Portal opens

I am having second thoughts, that title sounds like an episode of Stargate. It actually refers to the sweeping of Hamline Avenue, which has now occurred. There was a powerful amount of dirt and road trash which means that we still need a good rain storm to rid the street of a patina of dust, but at least the main clean up has occurred.

The clean up and today's light variable, mostly from the West breezes allowed me to ride my good bike out to the north. I cheated the wind today. It was West slightly South when I started out but the prediction was for it to shift around to the North by tonight. I took a chance and rode out with a tail wind and got enough of a shift to ride back with a tail wind.

It was sunny and warm, a day when even golf was being played, unexpected for March 31.It appears that Unk from "Sirens of Titan" has checked in in the comments section. Except that isn't his real name of course. If I recall correctly, and that's a pretty big assumption, his real name is Winston Niles Rumfoord. Unk shares this dual identity distinction with the author of the comment, that's not his real name either.

Bicycle geek note: a new record for most miles ever ridden in the month of March.

Pasty white skin

The strong winds from the south continue to blow. If this is what it takes for spring to get here I guess I am OK with it. It certainly makes riding a bicycle a chore.

But, 70.

I pulled my bike shorts up to the indistinct but still present line on my thighs and dragged my pasty white skin out into public for the first time this season.This photo was actually taken at the end of the ride. TOPWLH was not available at the start of the ride but for some reason she was hanging around when I got home. She has a job so her presence is not always possible at times when I might want a photo opportunity. Bother.

The pasty white skin came home with just a touch of color and a once again fairly distinct line. Riding with uncovered thighs gave me intermittent opportunities to watch them work. I see possibilities of definition there but I also see a long ways to go.

South wind, south ride, but first I made again that small detour north up to the Hamline portal zone. Still no sweeping.

I rode over to the farm campus. This is about the fourth time I have visited the cows this spring and every previous time there were people already either photographing their BF, GF or children. This time I was the first one there.Here's the NewLOOK nuzzling up to the most completely pronated cow, I have no idea if they were actually communicating. I suspect not.Anyone want to guess what that green stripe on this ash tree means?This and a double row of boulevard ash trees line a street upon which one of the ash trees was found last fall to be infected. All of the ash trees now bear this stripe.

In other emerald ash borer news I rode within a block of Ground Zero for ash borer, the place in South Saint Anthony where it was first discovered. There are brand new ash stumps there too. As Kurt Vonnegut says in Slaugterhouse Five, "So it goes, so it was meant to go".

Today I am going to use the word "Wowsers"

Wowsers, what a nice day!

There was a pretty strong south wind so I knew a northern ride was not going to happen. Even so, I rode out to the Hamline portal zone and checked street conditions. There is still no sign of sweeping so any northern rides are still slated for the Axis.

Neighborhood Watch note to Basketball Season Ticket Holder: There was a guy with a brown goatee putting something inside your screen door when I rode by your house at about 1:30. It looked harmless. By the way, can you get someone of at least Assistant Director level to get back to me with an official explanation for the patently outrageous claim that the Minneapolis paper reports was made by someone in the Legislature that the state doesn't even know how much land it owns? Actually, of course, never mind, I know the answer. I haven't been retired THAT long.

I discovered a three step solution for the strength and endurance problem still plaguing my bicycling. Here it is:

1. Remove about 50 percent of the weight of the bicycle.
2. Replace the high rolling resistance low pressure, wide tires with something with less rolling resistance, maybe high pressure narrow tires?
3. Have at it.

The Axis actually doesn't usually ever completely escape its storage spot in the rafters of the garage. I ride it less than a couple of dozen times a year and for the last couple of years at least I have hoisted it down for each ride and lifted it back up when that ride is over. It spends virtually all of its time hanging upside down like a bat waiting for the sun to go down. But because I hoist it down and lift it up regularly I have a pretty good feel for how much it weighs.

Today I carried Lightasafeather out to the garage. I says to myself, "Self, this is a whole different deal." I knew I was heading south, I knew that the streets in that direction are almost all OK for high pressure narrow tires.

Here is a NewLOOK at Fairchild, the official mascot of the Minnesota State Fair:Well, now, this is a REALLY, REALLY nice bicycle. I have been out on the new bicycle. Closed circuit to TOPWLH: THOSE are my summer cycling shoes.

