Giro d'Italia

Team time trial today. The Giro only rarely has a team time trial, the Tour de France almost always features one. This year no TTT in Tour, Giro has TTT first day. Liquigas crosses with the best time putting Enrico Gasparotto in the leader's jersey (Maglia Rosa) although the real leader is team leader and second across the line Daniel Di Luca. Astana second (former Discovery team rider Paolo Savoldelli), Team CSC third (Fabian Cancellara). A flat stage scheduled for tomorrow, chance for Milram and Alessandro Petacchi to shine.

Obviously I meant Arden Hills. Hazelnut Park is in Arden Hills. On New Brighton Boulevard, but in Arden Hills. We did play in New Brighton that year but it was a weekend tournament. The cities represented in our league were Roseville, Arden Hills and Shoreview. We played at least one game in Shoreview in addition to the Arden Hills games.

And this is Oasis Park in Roseville.This is where we played as 3rd and 4th graders. We also practiced there as 5th graders. This is the site of the team record for home runs. The 4th graders were the undefeated Rangers featuring that year's best female 4th grade softball hitter in Roseville, Tiffany Schreifels. Our batting order that year was Knutson, Sventek, Miller, Schreifels. Tiffany had a game that year where she had a 3 run homer and 2 grand slams, back to back grand slams at that. Tiffany hit them so far that other teams were in disbelief. Coach Knutson and I would stand at the bench and comment to each other, they are probably going to want to play a little deeper than that. But they wouldn't. And then Tiffany would come up and paste one way, way over their heads. It was almost unfair.

This is also where Leah had a bad run of outfield while Tiffany was batting in batting practice. Usually in batting practice there wasn't a heck of a lot to do. Shag the occasional ball that comes to you but mostly just stand around and contemplate. Leah got caught in the outfield several practices in a row when Tiffany was taking hits though and that always involved chasing down a plethora of long balls.

This is also where the star of yesterday's post had one of her most ignominious moments. When she was a fifth grader we had an actress on the team. The actress was at that time appearing in a Children's Theatre Company production of Alice in Wonderland as . . . Alice, who else? Yesterday's star was playing catch with Alice and somehow or other Alice ended up with a black eye. Ask her, she can tell you about it.

Fishing opener this weekend in Minnesota. I rode out to Lake Vadnais and the road was parked nearly completely full with cars. There were more people there than I have ever seen there before, happily fishing and kibitzing away.

The news of today's ride is that once again I dressed for yesterday. I went with base layer, sleeved jersey and arm warmers. It was fine at the beginning but about half way through I had to pull the arm warmers down. But then, the last few miles before reaching home had the return of the cloud cover and I had to pull the armers back up. So my choice of clothing was vindicated in the end.

Squirrels are vermin.