Say What?

In the nearly 29 years I've lived in our home, and of the abundance of squirrels that have made and make our yard their home, I've never once seen a baby (or juvenile) squirrel among them until this past week. It's so adorable! I've been seeing it sunning itself on top of a feeder on the side of our house. Tammy commented that it seems lonely because it's always by itself, never interracting with other squirrels. I'm not sure what to make of it because the squirrels we have around us are all gray squirrels but this little one appears more red than gray. I suppose it's possible that it becomes more gray as it ages. How fun it would be to get it to take food from my hand but I don't see that happening. I'm content to observe it from behind a window on the side of our home.  There's an Instagram account I've been following called babygirlbabysquirrel . The owner of the account rescued a baby squirrel from another animal's mouth in September

This week started out nicely. I took advantage of some unseasonably mild temps Monday afternoon for a 34-mile gravel ride to the southwest. My quads were a little sore from more miles than usual on my indoor trainer the previous week so I was hoping the ride would loosen them up a little. Later in the afternoon, in a matter of maybe 20 minutes, I began to feel weak and shaky. I had to lay down. Then I got the chills and couldn't warm up. I spent the evening shivering by our gas fireplace with a blanket over me. Except for a trip to GS Labs in Shakopee to a  drive-thru Covid testing site  the next day, I had no idea that I'd be on the couch or in bed until this morning (Friday). The testing site performed 2 nasal swab tests for current Covid infection and one finger prick antibody test to see if I've had any previous exposure to the virus in the past few months. They were all negative. My illness had all the makings of a bad seasonal flu but one that hit me harder than any

Until I bought my first fat bike a little more than 9 years ago, I'd been strictly a road cyclist my entire adult life. I'd been eyeing those strange beasts with their larger-than-life tires for about a year when I took a drive to Freewheel Bikes in Minneapolis one night to have a closer look. Steve offered me the keys to one to take out into the neighborhood to see what I thought. I was instantly hooked. I felt like a kid again on those fat, bouncy tires and I know I had to have been sporting the biggest smile.  Steve told me about the trails along the Minnesota River bottoms and how they'd be a good place to get a feel for my new bike. It was an area I was familiar with having literally run thousands of miles along Black Dog road in the shadow of the power plant's stack in my former life as a runner, but the trails themselves? They would be a new experience for me. The next day I excitedly took my Mukluk down to the river bottoms  via a stop at my mom's and Tim&