TRAM

So obviously it is a bicycle blog. So here's some bicycle background. I have ridden the Ride Across Minnesota 3 times, in 2002, 2003, and 2005. Here is the 2002 image.
2002 was hilly, unnecessarily so, deliberately for some unknown reason made difficult. It was unique for me in that I rode it from my garage. I rode from my garage to the starting point the day before the ride began. On the day the ride ended I rode from the ending point back to my garage.

Here is the 2005 image:
This one was unusual in that it was cold. In late July I rode through Embarrass, Minnesota on a day when it was 32 degrees in that icebox of the nation.

In between was 2003 which was unusual in that I rode complete border to border, west to east, Big Stone Lake to the Mississippi River.

Today it rained all day long.

Ford plant

A mainstay of the local economy for nearly as long as there has been a local economy, the Ford assembly plant is scheduled for closing. They make Ranger trucks at this plant. Some would say it is a victim of bad management, continuing to build larger and larger vehicles when the market turned towards hybrids and fuel efficiency. Some would say it is a victim of a bloated employee/retiree benefit package. I guess it depends on whose ox is being gored. What is clear is that the world has changed and Ford didn't change in time to save this truck plant.
The plant will disappear. There are lots of different proposals for what to do with the land. Some want some sort of light industrial redevelopment to create new jobs to replace the ones being lost. Some want housing, the riverfront is a prime location. Some want to create a riverside park.

My experience with long duration industrial locations tells me that there are some nasty surprises lurking somewhere on the grounds. It will be interesting to see who gets stuck with the bill for clean-up. Actually I am certain that Ford won't completely escape liability. I am also certain they will try to avoid paying anything more than some kind of absolute minimum. This isn't the only plant that Ford is closing and the company is in some financial difficulty anyway. Difficult decisions remain to be made. Is it worth the bankruptcy and dissolution of the corporation to get this pollution cleaned up?

Not my ox, at least not directly.

The plant is located on the river boulevard and is significant today because I rode all the way to it. This isn't quite the full ride in that direction yet but it is my deepest penetration in that direction to date. Also significant today was I climbed for the first time this year the Saint Anthony Avenue hill along the tracks from the river boulevard to Pelham. This hill, as is true of all of the local hills, is no mountain, it is a hill. So it isn't extremely long. But it is steep and for early spring legs it was a bit of a brute. It is a regular part of the ride, though, and today I turned up it for the first time this year, a mini-milestone.

As is apparent from the photo today was grey, very grey, but it didn't rain and yesterday's puddles had all dried up. Spring has been mostly grey, but at least it is here.

Caught in the rain

You learn early that when a day is as far out of the average as yesterday was that a storm is usually coming, quite often a violent storm. So it was no surprise that rain was in the forecast for today. Well, I don't like to ride in the rain. So usually the process of ride preparation includes checking Mikey J's weather page and satisfying myself that it isn't likely to rain. And I did that today. As I drove home from work it was still sunny even if quite windy. Rain seemed possible, but what the heck, the sun was out.

So I got dressed and started out. Clouds were starting to roll in and covered perhaps half of the sky as I left the driveway. But the sun was out.

As often happens, I heard it before I felt it. At about 6 and a half miles I heard something hitting the shoulder of my jacket. Very shortly after that I felt the first drop of moisture. It was very light at this point but I turned abruptly and started for home. At about 8.2 there was a rumble of thunder. At about 9 it started to rain. The temperature was decreasing from 60 so it was going to be a cold rain.

Rain is highly motivating and I got in a hammering gear and started to hammer. I was taking all of the short cuts but I was a little over 3 miles from home. I could feel the rain going through my tights within a mile or so, not cold yet, but wet. At a mile to go I could feel it start to work through the jacket onto my shoulders. Not wet yet, but cold. So I kept hammering and made it home. The bike is a bit wet and I got the dirt stripe up the back of my jacket. But it wasn't my worst rain experience.

I get rained on about once a year. Here's hoping that this was the time for this year.

No photo (it was raining), so here's a favorite photo from April 2004:
This the first thing the guide showed us in Paris. Arrive in town at Gare Montparnasse. Check into the hotel. Back to the Gare and onto the Metro. Off the Metro, up the stairs, turn left and boom: France. This is the Obelisk at the Place de la Concorde at the foot of the Champs Elysee.

Ice out

Several really nice things happened on today's ride.

