Jay Richards

It definitely felt like a return to Fall weather today with the temp falling to the 50's and a cold rain early afternoon. A few trees have started changing already, usually the ones that have been subject to stress etc. We have a couple trees right next to our house that needed to come down but dragged my feet because I hate thinning trees right around the house. (Squirells had been chewing the sweet maple bark off the branches and pretty much did the tree in.) But better to take them down when you can versus middle of the winter after a nice winter storm and a dump of snow and a tree has crashed on to the house and you have to deal with that instead of playing in the snow.



Took the tree down to the left no problem but the one that had the dried and colored leaves took some examination to determine proper way to cut and make sure I didn't drop it on the house.
Fell in good spot with no harm done. Jonell helping out the clearing. Nicely done. Going to have to take Jonell out this Fall when deadfall clearing. Probably wouldn't get anything done then!
Managed to save the little sapling next to the cut tree. Hopefully will grow up nicely. Not expecting it to grow up like the tree that was taken down.
Blocks for campfire and grilling. The lingering of sawdust when cutting leaves a aftertaste of maple syrup.


Last week we pretty much had kid friends over every day. All good. Highlight of the week was Jack's birthday party on Friday. Nice hot summer weather for plenty of water action etc. Looking forward to Labor day weekend when I can have a bunch of my friends over.
Jon sporting some serious hockey hair. Last tourney of the summer coming up this weekend in Duluth then we are going to cut it low for football, if we can. Going to be a good tourney with some solid teams. Skating in three rinks I haven't been in so look forward to that and hopefully feel good enough to ride out at Spirit Mtn with Jake.
Sunday headed down and over to Wisconsin for the Border Battle. Still on the sidelines recovering from lymes....good days and bad days.....learning to be patient and letting it steer its course. Photo above brought back a few memories: Don Schimachael back on the mtb solo.....think last race saw him besides Cheq. was Gear Grinder in Jamestown but he would make it over to the Prairie Knights Casino race south of Mandan. Made fun of my cut off bib shorts at that race. Doing Cheq. with Adam Bergam stoking. Andy Dahl in polka dot jersey: raced against Andy back in the 90's. Never forget the National race at MT Spokane I drove out to with George Hayes and met up with Eric Bartz and Jeff Hall and Andy threw a tube down after I flatted saving my race. The days of 100+ riders in each Expert age class.
Thoughts and prayers going out to Geno who crashed yesterday. Talked to Gary Sjoquist at Q active today and said Geno punctured a lung, broke a rib and one other bone. Tough deal. I guess Eddie Karow, also in photo above above, stopped to help with evac after dicing and duking with Geno and dnf'd after helping. Just good people all around at these mtb races.
Jake raced JR X having a solid race taking first among all JR xers. 4 min riders on the podium including Maplelag rider Trent Warner. At WORS cup they started separate from Male and Female elite but yesterday they were right behind the Elite riders with no time break so lots of traffic to deal with. All seemed to turn out okay. Fun watching the elite races. Like the shorter laps, making for tighter racing. Did feeds for TJ Woodruff and was kind of crazy since he was drilling it at the front on most of the laps opposite sides so I had to make sure I didn't take out the other riders. Enjoyed visiting with folks I normally wouldn't if racing and explain to some folks curious about the Loppet that Maplelag isn't 7 hours from River Falls and we do have electricity. Ha! Good stuff.