Not a private beach but a pretty empty road

Labour Day is past tense, it's really fall now. The kids are all back in school including the new freshmen showing up at all of the college campuses I ride past. Nearly all of the members of the work force have taken their vacations and by now the worker bees are back at the job. A mid-day bicyclist is out there without much company. It was another very nice day, temperatures edging into the upper 70s but with a very fresh breeze, mostly east but also south. South wind means Saint Paul so I set off in that direction yet again.

There has been some mention here of late about my furthest south ride in the City of Saint Paul. I set out to render that all moot today by making sure that I got farther south than anything previously done this year. Here is LOOK at the entrance to Watergate Marina, on the River Road just before it intersects with Davern.I guess I will have to check Google Earth of something, however, as I am not sure that is the farthest south I have ridden for all municipalities this year. I remember crossing the Mendota Bridge and riding out to that Pilot's Knob overlook in Eagan a couple of times and I do not really know what the comparative longitudes are for that point and today's turnaround. I admit to some hesitance to plunge back into that whole longitude thing.

In any case, I thought it was nice to interject a Watergate reference into the blog as who doesn't want at least one more chance to take a shot at Tricky Dick.

I decided to post this again as it is illustrative of the walk in Cathedral Hill as described by some dead author or another as I mentioned in yesterday's post.The tower on the right is part of the Lycee Henri Quatre, the church on the left is the Eglise du Saint Etienne du Mont, downtown Saint Paul in the background. The photo was taken from the outdoor balcony at the top of the main sanctuary of the Pantheon.

By the way, Eleazar, son of Aaron, is a seriously dead author although the Wikipedia article that I read focused more on his high priestly duties than on his possible authorship. I admit to not previously being aware of the ritual of the red heifer.

And with all the recent University Grove chatter I was more aware than usual of the fact that I often ride past Eastcliff, the official residence of the president of the University of Minnesota.Until looking for the above Eastcliff link I was not particularly aware of the fact that Eastcliff was built by local lumber magnate Edward Brooks, Sr. This is a familiar name to anyone who has ever done mineral title research in Minnesota. There are only a few of us who have done much of that but the ones that have are certainly familiar with Brooks and with the company in which he was a partner, the Backus-Brooks Company.

The ride to the south today returned to the more usual route for rides to the south. I rode down Como Avenue past the Fair. There was still quite a bit of vehicular traffic but the alway dangerous pedestrians were completely and totally NOT in evidence. On the way home I rode around the back side of the grounds and found this scene of the Midway under deconstruction.I was in the general area of my friends the bronze cows but truthfully I didn't have enough lunch and I was starting to feel a little knackered so when these cows displayed a clear interest in me and what I was doing I decided to let them stand in for the regular trio.Those are black and white heifers, not a single reddish looking one anywhere in evidence.

It was a nice day, and even though the ride was not a private beach it was still a pretty nice ride.