Sorry about that. I should have warned you. Anyway, I was in northern Wisco doing some relaxing. The Internet is still a pretty new thing to people up there, so there was no blogging going on. But, what they lack in reliable internet access they make up for in lakes and trees. This is roughly where I spent the week:

I rolled up on Saturday, the day was hot and sunny. It looked like the perfect kick-off to vacation time. Little did I know know that it would be the last I saw of the sun for a few days. I woke up to thunderstorms Sunday morning and people chanting USA! USA! USA! Because that’s what we ‘mericans do on the 4th of July.  The rain ruined the plan of parking the boat in the middle of the lake with 12er of Pacifico, a pack of smokes, and tanning naked. Instead I stayed inside and finished reading Norwegian Wood, then started reading The Possibility of an Island, again. American authors are for chumps, even on America Day.

By early afternoon the local TV station was calling the day a waste, it was going to be raining all night and through the next day. Fireworks shows everywhere were being cancelled. Americans were pist!

The next morning I was antsy by the time I woke up. I really needed to get out of the house. It was still raining on and off, but I decided to go do some biking anyway. The local bike shop hooked me up with a sweet Trek 4300 hardtail with a garbage barge shock up front. So I immediately took it out to some trails and sloppied the bastard up. I also found this Mountain Bike Skillz Zone which was 75% rad. There were teeter-tottery things like this:

And some larger ones like this:

Then there were the warm up drops. Which were pretty fun to be screwing around on.

After I worked on my skillz, I took it to the trails and rode the shit out of them, getting all sorts of lost. While I didn’t really need to use my skills I did get to rip through the place on some fun-ass single-track. At one point I rode into an area that The Lorax obviously never made it too.

It seems that the people of this area have never read my dissertation, Of People and Trees: Life in Wisconsin’s Northwoods and the Relation to the European Settlers of New England. Do I need to remind people that if you remove the forest the evil gets loose?

Then while leaving this once hallowed area I saw this sign:

But it seems the term “steep” is relative:

By this time the rain was starting to let up. I wrapped up the ride, returned the rental machine and went back to the lake house. The weather cleared for the next couple days and I spent the rest of my time sitting on the dock making fun of the wakeboarders. Man, now I know how skateboarders feel when they see snowboarders. It’s a good lake though.

All of these images were taken with my slackberry, so I will disregard any comments you make regarding my photog skillz.