And how was it? It was a first ride, that unique moment when the daily ride odometer agrees completely with the total miles odometer and it was FINE. As I suspected the fit is spot on. Whether the saddle is comfortable remains to be seen but it is the same brand I rode on the OldLOOK so I feel fairly confident. It felt a little different today though because it is a different brand than what I have been riding on the Axis. General impression: Wowsers, this is a REALLY, REALLY nice bicycle.

It was a great, great day and I was riding my bicycle. Somebody find something in that for me not to like, otherwise I am just going to say, one more time, "Wowsers!"

Ice out on Josephine

Here is today's harbinger of spring: ice out on Lake Josephine.Just as I thought, a sunny day and a strong wind provided the recipe for removing the ice. Today featured a strong wind from the northwest. The photo was taken facing northwest, there is a small pile up of ice chips just out of photo left, at the southeast corner of the lake. Ice out means no more rides into strong winds blowing across ice covered lakes. This is good.

Another harbinger is the advance of street sweeping. I think all of the local streets that I regularly ride on have now been swept. All that remains are the county and state highways and some of them have recently been cleaned. Cleveland and Fairview have been swept. I am not sure about Snelling as I do not ride on Snelling. However, from the vantage point of the Snelling service drive, which I do ride on, and which has been swept, it looks like Snelling has been swept. Hamline and Lexington have most emphatically NOT been swept. All of my northern rides require some time on Hamline, I will be on the spring bicycle until the sweeping is done.

Is it obvious that I am starting to get a tiny bit itchy to try out the new bicycle?

It was cold and windy again today and as previously noted, riding in the cold is extremely hard. Fitness is slow to gain a foothold but today, for the first time I started to feel as though some of the strength is starting to return. Endurance has yet to make an appearance.

It was hard, it was fun. I love my bicycle(s).

A tale of two bicycles

It is really hard work riding when it is cold. But the wind today was less and I also felt a little better. I got my mileage back above the average for so far this year but still below the average goal for the season. It is a process.

I passed this piece of the permanent sculpture collection of the UofM Farm Campus while on my ride today.The one in the rear is a department store bike, a Roadmaster Mt. Fury. The partial bicycle in the front is an actual bike shop bicycle, a Trek 4500. I took a pretty close look at both of them and based on the stage of rust on the only steel part of each bicycle, the chain, those bicycles have been there about the same length of time. The rust was very much the same for both.

The Trek was sold by a bike shop at the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City, South Dakota (the shop tag on the downtube was intact). The Roadmaster was probably sold at Target. Both bicycles have one of those Kryptonite U-locks which apparently a clever thief can pick using a Bic pen as a tool. The locks themselves retail for about $80 which to my eye is more than the value of the Roadmaster.

No one wants anything off the Roadmaster, even after a winter at the bus stop, that POS is completely intact. Conversely, someone took the wheels, the fork including the front brake, the handlebars, the stem and the shifters and brake levers from the Trek. The Trek is nothing particularly special, the missing parts are all fairly low in the Shimano and/or Bontrager parts hierarchy. It was a suspension fork which may have influenced the appropriator. I did a search of eBay and found a pretty much brand new Trek 4500 recently sold for $520. That makes it a little too nice a bicycle to be abandoned. On the other hand the value of those parts is not high enough, in my opinion, that they should be attracting a thief. It is an OK bicycle but certainly not a top of line model.

So what did I learn today? Not much. Even thieves know that a Trek is a nicer bicycle than a Roadmaster.

Assist from Mother Nature

Yesterday I felt as though I could really, REALLY, use a day off. Mother Nature came through with another one of those water would freeze in bottle days. Actually I believe the official high got to 38 or something but at the moment when I had to decide whether or not to ride it was water freeze in bottle weather. I accepted the verdict and took a day off.

Today was warmer but that gawd awful spring wind reared up again. I got a ride in but stayed close to home and spent lots and lots of time gradually working my way a short distance upwind.

I got to Lake Como near the end of my ride. The wind was strong from the southeast, Como is pretty much directly southeast of where I live. After the picture it was downwind all the way home.The ice is closer to out on Como than it is on the more northern lakes I have visited recently, I estimate the rest could leave any day with a bright sun and a bit of wind. Come to think of it, that's much like the weather we had today. That ice may already be gone.

I rode less than the average length and less than the average speed.

