1,020 miles this bicycle this year

It was definitely not a good day to be closed up on the fourth floor. The day was sunny and warm and fall produced spectacular light, ideal for outdoor color photography.

This was obvious to me even before I got out of my own driveway. This is the neighbor's ash tree silhouetted against the cerulean blue sky.I tried later to line up one of our own ash trees for a similar shot but sun angle and the realities of landscaping in the two yards means that I got a much better picture of the neighbor's tree than I got of our own. Suffice to say that in person our tree looks pretty much the same as theirs.

Once I started to ride I rather quickly passed a significant mileage milestone. This is the second bicycle on which I have ridden at least 1,000 miles this year. I have never done that before. I also venture to say that most people have never ridden 1,000 miles on any bicycle in their entire lives.

I am plenty OK if that last bit sounds a little boastful, I meant it to be.

I took a new route around Sucker Lake, looking for a geographic feature that I had noticed on Google Earth. I found what I was looking for and also came across this striking display by some sumac.Of course, we all know that sumac is a weed. Still it makes a nice show once each year.

Did I note that it was pretty out there today? The jewel of the northern lakes seemed pretty outstanding today.I have two odometer functions on my bicycle computer. One notes miles up to 1,000 in 1/100 miles increments. The other notes miles up to . . . well up to at least as many as I have so far. This leads to a moment once every 1,000 miles when the two odometers display the same digits. Here is where I was today when one said

191.91

while the other said

19191.

Exactly the same display except for the decimal on one. I thought it was fun and stopped to photograph what I could see from that spot. The pelicans are still in the lake. This is the other half of Lake Vadnais.Then down at the corner of Lake Vadnais there is a shallow spot where a great blue heron has been hanging out most of the summer. This bird has been in this spot long enough to become a bit acclimated to the presence of humans on the road at the edge of the lake and no longer spooks and flies away if you try to get its picture. Instead it seems to stand and pose.Here's some more color, this is another neighbor's tree, a maple this time. This one sprung into my field of view as I neared home and demanded to be pictured.Done.

While I was trying to get a picture of our ash trees I instead got a nice photo of our sun dappled backyard and deck. You can also see a tiny bit of the foliage on both the back and front ash trees.I had a small mileage month for September, the second lowest recorded since I started keeping track. But of the miles that I needed at the start of the month to reach my annual goal I managed to ride half of them in September. This means I need only an ordinary October and I will reach my goal. In checking the log I also noticed that I have nine straight Novembers when I have at least some miles.

I rode my bicycle today on OOTNDITHOD. I hope everyone else enjoyed their day as much as I enjoyed mine.

And furthermore

Today was a wonderful day for late September and since I don't have a job I waited around for TOPWLH (who does have a job) to come home and then we rode our bicycles. The wind was stronger than what we usually get in the summer time so it was pretty hard work but it was a beautiful day and a ride well worth taking.

Here is TOPWLH at Island Lake in Shoreview.I heard a TV weather guy this morning talking about fall colors and he was saying that peak colors are already occurring in the northern reaches of the state. Not so much at Island Lake. However, the lengthening shadows do testify to the sun's position being lower in the sky, another certain sign of fall.

LOOK at Island Lake. I like those orange tires.Here's another sign of silly season. This one is only about half a block from the array I photographed yesterday, just around the corner.I didn't feel like taking this picture yesterday but today I must have been in a more Lipton's Instant Party kind of mood.

If you give every single person a vote you end up with the government you deserve. I am Gzmoohoo and that's the message I approve of.

Editorial note: Despite persistent claims to the contrary I am of the belief that there are some prepositions that you can end a sentence with.

I haven't shown the corn for a while. It isn't harvested yet but it is thoroughly dried out. I know you want it to dry before harvest but the exact dynamic is unknown to me. I worked on a farm summers while in high school and have cultivated corn but that whole harvest thing occurred after school had started again and I was never around. I know nothing.GRider, as always, for scale.

Silly season heating up

The sky was blue and beautiful when I started out and it is again now. However, for most of the time I was riding the prevailing sky condition was mostly cloudy. I rode around underneath the clouds.

