Day 35, Northfield to Lake City, Minnesota

Ride distance: 52 miles; ride time: 2:54; cumulative distance: 2130 miles; average speed: 17.8 mph; calories: 3290; ascent: 1879 feet; descent: 2124 feet. Today’s ride was relatively short so we met at St. John’s Lutheran Church at 8 a.m. instead of our usual 7 a.m. meeting time. The ride went well except for 9 miles of road construction that resulted in a dirt road devoid of any asphalt. Zack had a blowout of a tube in addition to a tire that went bad at the same time. We’re getting used to fixing flats by now. They seem to take about 10 minutes to fix. Our host today was a Catholic Teen Center in Lake City. Amy was the coordinator for our stay and she did an excellent job of lining up host homes, coordinating a wonderful potluck dinner for us, and making lunches for the next day. As an extra special bonus, she even lined up the use of a 24-foot Sea-Ray speed boat for us to ride in on the Mississippi River. We had a great time of cruising on the river. There were 12 of us in the boat. Several of us even tried our hand at waterskiing. Lake City is famous for being the birthplace of waterskiing. The first waterskiing was done in the 1920’s. The skiers were pulled behind bi-planes with pontoons. It took awhile for speed boats to have powerful enough motors to be able to pull skiers. Johnny Young was the most successful looking like an old pro. Paul Bayfield was next to go and he made a very respectable showing too. Arek and I tried it and were unsuccessful. We had fun but we couldn’t quite get up on the skis. Mike tried it and was able to get up on his third attempt.