Goose egg

I hate it when I don't get to ride on the first day of the month. It seems like that sort of omission leaves me in scramble mode for the rest of the month. Sure enough, yesterday was nice enough early and nice enough late but the window of opportunity around midday when I prefer to ride was dominated by intermittent showers. I started the last month of the season with a zero mile day.

And today was cold. It felt OK just standing in the driveway but as soon as I headed north into the wind it was cold. Today's lesson relearned was that riding in the cold is really hard, much harder than summertime riding. I had to add a couple new items of gear but it is gear that I have and I was comfortable enough. But it was cold into that wind so I cut off the northward section of the ride at the Shoreview water tower. Here are some geese milling about in the shallow section of Island Lake southeast of the road intersection out there.No sign of any nesting activity.

Because of truncating the north end of the ride I had to take a loop through the Fairgrounds to get the complete two hour ride.

East Grandstand: 51. Cattle Barn: 50. West Grandstand: 60?

As always, the cattle barn reading is most likely the accurate one. It was 70ish the other day when I rode. A 20 degree drop in temperature feels cool at any time of year. Today it felt cold.

Yesterday FC Nantes traveled to the Isle of Corsica and emerged with a 3-2 victory over AC Ajaccio. Nantes now stands 6th in the table.

In football news of perhaps more compelling interest to most who might read this, Saint Thomas has traveled to Collegeville and playing before a record league and NCAA Division III football crowd of 16,421 broke a 12 year losing streak by defeating Saint John's. Saint Thomas assumes first place in a league which it has not won since 1990.