Noon+:40 3.8mi EG59 CB57 WG66

I must admit that I found dressing for 60 to be just a tiny bit tricky just two days after dressing for 40. That's my only complaint. It reached 60 today.

Everyone who lives in Minnesota knows that dressing for the weather here is a matter of proper layering. Today I was pretty close to hitting the right combination on the way out the door. Two judicious adjustments of layers, the first coming at mid-ride, the second coming as I was nearing home and briefly turned back into the wind, kept me first from overheating and second from getting chilled.

It was a south wind again, fairly brisk, but south so I headed down into the city. Any ride down into the city takes me past the Fairgrounds where at 12:40 and about 3.8 miles into the ride I observed the captioned temperature displays.

It looks like code up there, doesn't it?

I also came across this bit of tribute to sausage on a stick.You need the relative desertion of this time of year to notice some of these things, I guess. So Pronto Pups appeared at the Fair for the first time 62 Fairs ago. Who knew?

I am expecting big news at Dead Man's Curve. I rode past this sign yesterday and it proclaimed that the detour would end on November 6. I thought I might get in on some grand re-opening or something.Instead I got an opportunity to take a close look at the detour sign. That "7" is a tape number, not paint. They removed yesterday's "6" replacing it with this new schedule.

*sigh* I will keep checking. Most of the heavy equipment, including both of the two cranes that were there, have left the scene. The barriers are still up, I didn't really check but I bet that rent-a-cop is still around, too.

I wanted to go somewhere I hadn't been lately and somewhere I hadn't ever been this late in the season.I take the water flowing over the edge as evidence that the construction season down in the gorge below the Falls is at an end. It was pretty over there today, and for a not too surprising change, there weren't very many people around.

Most rides into the city are out and backs. The Capitol Loop is a loop but the usual ride is to some destination and then I ride back home the same way I came. Today's ride had one small characteristic of a loop as I rode to the Falls on the Saint Paul side and rode back on the Minneapolis side. While in Minneapolis I rode all the way to Franklin before using that bridge to cross back to my side of the river. I can report that the Minneapolis bicycle path construction seems to be complete even though there is still landscaping going on (men with a loader completely blocking the path south of Lake Street while dumping black dirt next to the path). The landscaping didn't bother me, I was riding on the road.

The point of this lengthy digression is that any to the city out and back takes me right next to the Fairgrounds both on the way out and on the way back.

Noon+2:15 21.3mi EG60 CB58 WG64.