Haunting

I missed out on a ride yesterday on a completely rideable day. But the city vacuum truck crew is coming this week to collect our leaves. This made it necessary to amass the annual giant leaf pile. The task is now performed by out Team of Three (To3). The junior member, the most indispensable of the team, is only available on weekends so Saturday it was. The entire process is being photo documented by the To3JM, she is good at stuff like that. But today as I set out to ride I got a picture of the pile.Some may notice that the pile is not up to the monumental standards of some other year's piles. This year the leaves were still a little bit wet so they settled in the pile instead of fluffing up. Furthermore, when Hurricane Minnesota blew through here last week it may well have taken quite a few of our leaves and made them into someone else's leaves. We made do with what we still had.

Today's SSE wind led me down into the big city. Here is something you cannot see when the leaves are on the trees. There is a gorge leading down from Saint Thomas towards the river from near the intersection of the Cretin and River Road. There is a very small creek flowing at the bottom of the gorge which eventually goes over something called Bridal Veil Falls. This is the headwaters of the creek, a spring about 50 yards or so from the top end of the gorge.It's right in the middle of the picture where the browns of the leaves turn to a darker color. That's naturally flowing water. It isn't a culvert, it doesn't come out of a pipe, that's water rising up out of the ground. A spring is something you just don't actually come across very often in an urban environment.

I was riding up Summit hoping to reach the traditional turn point for having a SE tailwind on the way home. I had just passed the Our Lady of Peace School of Law when a person walking to her car hailed me by name. Being hailed while riding is also something that doesn't happen very often. It was a friend from work (some observers may remember that I used to have a job) so I stopped and wheeled around and went back. We were warbling fair weather as when . . . wait, never mind, we were having a pleasant conversation about this and that when another person ambling down the sidewalk turned out to be my brother, thereby completing a hat trick of unusual occurrences.

It is the last day of the month and as is the usual case, it is time to review the numbers. I often say that it is a seven month bicycle season here but the truth is that until today the highest total mileage ridden in each of the months was more than 600 for only six of those months. For a variety of reasons, but mostly October's failing light and falling temperatures, the total mileage for the month just never got up to the totals for the other months. Until today.

So today I established a new record for the month, 614 miles. The "golden year", the total for a mythical year in which the record for each month is ridden is now up to 6,335.91 miles. That's about 950 miles more than the actual most miles ever ridden in a year, 2003, the year of the second Ride Across Minnesota (the Ortonville to Red Wing trip).

So here's a new feature, a quiz.

Guess which of the following is the most haunted building in Saint Paul. Click on the link to the one you think is the actual haunted house. If you are correct you will receive confirmation. If you are not correct you will see an entertaining video of a bicycle crash.

A. Governor's MansionB. Griggs MansionC. Cathedral of Saint PaulD. State CapitolThere, that was fun, don't you think?

Don't forget, tomorrow is the first day of National Blog Every Day for a Month Month.