Our Bike's LTD / Scenic Concepts group ride started off on dry roads at 12:30pm sharp.  Everything was going smooth, fast, and warm until we hit some Minnesota gravel roads.  What we found were beautiful sheets of slush, road ponds, and places where our bikes could swim freely unrestricted.  By our third climb of the ride our derailleurs were frozen and we could no longer shift to our middle rings...so we climbed the last 500+ ft hill in our big ring with ease.  After descending into La Crescent on CR 25 we could no longer feel our hands or feet.  I personally could not move my fingers.  Our very talkative epic ride went from jokes and laughter to silence and pain.  This was our first mud ride of the season averaging 11 mph.  In fact, mother nature found a way to drop both of us.  Lesson learned . . . don't bring the race bike out in March!  I would do this ride all over again in a heartbeat.

Banks' look of excitement says it all...

Karl Senior's Race machine stripped of it's race tuning...

Frozen clay

More frozen clay

My back side looks much worse than my front.