January has been a bad month for the Greg & Feeshko family.  To reiterate what I wrote on the last page, The Feeshko's mom died on January 1st.  What should have been a day of celebration, turned out to be a day of sorrow for us.  The Feeshko flew out to Spokane, while the next couple weeks for me were dedicated to finding an assisted living facility with memory care for my dad. 

By some sort of Church of the Great Outdoors miracle, my brothers and I found one with the almost perfect combination of excellent care, friendly and dedicated staff, delicious food (I know because I ate a few meals there) and being able to stay in the same town where he has lived for the last 50 years and where he has plenty of support from friends and family.

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The next few days involved moving some of my dad's stuff into his new apartment.  And, just to add a little extra excitement to all the bragging I've written so far, we moved all that stuff in the midst of a two-day Iowa blizzard.

The blizzard made the national news.  The reporters talked about all the cars and trucks in the ditches, motorists getting stranded on the highways, and they interviewed people shivering on the streets.  Somehow, the reporters missed out on the opportunity to film my brothers and I carrying tables, chairs, a bed, a couch, pictures & other memorabilia, and boxes of personal care products out of my dad's house to my mini-van, driving across town, and then carrying the same things from my van into the assisted living place--IN SNOW AND 50-MILE-PER-HOUR WINDS!  Most assuredly, I would have been glad to grant one of the reporters an interview.  They'd have gotten quite an earful regarding the conditions from my perspective.  Some of my diatribe might have been dedicated to how much I wish I could have been riding my bicycle instead of carrying furniture.

After the relocation and after the blizzard subsided, I drove back to my Minnesota home under sunny skies.  Sun be damned, the temperature had fallen to 15-degrees below Zero.  I was thankful that my car's heater managed to keep my toes just warm enough to avoid frostbite. 

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I held onto hope that maybe, just maybe, I'd be able to fulfill the January bike tour dream.  The conditions were right for an exciting Minnesota wintertime bike trip.  A cold snap had moved in, there was snow on the ground, and there was nary a leaf on any view-blocker.  NICE!  So, on my first day back home, I took another acclimatization ride.  Check out my video.

Indeed, MY Minnesota Town's measly three-inches of snow was no match for MY DAD'S Town's 20-inches of snow.  Nor could MY Town's overnight low temperature of 9-degrees below zero match Iowa's overnight low of 20-degrees below zero.  Those Iowans have all the luck. 

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True, the weather was working out for my first high-intensity bragging tour in the month of January.  Yet, something was wrong.  The Feeshko will be flying back to Minnesota tomorrow and she is still grieving.  And I still have a bad feeling about leaving my dad in Iowa.  The bottom line is that I can't do a January tour in Minnesota this year.  Maybe next year will be the  right time.  I'm so ashamed.

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To the rescue came a message from an anonymous Cycleblazer who suggested an alternative idea.  His idea was to write about somebody else's SUCCESSFUL January bike tour as a substitute for my failed one.  To preserve the anonymous Cycleblazer's anonymity, I will not name him.  But if you were to interrogate me with waterboarding, I might slip up and hint that his first name begins with Sco, and his last name begins with Anderso.  But no matter how much water you pour on my face, that's all the information you'll get from me.

Sco Anderso's idea is crazy to the max, and it could easily result in bad Cycleblaze consequences for him and even worse consequences for me.  Maybe that's why I liked the idea so much.  I like to live on the edge.

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By legal proclamation, you are hereby released from any obligation to continue following this failed bike touring journal.  Of course, the proclamation does not FORBID you from reading Phase Two, which involves my first foray into writing a bike touring journal for somebody else.