Me and my shadow

I perhaps could have ridden on Saturday as the weather was cooperative but I didn't because we had hockey. On Saturday Minnesota completed the weekend sweep of Saint Cloud State with a sound 7-0 thrashing of the visitors. This was a complement to the Friday 4-0 win over the Huskies at the National Hockey Center in Saint Cloud. The hockey was rewarding even though it was a bicycling opportunity missed.

This morning I was downstairs probably commenting on someone else's blog or something when TOPWLH announced that the sun was out. This is a rare enough experience of late that an announcement was definitely called for. I dilly dallied, however, and by the time I arrived on the main floor the Groundhog's Day like sun appearance was over.

But today is the first day of traditional standard time. Today is a day on which for most of the years I have been riding no ride would have been possible. But with daylight time extended and with the whole lack of daytime scheduled activity, today was a double bonus opportunity to ride. The weather cooperated (a triple bonus opportunity?).

It was still only about 42 and still battleship grey when I geared up shortly after noon. The local weather channel promised partly cloudy and I took them at their word. It took a while but at about the six mile mark it happened. I stopped, got out my camera and put my right hand mitten in my pocket (need a bare hand for on the bicycle photography, don't you know?), restarted and got this picture while actually in the act of riding my bicycle.I think that constitutes fairly conclusive evidence that the sun was out. Still, it was pretty cold for most folks and for the two and a half hours I was out it was mostly just me and my shadow.

I saw only two other GOBs (geezers on bicycles), one jogger, one guy on those roller ski things and three or four walkers, interestingly enough, this time only one of whom had a dog along for company.

I was riding along, composing a ride narrative in my mind of not seeing any bicyclists yet again when I met the first GOB on the downhill to Snail Lake. He was on a comfort bike, struggling up the hill, but as announced by his chartreuse riding jacket, he is a regular rider.

That downhill is one of the favorites of the resident Bianchi rider (RBR) who always announces to me when we join up again after riding down that hill what her top speed was. It is one of a couple of places where I always try to exceed the posted speed limit so we are going fast. I always encourage RBR to focus on the road at that speed and check the top speed at some later time. But it is an event, going down that hill. It has been at least a couple of weeks since I have gone 30 mph but today I achieved (according to my bicycle computer) a top speed of 33.2 mph on that hill. Zippy, zippy, fun, fun.

The sun had come out and at the next intersection there were some sumac that I had photographed the last time I was out there on a day when the sun wouldn't cooperate. I hoped for a better picture so I checked but those sumacs are officially and completely totally over. But I did get this picture of the part of the park across the street from Snail Lake. There is enough water in the swamp in that park that these trees are still exhibiting some color. That's mostly a mixture of aspen and oak.I started to think I was going to get in the full ride. I was headed towards the Sucker Lake part of the park and I was anticipating the sign on the curve just inside the gate there which limits speeds on that curve to 15mph. Perhaps obviously this is another place where I always, always try to exceed the speed limit. Imagine my disappointment when I came upon this at the gate into that part of the park. I am pretty hard core, I think, but I was pretty much instantly convinced to break off my plan and seek another route. A recent newspaper article here has detailed that the Boundary Waters area in the far northern portion of the state has only about 0.5 deer per square mile while areas of the Twin Cities (such as this park) have densities as high as 40 deer per square mile. This clearly calls for some culling even if archery seems like a pretty inefficient way to go about culling.

I headed back down Rice Street but wanted to cut over at County Road F to the entrance to Lake Vadnais to confirm for myself that the hunt was also on in the Vadnais area of the park. The hunt was on but different conditions were being imposed on this part of the park.The sign says I can ride on the paved road through the park so I did. The first thing I noticed was that there were several pick up trucks parked in areas where I don't ordinarily see vehicles parked, mostly at the heads of unpaved trails leading back into the woods. I suspect these were the trucks of the archers.

I kept going. There were only a very few anglers present today, the least I have seen there this year. But one of the two or three I saw was, in deference to the other sportsmen present in the park, casting his line while wearing a blaze orange poncho. Good choice on his part, I thought to myself. Vadnais was pretty today.The sun disappeared off and on as I rode on towards home but it made another cameo just after I pulled into the garage. Our bush is really pretty this year and with the sun hitting the trees in the background I finally got a nicer picture. It is a tiny bit past peak.There has been interesting news from football in France. On Friday evening FC Nantes secured a much needed second away from home victory by defeating Dijon FCO (shouldn't there be a mustard reference in here somewhere) by 2-1. SM Caen also won, extending its unblemished (no losses, no ties) record at home and maintaining a comfortable margin in first place of Ligue 2 over FC Nantes. Both teams play again on Tuesday.

Also of interest is that the Ligue 1 game scheduled for Sunday between Marseilles and Paris-Saint Germain was postponed because of an outbreak of H1N1 among the PSG players. I was struck by the report of this event on the official site of the French Football Federation: Swine flu and sport don’t mix. The French website refers to President Barack Obama without identifying his country. I found that to be pretty interesting.