Not a fluke

It was nice enough today and I decided I wanted to ride to Vadnais again. The main reason was that I bungled the photo yesterday and I wanted to have a picture of ice covered Vadnais. This is the north end of the lake, the open water is where the creek flows into the lake.There is ice but as noted by the sign it is, well, read the sign.

The second reason for riding out there was to convince myself that riding that far this early in the year was, well, see post title.

The wind shifted from NNW to W and increased a fair amount in velocity during the ride. This ride is north out into the wind but it also has a pretty strong east component. With the change in conditions I ended up riding back into a much freshened breeze and ended up never getting the assist of having a strong tail wind.

It was amazingly difficult.

Bodies of water revisited

OK, before anyone gets too critical, let's review the bicycle LOG.

Friday: "Water would FREEZE in bottle."

Saturday: "Sunny but never 40."

Sunday: "Sunday"

So there you have it, three days without a ride. Note on the last of the three: I am gradually adopting standard retired person attitudes about the weekends. There are so many people who have jobs who are out there SO desperately trying to get some task or recreational activity or some other such thing done that it just seems wrong to interfere. I mean, Sunday is just too Sunday for a guy who can ride in the middle of the day any of the other days of the week. I didn't ride.

I did ride yesterday but did not blog, a rare event. Yesterday was warm enough to ride but featured a powerful southeast wind. I rode but that wind totally wasted me. A common pattern for me is that I don't have a picture as the ride nears an end and I spend a little extra effort at the end finding a photo. Yesterday the wind so thoroughly defeated me that I spent the last couple of miles with a death grip on the handlebars, afraid to get off because I wasn't sure if I would be able to stand up well enough to get back on the bicycle. I was afraid that I might have to call Laura to come and get me and even though I once did purchase a bicycle from her I just wasn't sure that that one purchase put me in line for that level of customer service, particularly at this distance from her shop. So instead of a photo I struggled on home and immediately went to lie down. *sigh* This is going to be just a little bit harder each and every year.

Here's another point, if you want to average 25 miles per ride over the course of the season then at some point probably pretty early in the season you have to start riding at least 25 miles. That was today's accomplishment. I took the full northern tour, out to Snail Lake, Highway 96, Sucker Lake, Lake Vadnais, all of those familiar places. The wind was blowing from the north and each time I reached the south shore of one of those lakes I rediscovered the truth of something that was recently commented here. The wind blowing across an ice covered lake is COLD.

I took a couple of pictures out at Vadnais but there was another one of those egregious cases of "user error" and have nothing to actually share.

However, I believe I have solved this mystery:If your answer is "snow melt" you are living somewhere else. The snow has been completely gone for over a week. If you think "rain", wrong again, no rain here for at least that same period of time. If you said "Cliff's house", well, technically you are correct but Cliff's house is not a mystery. The mystery is why is there water in the street?

Once long ago I had to go to the county courthouse to check on the status of some document or another that was being recorded against our property, I think it was a mortgage assignment. Note to TOPWLH: Remember when we had a mortgage? While I was at the courthouse I took the opportunity to review quite a few of the relevant documents relating to our house, including the plat of survey of our subdivision. The plat showed blocks and lots and some other pertinent details, the most unusual of which is that at the far end of what is now our street there was depicted on the plat a wetland.

What you see in that photo is that wetland. There was some fill added when the houses were built but ground water doesn't know anything about houses. The ground water hydrology still requires that the water travel, hydrology term here, down head. This spring the ground water is asserting its occasional role as surface water, seeping up through the yards and through cracks in the street and then pooling up.

Wetland.

In major bicycling news, shortly after I got home I had to run to the window to get a picture of this guy:The street in front of my house has been swept. It is another function of being retired that there are all of these things that I used to notice when I got home from work that I now actually see occur. Today I saw the street sweepers.

March madness

A search of the blogosphere would almost certainly reveal that the title I have chosen for today's post is an extremely common title for today's postings. Nearly every one of those posts, however, is a paean to the college basketball thingy that has suddenly totally usurped any other programming on CBS. I have no job, which means that I myself had a couple of minutes to watch part of a basketball game earlier today. The participants represented Villanova and something called Robert Morris. Actually that is a cheap shot at Robert Morris, I know all about Robert Morris. They have women's hockey at Robert Morris and they played at Ridder Arena last year.

So anyway, the real March madness where I live is the continued refusal of mid-March to act like anything other than mid-April. Today was yet again upper 50s and sunny. What's not to like about that? I missed a bunch of apparently really important basketball and rode my bicycle.

