Where are the rest of your pants?

It's Frenchie and Sir Walter relaxing by the Wisconsin boarder!

















Shannon put the fire wood on her bike and we rode around the park laden thus.




God dammit.

It has been a while since I updated.

The last time I posted the van was running perfectly. Since then we went to St Croix State Park. Which was awesome! We went fishing. We went biking. We went hiking. We played Frisbee.

here are some pictures

The tent worked perfectly. The old Boy Scout favorite proved easier to break down than I even remembered. Which made the nieghbors jealous—with their raspberry shaped dome tent and a dozen different sizes of poles.

What we aren’t prepared to go without is esspresso. If I haven’t mentioned how awesome the 9 cup Bialetti mocca pot is, here I am saying an aluminum espresso pot that works on a camp stove or the kitchen burner has infinte utility. Every camping trip we’ve been on has had espresso. Which boggles other’s.

Frenchie didn’t like the washboard of the gravel roads in the park. My teeth didn’t fall out but my steel waterbottle did cartwheels. In fact, the water bottle worked pretty badly.

maybe...just maybe...old french road bikes are not mountain bikes. I know, it’s hard to believe but perhaps there is a difference.

So, as the weekend wrapped up it also got toasty out. We tried some of the Munger trail on our way out of Hinkley but Shannon’s tire started to seriously bulge. The three year old tires started to come apart in the middle of the tread. By the time we got back to the van the rubber was rubbing on the fender.

We were able to dodge a lot of traffic by taking 35w to the Cleveland exit and sneaking into St Paul through the U of M campus. We did stop at Fleet Farm in Blaine and finally picked up an axe. So we'll be able to chop our own tinder, which is awesome.

On our way back, the van was running a little hot, but, I figured that 90 degree heat would explain that away. It had been running a bit rough but I just figured that I was needing a bottle of seafoam.


Shannon had me pick up a kettle for canning. It sorta fit on the rack...



This past Saturday the engin temperature skyrocketed. So Shannon took it into the shop only to get bad news. antifreeze in the oil from the headgaskets. Crap.

what did the van get us at Upull?

300 bucks.

Monday I test rode a Crosscheck. On smooth surface it felt sorta like Frenchie, but without low speed squirrliness. On bumps it was a dream. Tonight I test rode a Big Dummy on my way home from work, which was also smooth on bumps, but the Crosscheck had more electricity.

Did I mention we are looking at buying a car?





The question they asked at work was :

"John, where are the rest of your pants???"