home sweet home in beautiful Minnesota!

Goodness, I realized that here I'd directed people to my site for the summer, and it hasn't been updated in almost a month! So much has happened in the last few weeks...

Thanks to everyone's support including my friends and family, the good people of Plymouth, MI, the fantastic community in Ypsi and the support of local cyclists, I was able to meet the pledge goal that I made for June 1st! It was such a good feeling, and the pledges are still trickling in as well. I have raised $5,575 to date, and all in total the Big Ride Crew has raised $326,870!

Last Thursday I finished my last day working at the cafe, scooped my last ice cream cones and made my final lattes for a couple of months. On Friday I made the long drive back to Minnesota with my baby (a.k.a. my bike), with a broken cruise control, rocking out to my brother's iPod and admittedly subsisting on a good store of caffeine. Of course I miss my boyfriend and everyone else, but it has been so nice to be home. Going out to coffee with my parents, enjoying the "spacious" home life after apartment living, our own washer and dryer, and of course finding bliss in the beautiful Minnesotan roads and countryside has been just wonderful.

Finally, I am making some of the final preparations for my departure. Ane and I made a trip up to the Twin Cities yesterday to make some final purchases at the huge Erik's Bike Shop. I got a thorough tune-up, got all of my spare tubes and such, bought some bike shorts, more waterbottles, etc. etc. We had a pretty grand time together. Waiting for my tune-up we killed time at REI and some local coffee/bakery joints, eating and watching the stylish city folk :) I guess we can be quite the pair together, and I think that the bike shop guys got a kick out of us (we were told never had people had so much fun in the dressing room while we tried on bike shorts).