Cabin Fever In Iowa

After backing the car out of the garage, I use this trainer to
pedal while listening to PRI jokester Michael Feldman. 

This has been a tough winter. Tougher than I have experienced since the farm boy days. The last few weeks have had me climbing the walls with "couped upiness". So it seemed like a good idea to clear my noggin, get some exercise and train my gluteus maximus to receive a hard seat come traversing America time. After all I haven't done any pedaling since the pre-Xmas rides in South Carolina. My guess is I thought I had burned up enough calories on the Swamp Fox Trail. and wore down my tailfeathers adequately,  to take off a couple months---Off your butt, slacker Maze! So, off to the garage I have gone. As much I hated going to Gold's Gym to pump it up on stationary bike in 2005; prepping for a Mt. Everest Base Camp trek in Nepal, I have now relinquished my resistance to spinning to nowhere and purchased a bike trainer. Hence I have been riding in one spot for thirty minutes, three to four times a week. The garage isn't the most toasty spot in the winter months, most often just above freezing, but I am making progress with the butt and legs. I plug into my I-pod and spin away, listening to Michael Feldman's Whad'ya Know?( I listen to him on the trails too ). One spot in the garage doesn't replace the sights alone rail trails but it has established sufficient mind clearing exercise, segwaying away from record cold and snow outside. In addition, I am using my STAFGD (Smarter than a fifth grader) device (Samsung Note 3) and discovering I can listen radio station broadcasts across the nation. For example,  I can listen to Jimmy Kimmel Live---my replacement for Jay Leno . There are so many tricks and applications these midget computers can do yet  I wonder if I will ever learn enough to say I am smarter than a fifth grader. So far I have been shocked at how smart my  STAFGD truely is. Often it seems to read my mind.

The past two winters, I have perused Google Earth, Google Maps, Trail-Link, state park websites and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) of half the states of this country, locating trails that cross every degree of latitude. Since my goal is to avoid roads and highways, it has been tricky trying to locate trails that would meet self-imposed criteria (see my first post nearly two years ago) and eventually cover the USA from the Canadian to the Mexican border. Just a few days ago I just finished planning the last trail to traverse the country from 48.60777 to 32.53446 degrees parallel. I have found eighty-five trails in twenty-two states to accomplish this cross country feat. It is a lengthy process to identify a trail, assess the its elevation and rideability and then draw a line down the trail. I figure by the time I find a workable trail and then click the computer mouse every few miles along the route, I invest three to four hours to plan a trail ride. For eighty-five trails that amounts to nearly three hundred hours at the computer. All latitudes must overlap each other. Sometimes I discovered I could only get an overlap of latitude by riding city streets, sidewalks and bicycle friendly roads. I consider bicycle friendly roads or streets to be ones where the speed limit is 45 mph or less and a shoulder at least three feet wide or more. UTube has been very helpful in giving me a preview of a trail. At this point an interesting fellow with the pseudonym "XtremeKatfishn", wins my UTube Oscar for his video coverage of the Swamp Fox trail. As tough as the December 2013 ride was for me, his mile by mile  images and reports of the Swamp Fox spared me added frustration of not knowing the trail named after Francis Marion, was not a friendly bicycle trail. Katfishn helped me see there were going to be some rough spots. Unfortunately not many UTube reports contain the detail that  XtremeKatfishn provided. So for each trail planned, I must do considerable research to try to find out what the trail offers in terms of surface characteristics, unfinished or "washed out" bridges, availability of drinking water, trail head locations, elevations etc era. I am very thankful for what I have been able to decipher from the internet. Another information source I use are bike shops that reside in proximity of the trail. Depending who is working at the shop and the distance from the trail to the shop, I have learned next to nothing or quite a bit. For example, some shops know that a bridge is out, trees are down or something as mundane like why the trail was so named. Other shops tend to "kiss me off" with a curt remarks such as---"never heard of it"or "call the DNR"

The orange lines are trails I have ridden,. Green are planned, to be ridden trails. The longer the trail the easier to see on
the map above. There are a string of trails to be ridden along the California coast, Santa Barbara to San Diego and
numerous shorter trails in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. A trail needs to be thirty miles or more to show on
this map.

If all things go as planned, Chris, Geoff and I will do another MBBR (Maze Boy Bike Ride) in Virginia May 7-12.

While I wait out the winter, I will fine tune the three trails planned to assure they meet necessary latitude criteria and watch the birds and furry critters out the window. We get forty to fifty feathered friends and a half dozen mammals stuffing themselves with various varieties of  bird feed. Unfortunately the deer "pig out" on feather food to the tune of disseminating the feeders two to three times a week. I now fill the feeders less than half full to keep within our wildlife budget. We used to feed them corn, but the price is ridiculous---a side effect of ethanol production . The racoons, ground hog and opossum clean up seeds on the ground but the squirrels have 'figured out' a way to shinny up the one inch pole holding the feeders. Although the deer are usually nocturnal, occasionally they will roam through the property in the late afternoon. Here are some of the creatures that have come out during the day.

One of many fox and grey squirrels that
compete for the bird food. Luckily this
guy can't make it up the narrow pole. It's
fun to see him shinny half way up and
then do fireman's pole slide to the ground.
 Sometimes I oil the pole for added
entertainment :-)

Olivia the back lot
opossum shows up
occasionally to annoy
the cats.

Ricky and his buddies have been a
nuisance for us when two years ago
they decided to live above the ceiling.
13 of them. At $50 a creature to remove
them, the nuisance factor doubled.

Ricky's little brother. Cute but a bother
none the less.