Manager's meeting

The beautiful weather continues. I didn't actually get out in the morning today although it was certainly plenty nice enough at 10am to ride. I instead hung around here at home and made sure that the person who lives here who still actually has a job (TPWLHWSAHaJ) got off to that important 11am meeting with the Dean. Geez, I miss that.

I was sitting around feeling pretty morose, missing that dynamic give and take of the life of a bureaucrat. Just when the pining reached a peak I looked out the window and saw what for all the world appeared to be a manager's meeting breaking up.Everybody neat and pretty? OK then, on with the show.

I tried another route to the south, attempting one of the few crossings of those railroad tracks that I haven't tried recently, this time on Lexington. It turns out that even at a time with much reduced traffic pressure that the two lane bridge on Lexington over those tracks is a place where I on my 18 pound bicycle just do not want to challenge multi-ton vehicles for a piece of pavement. The only way across there was to ride on the sidewalk. Geez, I hate riding on the sidewalk. For crying out loud, there were people trying to WALK on the sidewalk.

On the upside, crossing at Lexington fed me, when finally off the sidewalk, back into our old neighborhood. Here is the Emily tree, planted by MySU and I in front of the house where we lived when our darling dafter was born.Nice tree, eh? You oughta see the kid!

Two of the neighbors were out in the yard and as I started to ride away one very appropriately asked me what was my interest in that tree that caused me to stop and take a photograph. I stopped and explained and ended up meeting the new neighbors of the people who live in the house we used to live in, Maurice and Andy. Maurice lives in Larrie and Kathy's house and Andy lives in the house at the end of the block on Hamline. I stayed and chatted awhile and caught up with the gossip about those people who still live there that Maurice knows and that we know because we once lived there. Very nice fellow, Maurice, he said he has a nice old Motobecane road bicycle with downtube shifters hanging from the rafters of his garage.

He used to ride but hasn't for several years. This is my blog, I get to post about things that boost my ego. It always boosts my ego when someone about my age or perhaps even a bit younger looks at me and says, as Maurice did today, "I used to have a body like yours". I replied to Maurice and it is the truth that it is hard work but it is work that I enjoy.

Once into Saint Paul I headed into the wind, riding mostly towards the south and the east. South and east from out near the northwest city limits leads every single time towards downtown and the State Capitol building.

I recently posted Floyd B. Olson. I knew the Capitol grounds to have a symmetrical placement of statues but I did not know who was honored on the east end of the grounds in the similar location as the west end of the grounds Olson statue. There are a couple of reasons for this, one being the usual angle of the sun when I rode to the Capitol in the past but the other being that the hill up past the Capitol building is much longer and more severe on the east end of the building. I felt strong, I didn't fear the hill, the sun was enough overhead that a picture seemed possible, I went over there to see who it is.

Columbus.LOOK at Columbus. I think the street used to be named Columbus Circle. I believe it has been changed to Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard. I occasionally have to correspond with the institution located on that street and it is always, ALWAYS a challenge to get that whole thing written on the envelope.

After that I was JRA (bicycle geeks know that one). As I got closer to home I ended up riding on the Fairgrounds. I ride there quite a bit but usually swing in there on the way out to a ride. It is a little out of the ordinary to be riding there at the end of a ride. There was a gate open that I almost never see open so I rode in to take a look. Here is what they used to call Turn 3 at the Fairgrounds half-mile race track back when they still had automobile races there.Now they call it useless pavement.

On the way out of the Fairgrounds I experienced for the first time this year what will soon be commonplace. I rode over some fallen leaves and one of them rode the wheel around and lodged between the brake and the frame. There it stayed making an irritating noise until I stopped and dislodged it. Summer is over, welcome to fall. Maybe pretty soon the weather will even start to feel like fall. For now, today was another spectacularly nice late summer day.

Originally posted by Marz in yesterday's comments but worth a reprise here in the main blog:

Bad Manors Squirrel Diner Live

Of course, my feelings are well known. Squirrels are vermin. The only thing missing from that site is a control that lets remote viewers zap the squirrels. Now THAT would be fun.