First, street sweeping has begun early. Partly it is the suddenly warm weather but I think also we had a pretty mild winter. There wasn't much snow until pretty late in the season so there wasn't as much sand and salt put down on the roads as there is in a more severe winter. Street sweeping is extremely important to me as once the streets are swept I start riding my road bike (which is more fun to ride). The street in front of my house is one of the streets which has already been swept.

Second, I had a moment of real communication. I live near the university. University married student housing is located along one of my primary riding routes. There are lots of foreign students in married student housing, many with rudimentary English skills. So I was riding and I met an Asian woman riding on the wrong side of the road. I think Chinese although I am not sure and that detail matters not to the story. But as evidenced by her clothing and bicycle I am fairly certain that she was foreign. Wrong clothes to be middle aged American, and further American women of that age are very seldom on a bicycle at all, certainly not the one she was on. I made no comment to her, not expecting that she would understand anyway, but as always when I meet a person riding towards me on my side of the road I keep to the extreme right. If someone is going to have to ride out into traffic it isn't going to be me. I get right over to the curb and nearly without exception the oncoming rider realizes and does what they are supposed to, keep to the right. So we had this little interaction and I went on about my ride. More on that later.

Thirdly, I met another guy who thinks I live in his neighborhood because he sees me riding where he lives all the time. A youngish fellow with a Discovery jersey and a nice old steel bike caught up with me on the approach to the Pelham Avenue bridge. He lives in Saint Anthony Park. So we had a nice if brief chat about how I head south through the Park when the wind is out of the south. I always head out into the wind so as to have a tail wind on the way home when I am less energetic. Anyway, our conversation was brief as he was much stronger than I and I pulled in behind him so he didn't feel obligated to continue the conversation. He quickly left me in his dust. Hey, I don't mind. The young are much stronger than I am. While on the Ride Across Minnesota two years ago I met a guy from Shoreview who thought I lived in his neighborhood because he sees me riding where he lives all the time. Shoreview is where I ride when the wind is out of the north.

Fourth, I was taking a drink of water near the river when one of a group of young men who had jogged to the river and were doing group calisthenics commented to me, "cool bike". Well, who doesn't like to hear that? I said "thank you" and rode on.

On the way home I rode past Lake Como again.
This is pretty much the same vantage point as last week's photo but as you can see, the ice is completely out. Spring has arrived.
And this pretty much proves it. A baseball team was taking some hits at Saint Thomas. Ah, the ping of ball on aluminum bat, a certain sign of amateur baseball. By their general appearance and costuming I took this group to be high schoolers. The college team I am sure has been practicing for a while and may even have taken a spring break southern tour. Also, the college team by this time is more uniformly attired. And finally, on a day this nice they would want to be playing a game somewhere. I just don't think this was the college team.

And then the capper. On the way home I swung back onto the same street where I had earlier encountered the Asian woman. As I topped a small rise I observed that she was there again, and again riding towards me, apparently on her way home. Only this time she was riding on the right. This pleased me and I broke into a smile. When I glanced at her I was a bit surprised to see that she was smiling broadly at me, nearly as happy as I about having had a little moment of non-verbal communication. It was very nice.

Today's weather report: 81, an all time record high for this date. Sunny, light south wind, very nice.

Paperboy videogame

We had the game Paperboy on Super Ninetendo and maybe on Gameboy as well. The actual paperboy for this house should have practiced a bit more on the game to avoid the embarrassment of heaving the daily paper up onto the porch roof.

The weather prediction for today was thunderstorms, severe at times. It might still happen, I suppose. But after overnight rain the morning dawned clear and sunny. The streets began a pretty rapid dry out. I assumed that the storm was still coming but gradually my faith in the overnight prediction lessed.

Eventually I took matters into my own hands and checked Mikey J's Weather Station. Mikey J gives me the raw data I need to make my own predictions. I observed that there was a pretty strong south wind but that there was not any nearby precipitation. So out I went and I had a most satisfactory ride. In fact, I rode for the first time without leg coverings and without a jacket. The weather was so incredibly nice that I was joined on the roads by a large, large contingent of other riders. It appears that the season has officially begun.

A hazy Saturday

All the local forecasters said today would be even nicer than yesterday. But apparently the weather system which their computer models said would stay to the south actually penetrated a bit farther north. We had heavy early morning fog with occasional mist. The fog thinned out considerably as the sun came out but it never really burned off. It ended up being hazy but still fairly warm, a nice enough spring day.
Today I rode to the River for the first time this year. This view is upstream from the Marshall/Lake Bridge with the railroad bridge in the foreground obscuring the Franklin Avenue Bridge. Obviously a hazy day.

