Saturday, June 29, 2013

Riding The Storms Out


I arrived home from my journey to Northern MN last Friday afternoon. Before I even unpacked the car I went right to work mowing the lawn, doing the trimming, and taking care of some odds and ends outdoors. Severe weather was in the forecast so I felt that these things needed to be taken care of before the 90 (F) temps and dewpoints in the 70's arrived.

Later that evening the storms hammered their way through the Twin Cities and really caused a good deal of chaos. Thousands of trees blew down and several hundred thousand people were left without power, some for up to five days. We were very fortunate to have no trees lost and we also remained hooked up to the power grid. Many of our neighbors and friends were not as fortunate.


Several days after the storm I decided to spend the morning riding West on the Luce Line towards the city of Watertown. What I confronted was somewhat mind boggling.


In the first 13.5 miles alone I encountered 23 blow downs such as these that I had to go through, over, or around to continue my forward progress. It ended up being one of the longest 38 mile rides I had ever done.




 Firefighters refer to them as "Widow Makers"

This particular tree came down about thirty feet in front of me as I rode down the trail. No warning what so ever. Just a loud "snap, crack, and pop" and it was down. Thank God for timing.

Post ride R & R at the local coffee shop.

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