I got one photo early on in the ride while I was still well inside the Roseville loop. This one is about three miles into the ride although if I took a direct route it is only about two miles.

Based on this photo I am going to make two deductions, one of which is almost certainly correct and the other of which is still a pretty sure good guess.One, Renee's neighbors are serious yard hobbyists.

Two, they appear to be Democrats.

Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Horse show

There's a pretty big horse show going on over at the Fairgrounds. The parking lots are FULL of horse trailers. The schedule for the upcoming weekend is the Fall Arabian Horse Show and I am under the impression that that is a really big show. But the demeanor and casual dress of people I saw today make me wonder if today's activities are some kind of wind up for what the schedule lists for last weekend, the Western Saddle Club Horse Show. That thing was scheduled for Thursday through Sunday and it isn't unreasonable to guess that they were delayed at least one day because of the weather. I don't know enough about horses to be sure.

When they have one of those shows they put up barriers like this a couple of blocks from the show arena and the barns and judging arena.One of the signs says horse show participants only and the other says caution livestock at work. They are trying to limit the number of bicyclists casually riding through would be my guess.

On the back side of that barrier they have this sign saying no horses beyond this point.That seems fair to me. If they don't want outsiders among the horses then the horses should stay away from the outsiders too.

Today I was riding past that no horses beyond this point and discovered a horse clearly out of bounds. I am going to give the horse a pass though as horses can't read. I am not giving a pass to the person riding the horse who apparently was distracted from important horse guiding duties by the texting she was in the process of doing on her hand held device.

Yup, distracted riding.

My version of Chicken Italiano

There hasn't been very much bicycling here lately as the big storm blew through. It rained, it rained really hard, it rained really really hard. And I don't even live in a place where it rained hard.

So, here's the way I did it tonight. This is all going to happen in a single pan and a single narrative.

Here are the main ingredients with an antique toaster for scale. The background story on the toaster involves Christmas at GE. I am not the only one who knows it.I haven't used that brand of tomatoes before but when I saw it in the store I was instantly smitten. Who doesn't want to use tomatoes canned by God's brothers?

A single pan, the chicken breast goes in first to start browning. The meat takes the longest to cook but truthfully everything is going to get plenty of time.Big chunks of onions, big chunks of pepper. There is also some chopped garlic in there.

I thought about it while I was doing it and big chunks seemed like a better choice. The sauce is going to have lots of ingredients. Big chunks make identification of the ingredients easier. Further, big chunks give you an opportunity to fully experience the taste.In the next step we have fresh mushrooms in there as well and God's brothers tomatoes are poised.Here is everything together in the single pan.The pasta cooks separately so I guess maybe a two pan description would be a trifle more accurate. A word on pasta, complex carbohydrates are the preferred form. This is whole wheat pasta, a more complex carb than ordinary white flour noodles. But even with complex carbs, the secret of pasta is portion control. You want enough to enjoy the experience but you have to not go over the line. This photo includes our Pfaltzgraff pattern plates for scale.I am going to rely on TOPWLH to make a comment on whether it was good or not. I cooked it, I shouldn't say.

Rare things

I don't like to ride in the rain and I will almost always NOT ride if the weather is sufficiently threatening. The remnants of that last hurricane are about to blow through here and the learned opinions of those employed to scare us about the weather were universal in stating that we should be afraid, very afraid. The weather was sufficiently threatening.

I suspect they are right, they usually are. But they are in the business of predicting for the day and longer. My opinion is not learned but I am a pretty good self taught predictor when we are talking about looking at the radar and predicting for the next two hours, long enough to get in a two hour bicycle ride.

Shortly after noon I decided that the leading finger of the storm which was closest to here was actually losing form and falling apart. The main storm was still out there but I thought it might be a couple of hours away. I thought I could ride out a few miles and head back to be close to home after about an hour and then stay close to home, ride as much as I could and at least get in part of a ride. Well, every time I rode east it felt like rain was imminent. But I knew that the storm was coming from the west and every time I got a look at the western sky I was encouraged to keep riding. At first I was hoping to get in 8 miles, then 10, then 14. I got the full two hour ride.