I rode twice in Florida in February and I would like to say that Florida is flat. Perhaps I should have commented on that earlier, I suppose. But riding where I live is a constant reminder. The surface of the earth here is heavily glaciated terrain, lumpy and rolling. Florida is flat, the only uphills I recall were overpasses. In defense of Florida it was about 50 degrees warmer there than it was here at the time I was there and there was plenty of exotic wildlife and subtropical vegetation. Florida was a relief at that moment but there is just no getting around the fact that it is flat.

Sunny and gorgeous

The sun came out and the temperature rose. As I finish my ride it has reached 64F (18C) to make today pretty much the nicest day so far this spring.

Except for the early morning finger surgery which someone else will have to blog (not my finger), it has been a most excellent day.

Here is Grass Lake. It has a limestone path which I never ride on my road bike so early spring when I have the wide tire cross bike I try to include this lake on one of my rides. According to a newsletter I recently read, much of that vegetation in the middle of the lake is actually a floating biomass. Sometimes, as it is in the photo, it is near the far shore, and sometimes it is quite near to the photo vantage point. Also depending on rainfall and I suppose other hydrology issues, sometimes the lake can be almost dry, more a swamp than a lake. And sometimes the water level is even higher than it is now. It is almost always a pretty spot.
So, the biking. It is still pretty early in the season obviously but I feel pretty good. My legs seem better than I expected considering the mostly inactivity of the winter. My back was a bit stiff this morning but it resolved itself without any problem after I started to move around. The only sore part I have is my right arm, specifically the tricep which just doesn't seem to want to be doing all of this biking just yet. But it is only soreness, not anything actually serious and all in all I feel pretty good.

Lastly, I have been having a problem with the blog software. I tried to post a profile photo. I followed the directions but every time I sign off the photo disappears. I went to the blog help page and they give quite specific directions for what to do if this occurs. It involves posting the photo to this blog and then editing the HTML. Well, I'm up for that. So here's the photo:
This is my new Paris momento. It is a jersey from Cycles Laurent. Cycles Laurent is a three generation bicycle shop in Paris (9 Boulevard Voltaire, just a block from Place de la Republique if you must know) founded by Marcel Laurent, two time winner of the Bordeaux-Paris bicycle race. Bordeaux-Paris was a one day event of 560 km (350 miles) which in its heyday was considered one of the classics. It began at 2am in Bordeaux and finished approximately 14 hours later in Paris. It was an important event and winners of the race include Jacques Anquetil who also was a winner of the Tour de France.

My dafter, who speaks French, corresponded via the internet with Cycles Laurent and obtained this jersey for me as a gift.

By the way, I love Paris.

Frozen Como

It was sunny most of the day and warmer, into the 50's. I was hoping for sun for the photo but by the time I got to the lake the overcast had moved in.


There won't be lots more days when this picture will be available. That water that you see in the lake is water in the solid form. It was a nice day but the truth is that it can get a little nippy riding when there is even a slight breeze coming off a sheet of ice.

I stopped here to adjust the brakes. The brakes on the cross bike are cantilever brakes and they have a tendency to howl. They have to be toed in to quiet them down. It is a process with some trial and error involved. This time the trial seemed to go pretty well as the brakes were quiet on the way home. I am unsure, they look toed in quite a bit which I assume would lead to excessive wear. But I have decided that excessive wear is preferable to the loud screaching every time I apply the brakes. At least for now the brakes are quiet.

Vernal equinox

The first ride of the year is a long ride, no matter the actual distance.


There is still a fair amount of snow hanging around the end of my driveway but the field in the background is more indicative of the incipient springtime. It is warm enough to ride and has been for a while but the state of the roads has kept me from actually heading out. I hate riding in the slush and as evidenced by the still receding puddle on the cul-de-sac, the snow melt isn't quite over yet.

This is my former winter bike but as I did not ride this winter (or last), it is now my early spring, late fall, bad road conditions bike. It is a Bianchi Axis, a cyclocross bike featuring a higher bottom bracket, aluminum frame, and wider tires, qualities which make it more appropriate for riding on roads still covered with the sand put down for traction purposes during the heart of winter.

On the road again.