Pinkie

Well, that was nice. Today was a very nice day for late October which of course makes it an extraordinarily nice day for the Ides of November. Temperatures several degrees above average and mild winds made a perfect day for bicycling, or at least as perfect a day as is ever likely to occur this deep into the disappearance of the sun.

I hate to harp on that but the sun is now making only a token appearance each day, arcing across the southern sky from east to west but never making it more than about 30 degrees above the horizon. I am beginning to suspect that we are dumbed.

Just another way to look at it.

I ride lots (tip of the hat to Eddy Merckx who is famously credited with giving advice to do just that), both north and south from where I live (and occasionally east but not so much west). My favorite routes are the routes to the north, out to the lakes. Today's weather provided a late season opportunity for one of my favorites.

The lakes are a rewarding destination for me because of the setting. Once off the busy streets and into the park interior the city disappears. It was a really pretty day today out in the woods.

That's the entry road into the park at Sucker Lake. I intended to ride down and check on the beaver dam but found a new entirely unexpected obstacle. That whole path construction thing down at Vadnais is being extended up through the park at Sucker Lake.

Well, I says to myself, if the construction project is tearing up the old road at Sucker Lake, possibly they are no longer as busy down at Vadnais.

I rode over there to discover lots and lots of construction guys. However what they were now working on is an upgrade of the road. The bicycle path is in next to the road and when I coasted down it not a single one of those guys even cast a glance at me. What the heck, I went for it. I think I may have missed the swans this year at Vadnais but at least I was there on an extremely late fall day and there were geese.

It was very pretty day out there today.

The path is all the way through Vadnais, it is new pavement, who doesn't like new pavement?

But it is clearly a path when the pavement used to be an abandoned street, it is narrower by probably six feet.

It was way nice today but I was there alone.

Down at the bottom I was surveying what used to be the parking lot. It looks from what I could see like there will be some sort of picnic pavilion there, a big change, but maybe a good one. The road from that end will still go that far. To accommodate both a road and a trail they have taken down several of the big old cottonwoods that used to line the shore between the parking lot and the sheriff's station at the bottom end.

At about this point a fellow in a giant pickup drove over to where I was and informed me that the park was closed and that I wasn't allowed to be there. His authority was unofficial but unmistakable (a really, really big pickup) so I left without a fuss.

On the grading thing introduced yesterday, actually under either system I am going to get an A. I am actually angling for insight into gradations of A, low A, regular A, A+, that sort of thing.

And on the thumb (sur le pouce) today the pinkie folded under as well.

Today was an unexpected pleasure, a wonderful day to be outdoors in non-punitive weather at a time of the year when that is unusual. I keep saying this and every time I do it is more true, there aren't going to be many more of these.