Happy Mothers' Day to TOPWLH

TOPWLH bracketed herself for Mothers' Day, having brunch with her dafter AND her mother. The dafter is a most excellent child and actually the mother is pretty swell too. And TOPWLH. I went for a bicycle ride.

Here in Minnesota we have firmly established that fishing opener occurs the day before Mothers' Day. This means that when I rode past the various lakes on the northern route that there were lots more people in the parks than there were last week and most of them were fishing. Here is an image of Sucker Lake, the usual northernmost point of the 8 lakes tour.People are fishing.

It rained yesterday, really rained which meant that today was the long ride. The long ride took me to places beyond the normal beaten path which enabled me to get a photo of the last or at least nearly last unpictured of the Minnesota Rocks sculptures.This one is at Vadnais Heights City Hall. It seems to me that this one has a bit more elaborate staging than most of the others. For example, the city has ringed the limestone sculpture with nice granite benches, two of which are visible in the photo.

Yesterday in the Giro Christian Vande Velde added himself to the list of Americans who have ever held the leader's jersey in one of the Grand Tours when his Slipstream team won the team time trial and team leader David Millar slipped off the back of the team at the finish to allow Vande Velde to be first across the line. Despite his quite Dutchy sort of name, Vande Velde is an American, born in Illinois. But it is after all, the tour of Italy and today in the first road stage the first five finishers were all Italians and one of them, fourth place finisher Franco Pellizotti of Team Liquigas, gained enough time to take over the lead in the general classification and the Maglia Rosa by a single second over the American.

In French football yesterday, Paris Saint Germain gained a point in the standings by securing a tie at home against Saint Etienne. Relegation rivals Lens and Toulouse were both on the road and both lost as PSG edged up to 16th overall and out of the relegation zone with one game remaining. PSG, RC Lens, and Toulouse FC are all major clubs in France and one of them going down is nearly as shocking a result for this season as last year's relegation of Nantes.