First day of summer

Artist's note:  If you want to do it right you have to plan ahead and set things up.

The elevator did indeed skip that floor.  Today the temperature exceeded the average by about 10 degrees and it is pretty much officially without any doubt summer time out there.

I rode north today even though the window was a bit southerly.  The wind wasn't strong though and I did want to get north.  At the speed I am riding I didn't think the wind would be much of a factor anyway and that turned out to be true.  I needed to get north because in the abbreviated early season I have discovered that streets to the south have been swept.  I needed to confirm that streets to the north have been swept before switching to my road bike.  There are a couple of iffy spots but over all the major debris has, in fact, been removed from the edges of the streets and the nice bike should be coming out of the basement.

Only one hold up there, in the six month winter I somehow didn't find time to install the new tires that are going to be necessary before I take that bicycle back out.

*sigh*

What I today found most interesting about the streets is that there are an extremely large number of really, really large, deep and completely rude potholes.

Bad year for the freeze thaw cycle, I guess.

Early season fitness seems OK, I got all the way to the Shoreview water tower before turning back.  My costume screamed summer (short sleeves, shorts) but there does seem to be about half a lake full of ice chips out there on this arm of Island Lake.  I bet it will be gone tomorrow.

That's also the first wildlife posting of this season, a big, fat goose over there next to the left side shore line.

Here's that aforementioned water tower.  Frequent riders to that spot will note, as I did, that the strip mall that used to grace that spot, home of Anne-Marie's Dog Grooming, a beauty salon of the human kind, a pizza joint, a convenience store and IIRC a tobacco store amongst others, all of that has disappeared.  You can now get a clear view of the base of the water tower.

I stopped at the bike shop for the first time since, oh, November and had a nice chat with my personal bicycle mechanic.  There has long been an issue with the cantilever style brakes on the spring bicycle.  Scott long ago showed me how to do the adjustment myself.  Even so, with the extremely abbreviated early season riding schedule, those brakes are just fine right now.  The stop was purely social.

And so, it's on.

I didn't want to come down and do the blogging while the afternoon reigned as gloriously as it reigned there for a while.  I am now fearful that I won't go the one additional level down into the full basement to change the bicycle tires.  I could be riding cyclo-cross again tomorrow.