It is very easy to get into a routine, or really a non-routine up here in Cable. The Kansas garage is all set up perfect and it is so convenient that the routine almost begins before I get up here.

The only twist is that Stacie and her husband Karl, my orthopedic surgeon friend from Louisville are up here vacationing for the next week. Stacie grew up here and comes back a couple times a year to decompress from the hectic life of being a doctor.

Today we rode the Firehouse 50 loop, which is as the name says, 50 miles. It a few more miles riding from Dennis’. Trudi and Stacie just rode 35 miles, but Bill, Dennis, Karl and I did the 50 plus deal. I was a little tired from the race and the drive, but not dragging tired. It is super scenic, going over the Great Divide, next to the water’s of Lake Namakagon and through the Chequamegon forest. It was a little over 3 hours, so pretty perfect.

We went over to the condos by Telemark to eat with those guys last night. It is so sad seeing Telemark lodge all closed up. Maybe it will just be temporarily again. The area has so much potential, I don’t see why someone can’t just get it back up to speed and fiscally healthy.

We’re going to ride MTB this morning. I haven’t ridden a MTB bike since my shoulder surgery. I have serious doubts that it is going to work very well, but I have to try sometime. I swam for a few minutes in the lake today and don’t feel any ill-effects from it today. It wasn’t very quick, but it sort of worked. I’ll have to ask Stacie about it.

It is supposed to rain after noon. We have to take Trudi up to Duluth to head to Cascade Classic in Bend. She has a 5 am Wednesday morning flight to San Francisco, so it is nearly impossible to leave in the morning from here. Duluth is fun to hang at for an evening anyway.

Okay, better go make sure my MTB tires hold air. It has been gathering dust.

Dennis missin’ around at the Great Divide marker outside of Grandview.

And here he is again following Bill and I around all day.

The road next to Lake Namakagon.

Stacie grilling salmon for dinner.

One of my favorite places in the world. The water is so warm right now. At least the first 3 or 4 feet.

Gelato and cheesecake for dessert.

I think it is kind of fun and interesting comparing prices of different things and services and seeing if they seem in line with each other. They never really do, but recently it seems completely out of line. Trying to compare the cost of gasoline to the price of food to the price of bikes and I have no idea where to start as a baseline.

I drove down to Dallas on Friday and yesterday went by Richardson Bike Mart. I wasn’t there to shop, but I don’t get into bike shops that often, so I looked around for a bit. It is amazing how much some stuff costs.

Bike shorts for example. There were way more shorts and bibs that cost over $100 than under $100. And many were nearly $200. Man, I could go through a few thousand dollars worth of shorts in a season at those rates.

There was a Specialized McLaren bike there with an $18000 price tag. That is the most expensive bike I’ve personally seen. You can buy a pretty okay car for that price. One with electric windows and probably even heated seats if you looked around enough. I would have a really hard time justifying buying that bike with all the other things available in the world that you could buy for nearly 20K.

Trying to compare any medical costs to regular life stuff is pretty impossible and seems stupid. I was charged $1250 for an x-ray of my collarbone when I tore up my shoulder in January. Or a friend told me about getting charged $1750 for some stitches in his knee. Those numbers are so out of wack that I can’t fathom how they got so screwed up.

Shopping at the market here they had a sale on bottled water. 24 for $1.97. They are 500 ml each. So you could get 219,289.34 bottles of water for the price of the McLaren. That is a lot of water. Around 55,000 gallons of water, bottled and delivered. The water seems like a better deal than the bike.

Also at the store they had these huge apricots. I don’t know the exact price of the apricot, but they were/are really good. I think they would end up costing about $2 each. That seems pretty expensive, being about the same cost as the water, but in the right circumstance, I could see getting one apricot for the 24 bottle case of water.

I’m going to eat Sunday brunch at the Dallas Country Club in a little while. I have no idea how much that is going to be, but it is going to be expensive on any scale. I’m sure I could eat get dozens of Grand Slams at Denny’s for the brunch. But you’re paying for the ambiance here, not the food. That is a hard thing to quantify.

I drove my Honda Insight down here. It gets around 50 miles per gallon. So for that same two dollars, I can travel close to 30 miles in the car. Gasoline seems too cheap to me. Traveling the 30 miles, carrying all my stuff is a much better deal than the apricot.

Anyway, I guess we all decide what we feel is the value of the things and services we purchase. I think it would pretty impossible trying to convince a non-cyclist that most the stuff we purchase to ride is a value. But, having those $200 at the right time can be a value.

This is a deal, for sure, in this day and age.

This is an expensive bike. Deal? I’m not sure about that.

Richardson Bike Mart is dog friendly. You can’t beat that.

The huge apricot. Pretty great.

The guy in front of me shopping had this Mt. Dew. It doesn’t have any corn syrup. It is made with sugar. I don’t know how much it cost, but he said that it wasn’t nearly as sweet as normal Mt. Dew.