Call the rewrite desk

That's what I am imagining as a line from an old time newspaper movie.  You know, right after Perry White or somebody decides they have to tear out the headline and remake the whole front page to go in a new direction based on last minute developments.

I had to do that today.

It might be fairly obvious or maybe not but what I am doing out there is riding around making up lead sentences and paragraphs, writing a little story in my head.  I take some photos (art they call it in Lucas Davenport novels) and integrate the little story with my visuals, and here it is.

As the TCWUTH once said, "But Dad, that's totally bloggable".

Here's the one I HAD going.

After yesterday's record breaking heat today we were promised something more seasonable, sunny and upper 70s.  There was a front passing through just on the south edge of the metro area which must have ended up a tiny bit more north than expected because we had off and on mostly on cloud cover for most of the morning.

But at noon the radar indicated clearing, the clouds scuttled off the the south, temperatures started to rise.  It was 70 with light NW winds when I headed out.

I rode through Grass Lake today for the first time this season.  Grass is a very shallow lake, some years it is mostly grass, some years it is a lake.

At least at this point it looks like it is going to be a lake year.

It was sunny and nice (did I mention light winds) and I was thinking along the lines of OOTNDITHOD.  Except that with the substandard morning I was thinking of creating a new category, a sub-category if you will.

One of the nicest afternoons in the history of afternoons.

But wait, hold that headline.  The front that spoiled the morning wasn't through just yet.  Just before I reached the half way mark the moving away air mass produced a behind the weather change wind change.  The wind abruptly came around to be from the southeast.

Too late to do anything about that except accept fate and push back into the wind towards home.  I rode through Lake Vadnais again today.  No merganser today but there is a loon out there on the water.

There is a secondary item of interest too which I am comfortable most would not have noticed.  This spot is quite near one of the new fishing platforms.  In support of the idea that these areas are appropriately placed a careful examination will spot a bobber in the branches of that tree.

I didn't see the merganser family today but there was profusion of red winged blackbirds.  I don't know if they just arrived or what, but today they were all over the place, colorful AND loud.

The wind from the southeast was not only a head wind, it was blowing quite a bit harder than the earlier very light breeze.

There used to be a school here.

That's near the bike shop and Lake Owasso.  I believe when it was a school it was Owasso School.  Most recently the local cable franchise had been using the building for offices.

There are softball fields behind the school site at which one of the most important games of the Undefeated Rangers was played.  In the next to last game of the season we played the other team which was to that point in the season undefeated.  I recall that Tiffany had a big game (no surprise) and Sarah made an important catch at first base with a throw for a tag play for us at 2nd base (at least some surprise) which defused the other team's (the Angels) strategy which was to run, never stop running until you score or are out, the idea being that most of the teams in that league couldn't hold a decent game of throw and catch, if you keep running what happens most often is that you score.

We were capable of playing throw and catch, we spent a lot of time on that at each and every practice.  We clobbered 'um.

The game was also very notable for the deployment by fans of the other team of a sign proclaiming "Go Angles".  That's the part everyone else remembers.  I remember details of the play by play.

Even on the northern ride I detour a bit to the south of the direct route home to line up the easiest crossing of the major traffic carrier, Snelling Avenue.  I had reached that southern turn back point when I noticed that the wind had shifted yet again, now being northeast, the exact directions I had to ride to cross Snelling and get home.

Every single mile into a head wind.

Call the rewrite desk, clearly this was NOT OOTNA . . .

Here's an intersection about a bit under 2 miles from home.

I ride there a fair bit but hadn't really started to contemplate the significance of those signs until recently.  Note that there are three signs, no parking during the State Fair and Fry and Garden.

So Fry Garden seems like a natural attraction at the Fair, sort of like the Beer Garden or something.  With the vast cornucopia of fried foods available (quite often on a stick, of course) a Fry Garden is a concession which seems to me like it has a chance of making a profit.

Or maybe it is Garden Fry which sounds like a vegetarian stir fry at a Chinese restaurant.

That's all I got for today, or as they might say in an old newspaper movie, that's a wrap.