A couple of days off freshens the legs

My condolences to everyone who had to try to get some miles in this weekend because they weren't going to have free time at noon on Monday. Free time at noon on Monday sure worked out for me though.

My fitness level is improving but really, a rest day is a good thing. A couple of rest days and I felt strong.

I was approaching the red white flowering crab tree combination in Shoreview that I have pictured previously. This time I noticed some red sticking out above the white. I wondered if perhaps there was another one of those amateur grafting projects going on. Upon closer inspection I discovered instead that apparently in all this time I have only ridden past those trees in the northerly direction during the bloom. Today I circled around and approached from the west. It turns out there are actually three trees on that corner, red white red again.And a light post interfering with the image.

I was riding past one of the schools on that route when I had a little catcher in the rye moment. I had ridden down a hill lined with flowering crab trees and turned around at the bottom because I thought the photo uphill would be an interesting perspective. I still think that but I also discovered that the inmates were out in the yard.I think they probably need more than that 20 minutes of recess they are probably getting. There is a lot of unharnessed energy on a playground right after lunch.

The temperature crawled above the average for the day while I was out. It was mostly cloudy but the sun peeked out often enough to probably qualify for partly sunny. I felt fresh. It was a good day to be out riding.