Last ride?

Maybe.

Today I went over 300 miles for the month of November. That is an excellent first 15 days of any month but a particularly excellent first 15 days for November. There are several indications, however, that any more rides this month and this year may be hard to come by. Thursday and Friday seem slightly possible but most other of the next several days seem doubtful.

The morning newspaper reports that the average high temperature for the day has now reached 40. The high temperature forecasts for the near future are, for the most part, below average. It doesn't take much below 40 before my absolute hard and fast end of the season rule is invoked: I will not ride if the water will freeze in my water bottles while I am on the bicycle.

And after all it is the middle of November, next week is Thanksgiving, I remember lots and lots of Thanksgivings which included substantial snow sometime during the Thanksgiving four day weekend.

Here is the final act of the brush wacking episode behind our house. Actual heavy equipment showed up to remove the two giant brush piles.Surprisingly, that is a one man crew operating the truck and even more surprisingly, he did a really thorough and complete clean up of the smallish sticks and wood fragments that inevitably accumulate when you have that much brush in your front yard. TOPWLH even went to the front door to give him a shout out and a thumbs up.

I rode today. I headed out into a wind that was too strong to begin with and that kept getting stronger as I rode. There was some additional information about the hit and run on the West River Road in today's newspaper. The very strong wind was again from the west, a west wind indicates a ride towards Minneapolis, I set out to visit the crime scene again to see if I could improve my understanding of what happened over there.

Even though I eventually rode some distance on the River Road I learned nothing new except that heading south into Minneapolis was much, much easier than trying to continue on directly into the strengthening wind.

So south it was. I ducked off the River Road as it approaches Lake Street and ended up traversing south Minneapolis on 46th Avenue. I found 46th Avenue to be quite pleasant for riding with the possible complaint that the pavement is not in the best condition. I found a still nearly fully leafed out orange maple tree along the way.The nice thing about riding 46th Avenue is that eventually you come to the intersection of 46th and 46th. Some, including current and former Minneapolis residents, may know that 46th and 46th is approximately where you stumble into Minnehaha Park.

The Falls seem to running nearly dry.That is a little surprising to me. I have been out to the northern lakes and noticed that lake levels seem up if anything. It has been dry but it isn't that long since the last time I was at the Falls at which time the flow was considerably greater.

My guess is that the dam has been closed back where the creek flows out of that big lake where all the rich people live so that water levels can be maintained at a high enough level to avoid shoreline damage on that big lake.

And you know what? That's plenty OK with me. It isn't the fault of rich people that low water levels can damage the lake. And the lake does need to be protected.

Anyway, that's my guess.

Back on the Saint Paul side for the ride home I was thinking about a recent discussion I had with Wireless et alia about which house along that stretch I nominate as the Lucas Davenport big new house. I spotted one today which fulfills several of the requirements. The house number there is 564.However, I checked the archives and refer all discussion on the matter to a post from 2007 which identifies house number 404 as what I thought was the most likely candidate at a time when I was closer in time to having done the reading of the Sanford novels in which the big new house is a more prominent part of the narrative. I nominate 404.

Here's another shot through the leaves of a street with lots of oaks.That's Priscilla Street in Saint Anthony Park. Priscilla Street is one block from Standish Street. There should be a John Alden around there somewhere.