Road south appears to be unavailable

Today was the third day in a row of the nicest day so far this year.  Here's what I discovered while out riding my bicycle.

There is a giant pot hole under the bridge at Deadman's Curve, the only reasonably convenient route to the south.  It is so huge that there is a car hub cap lying along the side of the street.  If the hole is abrupt enough to knock the hub cap off a car I most assuredly won't be riding my bicycle through there.

I was standing on the sidewalk trying to get a photo when I was nearly run down by a person near to me in age riding a $99 mountain bike from Tar-gey.  As a result although I did get a photo I was stressed and failed to include the hub cap in the photo.  Without the hub cap the photo just doesn't have the same impact although I will e-mail to anyone who cares.

This citizen scared the bejeesus out of me despite having only a few feet further back passed this scene.

That's always good advice on the sidewalk.

So anyway, the road is closed.

It was OK today because the main wind issue was pretty much south anyway in a pattern which called for primary riding to be east and west.  As a result I got over to Lake Como on the way home.

Ice out at Lake Como.

I would be remiss if I didn't touch on the important bicycle news of the week.  According to various sources Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has been hospitalized following a bicycle accident.  This raises an important political question which incidentally, is not without merit as a bicycle question.

Did he fall to his right or to his left?

OK, I am going to link this up to the bicycle content above by noting that given the severity of the injury, proximal humerus fracture (pretty sure that's a broken shoulder), and that the injury required reverse shoulder replacement surgery to get the judge back on the bench (if not yet his bike) I am going to guess at the details.  I think he hit a pothole and went over the bars.  I base this in part on the circumstances of the accident that caused a broken shoulder for a bicyclist that I know personally (hit a pothole commuting to the DNR, went over the bars).

It looks like I'll never know for sure about the judge because I searched as much as I am going to and the story I linked gives the most detail but says that details surrounding the accident were not provided.

But, getting back to politics for a bit, he must have fallen to the right, he broke his right shoulder.  Breyer is, of course, a pretty conservative guy who because he is not as conservative as the extremely conservative majority bloc on the court sometimes comes off as a squishy liberal and sometimes as a "swing vote".  So just as with his politics there is a bit of a question.  The injury is to his right side indicating a fall to the right but the severity of the injury indicates maybe not.  Just the kind of bicycle accident you would expect from a "swing vote".

It's his second serious accident in the last couple of years and his THIRD since 1993.  There's a cautionary tale in there somewhere.