Working on the Route

While I am cooling (not really, its been 95 + degrees and humid in Martinez the past week) my heals waiting for a decent offer on this house AND in between work at the College of Dental Medicine and golf, I have been scoping out rail trails in Minnesota and Wisconsin to assess which ones will give me the proper north/south coordinates. It appears I will need to ride the Blue Ox trail between International Falls and Bemidji. This might be a major test in that it appears that this trail is not up to standards of most Rail Trails. The Blue Ox trail has not been surfaced with gravel, limestone or other smooth materials. The ride will be rough, with packed dirt, ruts and balast rock trails. The good thing is that this trail is mostly north south and over one hundred miles in length.  If the maps from from Rails to Trails Conservancy and Google are accurate, I can get sixty percent of the north-south route done in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. Then I will need to go further east and west to find rail trails that will give me the proper latitudes to include all north-south coordinates of America's trails.



This is one of my favorite Connie Cards.

Probably close to the thousandth one she

has made---I Love Connie Cards!

Connie's cards are something to brag about. Each one is original and unique. I feel fortunate to have received over one hundred the past 8-9 years. Card making is only one of many talents. There are dozens of needle work pictures donning the walls of our home and the boys homes. I am so glad she had them nicely framed so that generations to come will enjoy her talents. Along the lines of card making, Connie has completed numerous scrap books of the boys growing up days along with the her life, my life and other relatives. Her talents are sequestered by others so she makes cards and scrap books for the cost of materials. The biggest challenge is finding time for her to do all these creative projects in addition to reading more than one hundred books per year and putting together impossible (for me anyway) jigsaw puzzles. Adding to this, she continues to do part time work with the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Gosh, I will really be in the way when I officially retire July 31, 2012.