The River of Frozen Dreams

Winter seems to have taken a firm grip on the land over the past 4 weeks, but we still don’t have much snow. I figure that it will probably warm up around the beginning of November, although I really hope it doesn’t. The snow that we got 3 weeks ago is still hanging around and towards the end of this week, we got another inch of powder. The temps have not gotten above freezing the whole time though, so the ground (aka soggy spongy mattress ground) has been hard as a rock for some time now. This makes it perfect to ride on, so Katja and I have been cruising up along the river for evening rides. The river itself is a little sketchy to ride on yet, although I have seen 4 wheeler donuts out on the middle of ice. I’m not going to risk it though. We can ride about six miles in about an hour, but only 2 miles of that is on the tundra. Tundra riding is still pretty slow going.
Fishing would be so much easier if I could ride all the way up to where the Dollys are hanging out. It takes me about an hour to get to the fish when the ground is soggy and boggy, but only 30 minutes from my house when the ground is frozen. It is hard to believe that I was fishing this same water about 1 month ago. Many things take forever up here, the mail, traveling, etc. The weather happens very suddenly.

Today, Katja and I went on our mountain circuit ride where we ride up to the top and then maneuver our way down the other side without getting killed. With snow on the ground it’s a little softer falling, but you end up falling more often, so I guess it evens out. I went over the bars a couple of times today. We had a great ride though. I must have been really focused on keeping the rubber side down, because all of the sudden, I saw blackness in front of me and hit the breaks as hard as I could. Too late, my front wheel sunk into the murky blackness and I had to catch myself, which meant that my foot sunk down into the bogginess as well. Surprisingly I was able to pull my foot out quick enough so that I didn’t get too wet. I tried to sneak around where the ice seemed a little thicker, but I broke through again. I quickly decided that I made a wrong turn and backtracked to another trail that headed up towards higher ground. Katja did amazingly well the whole time we were out. She is leaps and bounds ahead of where she was last year as far as skijoring (bikejoring) is concerned. I’m really looking forward to this winter when we get the skis out.