Today's ride sets the new standard for farthest north ridden so far this year as I edged just to the north of the Shoreview water tower. I stopped at Island Lake Park. I almost never stop there for a couple of reasons. One, it is on the left side of a pretty busy street on the outward leg of most of my northern rides. The requirement crossing busy automobile traffic to enjoy that park moves it a bit down the list of things I yearn to do. Two, most of my northern rides are going to tour Snail, Sucker and Vadnais Lakes and perhaps a couple of others as well. Considering the traffic and considering where I am usually headed, Island Lake just doesn't fit in to my ride plans very often. Today, however, Island Lake made a fine destination and a turn around point.There is some open water visible at the shoreline and a close examination will reveal that the ice nearest in is looking to be quite a bit past its prime. If the weather continues in its current pattern that ice won't last long. Fortunately for the ice and for those longing for average, weather forecasts predict the return of March beginning possibly as soon as tomorrow.

For today though, I was happy to enjoy mid-April at least this one more time.

Plus 15 again

Breakfast for me involves one of the two daily newspapers that I read each day. I have a fairly set routine for this daily event which ends with the back page of the sports section where I find the weather page. Today I discovered that I may have sold yesterday quite a bit short. The official high was 50, 44 and damp seems a little unfair.

Today is Saint Patrick's Day and it seems apparent that God loves the Irish, at least this year. The sun was out before the parade started at noon and eventually the temperatures have poked into that plus 15-20 degrees above average range for yet another day. There wasn't much green visible on my bicycle ride but after riding I headed down into the saintly city to buy bread at my bakery of choice and sure enough I immediately encountered an "Irish guys do it better" t-shirt. I would be more impressed if the shirt had been worn by an Irish looking female person but, as you all can probably guess, the shirt was draped over a not very Irish looking male person.

I rode the longest ride of the year to date, not much of a claim with only 4 rides in. But I reached a new city, Shoreview, rode past the Shoreview water tower and on the way passed by a couple of real, actual lakes, no ponds. This is still ice-covered Owasso from the south end.I can feel the very first stirrings of fitness as I rode 10 or 12 miles today without any great strain. The problem is, of course, that I rode farther than that and the last couple of miles were into a wind that freshened after I had set out. The last couple of miles were pretty hard but I love my bicycle and it was a spectacularly nice day to be out there riding.

44 and damp

We had morning rain today but a man once reunited with his bicycle is difficult to discourage. In early afternoon I convinced myself that it was getting pretty dry and that I should try to get my work in.

I am pleased to report that I have figured out the appropriate dress for March as I was pretty much OK today. I am chagrined to report that today's costume was the same as what I wore yesterday and the day before. The correct answer to your question is, "Yes, yesterday I was overdressed."

But today I was good. I got my work done. But today, today felt like March. The temperature at the Cattle Barn was 44.That weird glow over the top of the barn is most likely the sun. It certainly wasn't visible to me as I took the photograph but you can't fool the camera, that has to be the sun. There is no report today from either end of the Grandstand as both of those displays are still dark.

Today wasn't that massive 20+ degrees above average that we have been experiencing recently but the truth is that 44 is still about 5 degrees above average, and I know what average means. I believe I am going to have to put today down as an overall plenty OK day.

And I would except that it wasn't nearly as dry as I had convinced myself. I rode in occasional sprinkles and at one point I could see the drops falling in a puddle as I rode past, most of the ride was a trifle damp and definitely on the cool side. Even so, the truth is that the street in front of my house was dryer when I finished then when I started.

If fitness is ever going to return I have to do the work. Today I got my work done.

A tale of three cities

It turns out that yesterday's high temperature was 64, a temperature which fails to trigger Pollari's first 65 degrees of the spring gin and tonic party but a temperature which does establish a new record high for Pi day. Today looks to be topping out around 60, still an enormous 21 degrees above average. I rode my bicycle.

Yesterday was Prologue and today was Stage 1. Followers of professional bicycle racing will know that Stage 1 is longer than the Prologue and probably a little bit harder. There is one and one way only to regain fitness: Do the work. Today I did the work. I went a little bit farther and worked a little bit harder.

