Bronze Floyd

Ah, November. I remember November now. It begins with the frantic final few bicycle rides of the year and ends with the frantic blogging about blogging to honor the promise to blog every day.

Today was still the bicycle part. November cooperated by producing a sunny day and temperatures rising throughout the afternoon into the lower 50s, actually quite a nice day considering that the average for the day has retreated into the upper 40s.

It was nice enough to induce me to abandon the riding around near home that has been too prevalent of late and to actually go somewhere.

Before Michelle there was a Minnesotan who was actually considered to be what they then called "Presidential timber". He has been pictured here before but I doubt he has ever been pictured anywhere on a prettier day, Minnesota's Hero of Labor, Governor Floyd B. Olson. Despite having been on television a lot I don't think our current candidate will ever a) be an actual serious candidate for the position or b) have a bronze likeness erected on the State Capitol mall.Floyd has been getting his name mentioned a lot around here this week due to the fact that the state university football team retained the bronze pig trophy named after him in the annual big game against the football team from the state university of the state immediately to our south.

Climbing the hill up to the Cathedral was easier this time than the last time I tried. The hill is still steep but this time I had a tail wind. The big stone church posed against the cloudless sky.Today's big mileage milestone was dragging the Crown Jewel past 9,000 miles. This happened a few miles after passing the Cathedral. This is an important milestone and one of my major goals for the year. The CJ came out of the basement and back onto the roads with 7,722 miles. I wanted to get past 9,000 this year which puts me within reach of a reasonable distance goal for next year of getting past 10,000. Reaching 10,000 miles would enroll me in the extremely elite group of persons I know who own at least two bicycles on which they have ridden at least 10,000 miles.

I kept riding down Summit. It occurred to me if I had known the route a day in advance that planning could have been done and I could have stopped by the check in on Calvin.

Calvin's owners were a bit worried a couple of weeks ago about how well Calvin was adapting to his daily dose of no people around. But actually, I guess they (and Calvin) are adapting and all is well.

I stopped at the end of Summit to observe how things are progressing down there in the river gorge. Here is a look upstream towards the Marshall Avenue bridge.Standing in the same spot I turned and got a photo of what I have always referred to as the monument. I have been to the spot dozens of times throughout my adult life on foot and on bicycle. I know now as I did not for many years that the monument was erected in 1922 by the Daughters of American Revolution in memory of the Ramsey County Civil War dead.I had a hard time getting home from there and it wasn't necessarily due to the fact that it is mostly uphill from there. The problem was the light rail construction on University. There is a major station going in at Raymond Avenue which is where I usually cross. The requirements of construction have resulted in a complete closure of University over there. Eventually I had to walk my bicycle along a pedestrian detour to cross a plywood ramp laid over a spot where construction workers were applying black tape to newly laid rails. I am just reporting the news here, I was probably more mystified by what was going over there while I was observing it than any reader can be by reading about it. Suffice to say my average speed suffered mightily from a couple of blocks of walking next to the bicycle instead of riding it.