I am home, I didn't get wet. It has rained here, a bit, but now it looks as though the main piece of the storm will slide past on the south side.

The second rare thing is what is going on in this photograph:That worker is plowing down an unharvested crop. I don't see that very often at all.

I suspect it is related to nitrogen fixation as I think that plant being plowed down was a clover or possibly some other fodder crop, a member of the legume family. So what is going on there is good land management but it is still not something that I see very often.

The third rare thing is this appearance of albino vermin in Falcon Heights.

Seasonable

Sunny and nice has reappeared where I live. I went out to wear some rubber off the tires.

Here is something I have never seen before. That engine is on the front of a BNSF freight idling under the Snelling Avenue overpass. I have seen BNSF stuff painted lots of different ways over the years, mostly as a result of the series of mergers that brought the current corporate form into existence. This one, however, looks to be a partnership with a foreign rail line.My Spanish is even more rudimentary than my French but there is a sign on there celebrating ten years of existence. And sure enough, a short search reveals that FerroMex is the largest railroad in Mexico and it has been in existence for eleven years. It is very unusual to see a power plant owned by someone other than the railroad on whose tracks the train is running.

There is going to be a lot of this in the next few weeks. Here is a maple turned mostly orange against today's brilliant blue sky.Nantes lost to Reims, 2-1, and currently stand 13th in the table.

GRider takes the spotlight

Today's mileage milestone was achieved by the Guest Rider. She mentioned the number of years it took her to get to this point but I either couldn't, didn't or won't hear it. Anybody who doesn't think 4,000 miles is a lot is probably a person with about 118 miles on THEIR bicycle odometer. Congratulations to GRider and her Bianchi Veloce.She also has a lot of unrecorded miles from bicycles rented on our annual Michigan vacation so her total ride total is even higher.

Note to self: Next time you want to photograph one of these please keep in mind that the automatic setting focuses on the ground, not on the computer and that that is true with the macro setting turned on or off. Try something else.

Here is where she was when she passed the milestone.It is handy that there is already a survey marker located nearby as it will make location of the historic marker certain to be placed there much more easily located.

It is probably also apparent from her costume that even with the sun obviously shining we are still running temperatures a fair amount below average for the middle of September.

We rode the 10 lakes tour with some modifications. For example, we skipped one of the lakes and visited a swamp instead. Here at the swamp in the Snail Lake Regional Park we got a photograph of a picturesque old dead tree.For those with a burning desire to know, that swamp is located quite near to Snail Lake along the route between Snail Lake and Sucker Lake.

We had a nice ride and we must have been humming along pretty well. As we rode past Lake Owasso an older gentleman came to the end of his driveway to remind us that the speed limit on that street is 30mph. We thanked him for his concern. However, one of the functions on my bicycle computer is maximum speed. I checked it when we got home and I am able to report a maximum speed that indicates we were never, ever in violation of the speed limit.

On the other hand we were going 29.5 at one point.

No soccer news from France today, Nantes plays the Monday night game.

Here's something from England though:

Mostly sunny 55, 19,000

I live in a place where in a month or so mostly sunny and 55 would be GOOD news.

And to be fair I think the official daily high edged above 55, maybe even to 60. But 55 was what was predicted for the daily high at the time I snuck out the door into a very Octoberish 51.

I came home to watch a little football on TV, a game being played locally, and was surprised to hear the commentary team repeatedly refer to today as a beautiful day. Well, pretty, I will give you. Mostly sunny. And it was good weather for football. But 10-15 degrees below average doesn't ordinarily qualify as a beautiful day.

But it was pretty, I have the gear, I guess I am going to accept beautiful day. For certain my interaction with the day lived up to beautiful. It was cool enough to limit the number of other riders out there and I had a very nice ride.

Early on in the ride I coasted through this display on my odometer. I still have not figured out how to get this thing in focus but I believe the information is visible.Here is where I was when this milestone occurred. I bet the GRider will recognize the spot, probably most anyone else won't. It is just off Hamline down by Lake Josephine.As I suggested back when I rode FirstLOOK for the first time this year, this bicycle and I have unfinished business and it should be apparent what that business is. So, can I do it this year?

