Much like small town merchants promote shopping locally, and fine restaurants source their meats & vegetables locally and craft breweries advocate for drinking locally, I'm a believer in TOURING locally.  At least I'm a believer today, because I have no other alternative right now.  Most other days, however, I'm a believer in shopping, eating, drinking and touring in other places.  

My initial thought was to ride a route south of MY Town.  A Hastings-to-Cannon Falls-to-Red Wing route sounded pretty good.  But everybody goes south for their winter tours, though usually much, much further south than Cannon Falls, Minnesota.  

To distinguish myself from the crowd, I decided to go north.  Pretty cool, eh?

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I have a pretty good idea where I'm going to ride tomorrow, but beyond that I could be in some big trouble.  

When I conceived of this tour I believed I had a few decent days ahead of me.  All I knew was that the high for tomorrow was going to be 38-degrees, and the next two days would be in the high 20s.  NO PROBLEM!

Things have changed considerably since I started writing this.  As if out of nowhere, the TV weather forecasters are predicting 3-to-6 inches of snow on Friday.  I can ride in that . . . but not very far.

I considered postponing this tour for a few days after hearing that.  Only two things prevent me from doing so.  One of them was my bragging in the introduction about my all-weather riding abilities and how I'm a Tough Guy.   The other thing was that I made a motel reservation for the first night and the confirmation e-mail stated in no uncertain terms, "THIS RESERVATION IS NON-REFUNDABLE."

I am on the record, many times, for ripping on the weather forecasting industry.  I think I've written such things as "those bums have no idea what's going to happen beyond a day or so" and "I wonder how much they get paid for such incompetence."

So, I'm going to take my chances.  I'm going to get to Cottage Grove tomorrow and play it by ear from there.  I figure I have at least a 75% chance of advancing.