I rode all the way out to and through the northern boundary of Roseville. Pictured here is the turn around point at Carlton and Tiller in Arden Hills. Those familiar with the street signs of the near in northern suburbs (and THAT'S a small group) will recognize the Arden Hills symbol on the street sign.What makes this picture significant, and in fact, what makes today's ride stand out may not be obvious but it is clearly visible. Arden Hills has begun sweeping the streets. The corner of Carlton and Tiller is cleaned up and ready to begin the next season.

Roseville hasn't done this yet and I intended to go with "A tale of two cities" as a post title to emphasize this difference. My plan went awry but I was quite pleased anyway when on the return leg I discovered sweepers out and about in Falcon Heights.

I often provide a view of one of the many north suburban lakes. Today I passed near a lake but the view was obscured and the sun angle was wrong. Instead I settled on a photo of this pond, Arona pond I believe is what it is generally called.Wireless has played a lot of softball on that far bank as it is the former site of Arona school and the Arona school fields. The school had ceased being a school and was the home of the city recreation department for several years. The building's maintenance costs eventually became onerous and the city bailed. The fields and the building are gone and in their place are these cheesy condos.

Be careful what you wish for. A neighborhood consortium were I live is currently in a controversy with the school district over the district's plan to build a new softball field near us. The neighbors want less structure, not more, they do not want the softball field, they want things to stay the way they are. If the district doesn't put in the softball field this year however, I suspect they will be back in a couple of years with another plan. The plan that time would almost certainly feature cheesy condos. I personally am sorta for the new softball field.

A stunning rebuke

Today is the first day of daylight saving time and the mid-afternoon temperature is reported to be 63. I rode my bike.

I still have the remains of a tan line on my thighs which allowed me to position the bicycle shorts at the proper level. The line is faint and indistinct but it is still there. So that part went OK. The rest wasn't quite so OK.

I have convinced myself that I have been more active this winter than in winters past and maybe I have. If I have though, the incremental increase in activity is very small. Today's ride was a stunning rebuke of any notion I may have had that I had retained even a shred of fitness. Hard, hard, hard. Did I mention wind and hills? Hard, hard, hard. This appears certain to be another one of those things that is just going to be a little bit harder every year.

But I did it, I rode my bicycle. Let the season begin.

I have been informed by official mailing from the city that a new 8 foot wide bituminous path will be constructed this year along the east side of Fairview Avenue between County Road B and Larpenteur. Here is the portion of said east side of Fairview at the corn field (which most assuredly is between County Road B and Larpenteur (today's bicycle of choice for scale).That's a pretty steep slope there. There is a meeting next week. I have plenty of time, perhaps I will attend and find out just exactly what their plans are at this spot.

Third time in the big city just THIS winter

I was watching the boys high school hockey tournament on the TV this afternoon. The game was Warroad v. Breck. During a break in the action the cameras panned across the student sections of the two schools. In the front row of the Warroad section were a bunch of small town girls wearing Warroad High School hockey jerseys which differed in small ways from the jerseys being worn by the boys team. One of our favorite hockey teams has made it back to the big city for a third time this winter, albeit this third time as spectators.

These girls have made it out enough times this year that maybe, just maybe, they no longer have to consider the midnight train going anywhere. I hope so.

Jeu de Paume

Le Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume is a museum I intend to visit if I ever happen to get back to Paris. According to Wikipedia "The building was constructed in 1861 during the reign of Napoleon III. It originally housed real tennis courts; the name of this game in French is jeu de paume."

So that would be a good thing to do if a person happened to be hanging around during the French Open.

Here is what tennis courts look like in Falcon Heights today.I have in person seen people playing tennis outdoors within the last month. Fairly obviously however, that was in Florida. I think it is probably at least the end of this month before the Falcon Heights courts will be fit to play on. Close examination of the photograph will reveal that the nets are already, or perhaps more accurately, still up.

But who knows? Sometimes these things go faster than one expects. Upon reaching home at the end of my walk the past two or three days I have taken my ice chopper out for some recreational ice chopping, a pretty common Minnesota late winter pastime. Today I completed the first passageway.I am all the way down to pavement there. This is an important moment and one which I eagerly anticipate every spring. I refer to this when speaking to my inner self as "reestablishing contact with civilization". It is now possible to get from my house out to the rest of the world without having to pass over any ice or snow. That passageway through the ice is the first of many little victories for me over winter.

One of the next little victories involves one of my bicycles. Here's a hint, today I was out and about in only a light jacket. I bicycled last fall in temperatures down to 40, temperatures today are up to 40. I sense a coming together in the near future.

