SUPERIOR NORTH OUTDOOR CENTER

May 27th Brunch Ride. . .

Mark — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:59:25 +0000

. . . Bike→Work becomes Bike→Brunch at Naniboujou. Check out our “Bike Rentals & Guided Tours” tab for more info about the Naniboujou ride.

May is Bike Month!

Mark — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:48:53 +0000

Check out the League of American Bicyclists’ May is National Bike Month. Bike into the Shop during May Bike→Work Week and get a free smoothie from our DIY, bike-powered blender.

MOVE IT! 2012

Mark — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:21:59 +0000

Check out Sawtooth Clinic’s MOVE IT! campaign for May 2012. Get active Cook County! New this year – “Raise the heat!” Track your minutes of activity and watch your thermometer rise as you move toward the recommended weekly activity goal.

Singletrack 2012

Mark — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:14:55 +0000

On Thursday, 4/12/12, the Superior Cycling Association (SCA) board met to hear the latest on singletrack building. Cory Berg, our current USFS liason, says that phase II of the Sugarbush system will start on June 21 and should take 3 weeks. Boardwalk on phase II was constructed by MCC crews last summer. Cory and west-end SCA board member Jeff Lynch were working on a partnership with the Tofte Town Board to finance the building of phase III so construction could contiue through the summer creating five miles of trail by summers end. See these pdfs:
SugarbushMTBTrails
as well as the Pincushion System singletrack in the works:
PincushionMTBTrails

Road biking with the McCarthy family. . . .

Mark — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 17:39:00 +0000

by Olwe

Amanda (foreground) and sister Kate McCarthy (behind Amanda), friends Nick (back left) and Brendan (back right) just finished a road tour up and east of Grand Marais on 61. They’re riding Trek road bikes. The McCarthy family, of St. Paul, is staying in their cabin on Devil’s Track. This reporter informed them of the many opportunities for mountain and cross biking, too.

Sightings. . . .

Mark — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 17:31:24 +0000

Here’s a classic Gitane owned by Lenna Sobanja:

She got it here at the shop. This classic bike has a lugged cro-mo steel frame with down-tube shifters, center-pull caliper brakes, and a classic-style double chain ring crank set. We added cross-style brake levers to help the smaller rider.

Sawtooth Challenge 2011

Mark — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:16:00 +0000

Hey, before we say anything, maybe check out the photo album here and here. Then take a look at the race results here.

This year’s Sawtooth Challenge happened on a wonderful day. August 27, 2011 was sunny and not too hot.

Glowingly beautiful August North Shore morning!

The race got underway at 10:00 a.m. Tim was the pace rider out of town until the snow mobile trail just north of the new Gunflint Trail road. From then on the riders raced up the hill to the Pincushion parking lot, then on to the stadium area. Once there, they broke out into the three classes Expert, Sport, and Citizen. The Sport Class included two loops of the main outer Pincushion Trail for a total of 15 miles, the Expert three loops for 21 miles.

Colin Pendziwol, of the Black Sheep Mountain Bike Club, Thunder Bay was our Expert Class winner.

Colin after his winning 2:04:21 effort.

Doug Osborn of Decorah, Iowa won the Sport Class with a time of 1:41:15.

Times were comparable to last year’s.

Bike Rack Dilemma

Mark — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:43:00 +0000

By Jerry Hiniker

Bicycle racks! Wow!, finally. . . .

A couple of weeks back I ran into Dave Tersteeg at the recycling center (you meet everyone there) when he told me the bike racks were actually on there way. It was exciting after all the work we had done on the Active Living committee, and holding our breath for the grant approval. Then a few days ago I got an e-mail confirming the arrival and installation including the locations where they had been installed.

I decided to take a look, and maybe a couple of pictures and headed out to Harbor Park across from the Trading Post first. I was speechless, I couldn’t describe it right away, but when the words did come my reaction was that someone had placed the rib cage from a whale just off the street. I searched around to see if I might have been looking at the wrong object but saw nothing else to rest a bike against other than the usual lamp post and park benches. Hmm, I wondered, would anyone actually think to use it for their bikes? Well, maybe I should look for the others first, maybe I would have a different impression in a different location.

Headed over to the Joyne’s parking lot where I found rack #2 inconspicuously behind the sign on the corner with 4 bikes attached to it, but surmised that the bikers might not have recognized it for its actual purpose but rather as an accidental convenience. Even haphazardly in their arrangement with the rack it was in use with bikes attached to one of the ribs. Ok, let’s take a stroll over to Drury Lane Bookstore and the Historical society. These two racks were smaller and quite visible, I was able to shake the whale rib image but now replaced by that of a 1958 Buick grill without the 177 little diamond dots between the bars. I cancelled my plans to visit the last three, fearful of what new image I might conjur. Even when visible the racks are sort of innocuous, and perhaps that’s what the designer at Dero racks intended, but we are Grand Marais, an arts community, something “artier” should have been recommended.

It’s not as if better designs were not available, scanning Dero and Saris catalogues I found some basic but appealing designs that invited artistic embellishment, and that fit the budget we had available. They had nice names like “City rack” and “Campus Rack”, not a bland ‘hoop rack”, and they were designed to compliment public spaces. All is not lost though, and certainly this not a failure but an opportunity: what can we do to enhance both the appearance and utility; to make them more inviting? Paint schemes? Added sculpture or other artifacts? Maybe permanently parking a bike at some of them to attract usage? Help me out here with suggestions, if we don’t get usage I fear they may eventually be displaced, and I really want them to work.

Mark’s righteous Raleigh

Mark — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:18:32 +0000

Mark’s Raleigh Sports is a classic from the Nottingham, England company Raleigh Bicycle Company founded in 1887. Mark’s Sports is an original English manufacture bike from 1959. Classic example of a sturdy, all-purpose, all-weather bike for local commuting, errand-running.

Berry picking on the North Shore

Mark — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 04:16:00 +0000

by Olwe

Last week was pretty much it for blueberry picking at the top of the Gunflint Trail . . . and this year was not as good as last. As you may know, way up on the Gunflint are many acres of wilds recovering from forest fire — prime country for blueberries.

Here’s a peculiar ‘shroom we found at one of our patches:

Notice the “Eye of Sauron” at the top. Somebody said this might be a lobster mushroom. I believe lobster mushrooms are edible. But if in fact Sauron the Deceiver has occupied this poor fungus, it might not be a lobster mushroom after all.

We also have been loading up on domestic raspberries from various garden sources. They’re doing quite well. In addition, the thimbleberries are coming in. They’re my all-time favorite, but they are not a prolific berry producer. A big, bushy plant may only produce a hand-full. I’ve even seen a few cloudberries, but they’re somewhat rare this far south.