Well, I doubt it. That many miles in the time remaining in this season is unlikely. But I checked the log (that's one of the main reasons to keep a log, so you can check it). Last year after September 18 I rode slightly over 1,100 miles. Of course, that included 520 miles, an all time personal best, in November.

I doubt it but if the weather holds . . .

I rode to a familiar place but rode a very unfamiliar route to get there.The blues are very pretty and the hardwoods around the north end of Lake Vadnais are beginning to display a slight loss of green in the foliage. Not enough light to produce that much chlorophyll is how I believe the explanation goes.

Fall has fallen.

Septober?

The weather guy in the newspaper said that, Septober.

It was warm enough today to dial back the cold weather gear a bit but as payback the overcast was complete, dense and constant. Not a single spot of blue appeared while I was out. Photography is light dependent, it is hard to get a good picture of grey.

So I scoured around on the hard drive and came up with a picture from 2003. It was taken early in the morning but after sunrise and the sun is evident.What in the world were we doing with our bicycles so far from home? That cannot have been a good idea.

I wonder where that helmet is. I know where the orange ones are but I haven't seen that red and yellow one since, well, probably since 2003.

Fall falls

I have already experienced and worked through a couple of stages of grief concerning the end of summer but clearly most people who live around here have not. I have already been colder than I am used to being while riding. Today when I opened the front door to pick up the newspapers I felt a bite in the air that hasn't been there for a long time. But today it was. It was cold. For most of the people that I ordinarily see outside while I am out today was TOOO cold. They stayed inside.

So how cold was it? The newspaper reports that average high for today is 71. Here is what I got at the Fairgrounds at about 3pm:

EG:55 CB:53 WG:59

The weather channel was reporting 54 when I got home. That is quite a bit below normal but it is also quite a bit above freezing. I have the gear, I rode my bicycle.

Here is what was new today, out of the drawer and onto my body for the first time since, oh, I can't really remember. But I know for sure I have been to France since the last time I wore long pants.That's what you see there, long pants, full finger gloves and if you look carefully at those socks you may be able to read the brand name: SmartWool. Wool socks.

I was completely comfortable and had a really nice ride.

But for most people this was the moment of shock of recogition. Summer is over. Most people stayed inside.

As a result I had the outdoors pretty much to myself. I saw one other bicyclist during my ride and that was a teenager with a back pack riding home from school. I saw not a single other recreational rider.

GRider doubted my statement that this was a temporary building over at the Fair. Well, here the building is about half way through the process of deconstruction.It appears to me that that is sort of a Lincoln Logs kind of building. They put it up every year for the Fair and then take it back down and store the logs in the toy box. Lincoln Logs, just Lincoln Logs on a bigger scale. For any young people tuning in Lincoln Logs were sort of like Legos, only made out of wood. That was from pre-historic times, before all toys were made of plastic. I digress.

But all is not lost at the Fairgrounds. The Fair is over but it looks as if some sort of event is on at the Coliseum for this weekend. I don't know for sure but I expect that it is a horse show of some kind. The other possibility is that it is a horse trailer sale.If you look carefully and have been paying attention you may notice that the Mashed Potatoes on a Stick stand has been packed up and has left the Grounds. So have the Pronto Pup stands. Today I saw some guys with a fork lift loading a giant buffalo statue onto a flat bed. The Fair is a memory, fall has fallen.

Did I mention that I had a really nice ride?

Envy not advised today

It has ended up being a pretty nice day in its later stages but it was overcast and cool during the time I was riding. Those stuck indoors need not feel any twinges about missing out on the part of the day that I was out in.

But I was out in it for sure.

