



Side story. This is a 59 Cadillac DeVille that my Great Grandpa drove. It is the last year the they put the wings on the back and has the first stereo that you could preset the stations. He was t-boned by a drunk driver in Mora where the Vasaloppet statue sits in 1964 and there the car has sat since.

It is smashed in pretty good on the other side. There is no doubt that if the same thing happened today he would have been crushed to death. Instead, he had a few bumps and bruises and walked away relatively unscathed. 

Gents Ride

I wanted to do this race for a while but getting a team together proved harder than I thought. The week before I had no team and just planned on going down and enjoying the ride. On Tuesday I got an email about being on a team and decided to go for it. When I got to Spring Valley in the morning I met up with my team and we made our way to the start line across the street. We started out at a good pace with all of us riding together at a comfortable pace. With a little leapfrogging we made our way to Preston together. They wanted to stop at the store, but I hate stopping so I continued on at a slightly slower pace. It is hard to ride slow with all the rollers on the course. You either have to hammer up a hill or coast down it. It was cold and windy and all I could think of was this video:



 I arrived at the checkpoint where there was water, coke, cured meats, cheese, the works really. Shortly after I stopped my teammates arrived as well. We hung out for about 10 minutes and then got back on the road. I decided to  snap a few pictures with the day old iPhone 5 before we left though.



35 miles to go.



The climb out of Forrestville State Park is always tough because your legs are not quite back into riding yet. I managed to climb every hill until the 92? mile mark. This Oriole hill is a pain i the ass at this point. truth be told, I don't know if I could climb it if it were at mile 5. Anyway, I got to the top and rode the rest of the way back to the finish. 99.7 miles. This felt like my best gravel race yet. I never went to a dark, f this, place or didn't want to be on the course anymore. The clock however would show that I was 8 minutes slower than in May. I analyzed some data and am still baffled by this, but hey, the clock doesn't lie.

I had a great time and am looking forward to the 2013 Almanzo/Gentlemans Ride.

The panoramic shot is not easy to take

It looks a little hazy, but the day was beautiful.

Recap

Family evening ride to the city.

Work is going well, but keeps me away from posting updates. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of the computer again. Maybe I should start writing my updates at work. Anyway, August was a fun month. We went to the Wisconsin Dells for a weekend and had a great time. I've also been riding my bike to work so that helps me get that in without taking time away from the kids. I got in about 430 miles for August, I am happy with that.

DT Stillwater

Yesterday I went on a river ride with Josh, Ben, and Marty. We started just outside Cannon Falls on the Cannon Falls river and rode our fat bikes through the river until Welch where we had lunch and took the Cannon Valley trail back to the cars. It started out so so, but after some experimentation you can really see what these bikes are capable of. There were times my handle bars were underwater and I was still pedaling along. Those guys took a bunch of pictures and video that I will link to later. All in all it was a great day.

This month I am riding in the Heck of the North in Duluth and am going to try and get on a team for the gentleness ride in Spring Valley.

I'll try and update more and take some pictures, because a blog without pictures is pretty lame.

Rora checking out the bikes at the fair