Green space

One of the joys of bicycle is that you see lots more than you do in a car. The speed of travel on bicycle is enough reduced from that in a car that an enormously greater amount of detail is available for observation. One of the things I do in this blog is post pictures of things I see that probably would have gone unnoticed, at least to me, at auto traffic speed.

The same effect is present if you go walking through areas where you have done lots of bicycling. The speed of travel is enough reduced that more detail is available for observation. I am in the process of walking all of the streets within walking distance to gauge how ready those streets are for bicycling. I love my bike and I want to get started.

I have mentioned previously, I think, that I live in the SENW, 16-29-23. I am aware that many of the folks looking in know what that means but for those who don't I live in the Southeast Quarter of the Northwest Quarter of Section 16, Township 29 North, Range 23 West of the 4th Principal Meridian, Ramsey County, Minnesota. So do at least a few hundred other people. I am currently walking all of the streets in section 16 to check conditions and today I got over to the NWNW (Northwest Quarter of Northwest Quarter). I ride those streets, either coming or going, during about one half of all of the bicycle rides I ever take. Today on foot I turned off the street and wandered down into a church parking lot. I am certain I have never been there on my bicycle, I don't remember being in there on foot.

The NWNW looks to my practiced real estate history eyes to have been originally subdivided from open farm land into buildable lots in one of the common ways, someone sold off frontage along the road that ran along the south edge of that quarter-quarter, and then sold off frontage along the road that ran along the north edge. The result is this, wonderfully HUGE back yards.These aren't fancy houses on either side. Our house was built in 1975 and these are not much older, probably mid-60s or so. They are mostly standard suburban ramblers, some with a walk out lower level out into these back yards.

There has been some talk recently about lack of green space in the part of Roseville where I live. I can see why there are some neighbors who don't seem too concerned. What they have outside their backdoors running away towards the neighbors fence in the distance looks plenty enough like a park to probably satisfy most of these folks.

I never would have seen it in a car, I probably wasn't ever even going to see it on my bicycle. That's not a park, that is a picture of people's backyards.

Blue sky

It isn't quite that crackling deep blue that we get on cold winter days. This sky looks more like spring is on the way.At the midpoint of today's walk I had an opportunity to discuss return policy and customer service with staff and management at a local retail outlet. It was a nice opportunity to brush up on my verbal communication skills and the conversation was mostly cordial. In the end an acceptable outcome for all was agreed upon. And there was no shouting.

Today's bicycle content is that the product lines available at this particular retailer include bicycles, bicycle accessories, and bicycle clothing.

Dirty snow

I am fairly comfortable with the annual science project that is the snow melt. I think I could probably even spell out a good enough explanation. Instead I think I am going to just go with the announcement that we have entered the Season of Dirty Snow. Here is a south facing bank just behind Arby's and KFC on Snelling.But this is a bicycling blog and bicycling content is encouraged if not out right required. Here is the plow mountain in the lot behind Erik's Bike Shop Roseville outlet.No, it isn't spring but it is getting to be pretty darn close to sweat shirt weather.

Hooray, hooray, the first of . . . March?

It has been quite a sedentary last 17 days. It is a little hard to dig my favorite Olympic moments out of all of that but I think I would go with three: Lindsey Vonn in her overpowering victory in the downhill, Bode Miller just getting a gold medal, any gold medal (actually in the Super Combined, I don't know much about that except that it is super and it is combined), and the transcendent performance by Kim Yu-na in my pretty much second or so least favorite sport, ladies figure skating.

But today I attempted to rejoin the living and got out of the house for long enough for a two mile walk. Here is an early, early look at the corn field.It was a two mile walk, a loop. There was one unavoidable puddle on the way out and on the way back two such puddles plus a spot where a spruce tree shades the street and where ice was still present and fairly substantial. Still there was a lot of dry pavement out there and I could easily see cobbling together a two mile out and back bicycle ride on dry pavement.

Except that is, for this, by far the worst obstacle still standing between me and my bicycle.The Daily Photo Blog theme for this first of the month theme day is passageways. Many observers will recognize this passsageway as the end of my driveway.

Still, according to my bike log for last year I first rode on March 15 (at a time when I still had a job!) and managed 126 miles for the month of March. Daylight savings time BEGINS this year on March 14, bicycling is never very far behind.

So, hooray, hooray, the first of March. Let's get this thing rolling.