Here is Blubell, an unexpected addition to the otherwise bright yellow fleet over there.I made my fall pilgrimage to the animal pet cemetery. I had never noticed this before. It appears to be an abandoned outbuilding. There are fruit trees behind that screen of bushes and quite a bit of open space. I think there is about an acre there and yes, I know how much an acre is and yes, I am qualified to make this estimate. What makes it unusual is this is all right off Dale and 36. Near the pet cemetery obviously.This is all right around the corner from the fire station over there and in riding up and down alleys and driveways to get a good look at the real estate for sale I discovered that I have missed what looks like it might have been interesting training at the fire department.Riding on an overcast day is still better than not riding at all. I felt strong, I felt good.

The reason

On days like today during the last couple of years of my tenure down at the plant I would occasionally remark to a fellow serf, say, upon returning to the building from an errand or task that had taken us outside of the factory building, that there were only a finite number of days like today in any person's life and that there were not enough of them left in my hours upon the stage to make it reasonable for me to spend even one more of them on the fourth floor of a building with windows that do not open. Overall, yesterday was probably a bit nicer than today by most people's estimation. For me, I love fall, I don't know why it takes a day like today every year to remind me of that fact. But fall is my favorite and a day like today . . .

Well, today is the reason why I no longer participate in activities down at the plant. Today was OOTN(Fall)DITHOD. And today was also Monday, a day when in my past life I would have been inside that building without windows that open. Today was a day to be outside. Today was the reason.

So naturally, we rode our bicycles.

I got this photo of the GRider at Oasis Park, the site of Tiffany's greatest hits.We played at that field for two years. During the second of those years Tiffany was the best 5th grade girl softball player in Roseville, by a lot. I wish I had the statistics because it was almost scary how good she was. We played seven games (and won them all, the undefeated Rangers), I am going to say she must have had at least 14 home runs, maybe more. And most of her home runs were not kiddie league home runs. A kiddie league home run is a well struck ball that no one will pick up until it stops rolling allowing the striker of the ball to run and run and run.

Tiffany's typical home run was an absolute smash well over the heads of the unsuspecting outfielders which even if chased with determination could not be returned to the infield before Tiffany and whichever of her teammates were on base had crossed home. Our line up that year was always Amy, Leah, Emily, Tiffany and those three in front of Tiffany scored on many of her hits. I distinctly remember one game where she had three home runs including two grand slams. The best player in the league. By a lot.

The other of the two years we played there we had the best 5th grade actress in Roseville on our team. We were practicing over there on the far side of the skinned infield for our first game of the season. Libby, our actress and also a fairly useful infielder and hitter, was also in late rehearsals at that same time for her part as the title character in the Children's Theater Company production of "Annie". She was the best actress in the league. By a lot. She would later have a TV series and the last time I heard she was still working as an actress and although she is anything but a major star she was without any doubt the best actress in Roseville. It's okay, Tiffany isn't a major star anymore either.

Anyway, she was playing catch with, well, I won't tell. She violated one of the basic rules of catch of which there are two. One, make sure the other person is looking before you throw them the ball. And two, make sure the other person is NOT throwing you the ball before you look anywhere but at them. The ball bounced, from a softball perspective, harmlessly off her cheekbone. From a Children's Theater Company perspective, their lead had a major black eye.

Our practice, if I recall correctly was on a Wednesday and opening night was Friday. But it worked out okay. The Children's Theater Company is professional theater and they employ make up artists for just such a situation.

Speaking of fall, here is the first evidence I have seen of corn harvest. It began today.A special shout out to all my friends at the factory. Today you should have been out here with me.

Wow!

What a nice day! The change from summer to fall was too abrupt but it is now fall. Once the fact of fall is accepted a really nice fall day like today reminds me why fall is my favorite season. What a nice day!

It was so nice that I got out in the morning to ride. This brought me into conflict with the largest one day bicycle event in the area, the Saint Paul Classic.Those who know me will know that I do not like to ride in large groups so I did as much as I could to avoid riding with the Classic participants. But I had to cross their route four or five times and on two occasions I had no choice and had to share pavement with the teeming masses. Geography dictates that I need Raymond to cross the railroad tracks on the other side of Dead Man's Curve and I need Pelham to cross the freeway on the other side of University. That same geography put the Classic on those streets.

