Ride Saturday, October 19

As requested by many of you, we will return to the Prior Lake via Bloomington route that we rode on September 7. The route is about 59 miles long and it crosses the Minnesota River at two different places, so there’s some climbing but it’s worth it for the scenery and this time we’ll have beautiful Fall colors along the way. We can do a stop at a Cyclocross race in Bloomington’s Moir Park and/or Edelweiss in Prior Lake — I’ll let you decide Saturday.

We should have great weather again Saturday with moderate winds from the west and temps from 50 to 58 degrees. We’ll leave Rosemount at 08:30, since the sun is coming up at 07:30 now.

Remember, you may volunteer with Free Bikes for Kidz every day you want through November. Dave Donovan joined me last Sunday and we worked on 16-inch boys bikes. There are four main stages that the bikes go through and they each need a lot of volunteer time. In stage one, the washers clean the bikes. In stage two, preppers do some basic mechanical work, like removing the seat post and lubricating it, so it can be adjusted to the kid’s needs. In the third stage, the mechanics do more involved work, like removing the stem and lubricating the bearings. In the final stage, paid mechanics check the bikes and fix anything that the volunteers have missed. If you volunteer, you’ll find the paid mechanics are helpful teachers when you run into a problem that you don’t know how to resolve.