Upgrades and Good Times.

I built my fat bike with a Salsa steel fork and it worked great, but I had a 907 aluminum fork that I picked up for a project that is not going to happen for a while and I thought that I should put the fork to good use.  So swapped out the Salsa for the 907.  Not a huge ride difference between the two but it is a bit lighter and it looks great on the bike.

While I was in the mood to do some upgrades I mounted my Hydroflask and Topeak Java Cage on the bike.  The 907 has a smaller triangle so I had to make a bracket to offset the bottle cage holes by 3.5"  I think that it turned out pretty well and it seems to work great.

We have gotten outside for some fun rides even with the colder temps.  Troy, Todd, Mike and myself took a ride around the Bald Eagle and Otter lakes on some great hidden single track.  I turned out to be a great day for a ride.

I received a pair of Bar Mitts for Christmas, they are awesome, nice and warm in really cold temps.

While we were on the ride a local reporter stopped Todd and I and snapped a picture for the paper, it ended up on the front page!  I think that this is the first time I have ever been in the paper!

Kyleen got some new pair of Volkl Kenjas  over Christmas and she was very excited to get out on them so, we joined up with Troy and Kerry and headed down to Welsh Village for a ski day.  It was a great day the weather was warm and the snow was great!  I have never skied at Welsh so this was a new experience for me. I only took a couple of pictures, we were having too much fun skiing!

Her new boards are so much wider than mine.

Troy and Kerry are ahead of us a couple of chairs.

We had so much fun at Welsh that the next weekend we headed up to Spirit Mountain.  I really like Spirit, the runs are a bit longer than some of the other local ski hills.  There are also some great views of Duluth Harbor.  We lucked out on another great day of skiing!

Mexico and Early Winter Fun

I realized the other day that I haven't post anything in a while.  It’s been very busy fall and start of winter for us.  We headed down to Mexico for a much needed break, we did nothing but relax.  We been going to the Barcelo Maya Palace for the last 4 years, but this was our first trip alone.  It was a great get away.  Think that our next trip will be to a new location, we love this place, but it would be nice to see something new.

The view from our room on to the pool.

The wonderful beach.

For Thanksgiving we headed to Kyleen's family and the following Sunday we head to mine.  My family has had a tradition of shooting before dinner, I'm sure that's a normal tradition right??  It worked out great that both of us hit the clay in the pictures below!

Then we came back to winter.  It seems like this year we just jumped right in!  Work has been busy for both of us but we have been able to get out for some fun.  Kyleen and I met up with Kat and Paul for some XC skiing at Wild River State Park.  It is a great place to ski and the trails were perfect.  We got in about 8 or 9 miles of great skiing, the trails were awesome.

Troy and I decided to head over to St. Croix Falls for a pre-ride of the Solstice Chase fat bike course.  It was about -8 degrees for the whole ride.  I did not take any pictures on the course but it was beautiful.  We did snap a picture at the end.

We headed to the cabin Thursday after Christmas for some snowmobiling, snowshoeing and relaxing.  It was a great time.  There is a ton of snow up there, riding was good and we’re hoping to get up there again soon.

After a great ride and a nice snowshoe around the lake it was time for a good beer!  It was a great sunset as well!