I walked my bicycle for a bit and got close enough to the main staging area to verify that this thing IS a big event.The one thing I DO like about big events like this is the chance to look around for nice bikes. I didn't note anything particularly nice today but I did see several people on new Schwinn road bikes.

If they ever do end up riding very much they are going to regret that particular buying decision.

After crossing the route yet again on the way home I rode up through the Park and over to the Farm Campus only to discover that apparently the cows rode in the big event too.You wouldn't think that cows that large could ride on bicycles that small, but . . .

I thought for a minute that I had come across early evidence of emerald ash borer damage quite near home.It has been a while since I learned to make this particular species identification but not long enough to unlearn. That isn't an ash tree, it is an elm.

Apparently Dutch elm isn't through here yet either.

On a stick

The Guest Rider wanted to see it for herself so today we tampered with the wind rule just a tiny bit and headed south over towards the rapidly emptying out Fairgrounds. The wind was mostly west and pretty strong. When wind direction did deviate from the cardinal direction it seemed to leak around ever so slightly to the north of west, something like W of WNW. But mostly west it was, no one suffered and we had a nice ride.

Today's question is how do they get mashed potatoes to stay on a stick?I know, that one is too easy. Everyone who has been to the Fair will know the answer. Pretty obviously they coat them with something and then deep fry.

This one is a little bit harder.I thought about saving that picture for a series on signs but who knows when and if such a series will occur again.

It was a beautiful early fall day.

Yippie ki yi aye

Having recently remembered how to ride a bicycle and having also remembered that Gene Autry was famous before he owned the Angels, today I continued brain research by remembering how to get to the Fairgrounds on a bicycle.

It looks way different over there without the crowd that we encountered last Sunday even though most of the stuff is still there. The Midway has been dismantled (those people all have business somewhere else this weekend) and a couple of the big tents have already been taken down. But the temporary stands that house most of the food vendors are waiting for the people who own them to have time off from their real jobs to allow them to come on out and finish the clean up. It is an interesting time on the grounds, sort of pseudo post apocalyptic.

I found that I can cover a lot more ground on a bicycle and with no crowds hindering my progress than I could cover while walking around over there. Surprise, huh? I came across this thing in the back yard of the DNR building.It is another junk sculpture and having arrived before the DNR people had come back to clean up the site, this time I was able to get the whole back story and even find out what that giant junk sculpture I saw over there earlier was all about. This one is called Nature's Engineer, the Beaver.Both "artworks" are part of a long running series of junk sculptures made from junk retrieved from Minnesota rivers by citizens as part of the Adopt-a-River program.That big dude last year WAS a fish, as I suspected but I never would have guessed sturgeon,Urgie the Sturgeon to be specific.

Data collected today: EG:66 CB:64 WG:69. As usual the cattle barn is in my opinion the most accurate. I have the gear, it was a comfortable ride. I have reverted to sleeved jerseys, a base layer and arm warmers. I started with the warmers on but after riding for a bit I was able to push them down and remain comfortable. The process of adjusting to fall weather has begun.

They say you never forget

It seems like only last week that it was definitely summer.

Here are the entries in my bicycle log for the days beginning September 2:

2: intermittent rain
3: cold, 59
4: cold and windy
5: went to the Fair
6: windy and cold
7: windy and wet

So there was ONE day when I could have ridden but I didn't. I was beginning to lose the rhythm of being a bicyclist but if your goal is 4,000 miles you are still fairly likely on September 8 to realize upon slight reflection that there are still nearly 900 miles to go and maybe I better get back after it.

And sure enough, I had not forgotten how.

We had a nice ride out to Lake Vadnais. The wildlife out there agree that it is now fall as most of the cormorants and nearly all of the white birds were not present today. The waterfowl that were present seemed pretty tame, however, or at least not the slightest spooked by the proximity of GRider.It felt good to be out there, we rode at what was for us a fairly rapid clip.

Later on in the day TCWUTH had obtained tickets from one of her sources and took us out to the ball game. This photo was taken about national anthem time.There's a Gene Autry song that applies here.

EDIT: based on the first comment I decided to add this, as they say in Galaxy Quest, "historical document":