Reduced mileage

I guess summer isn't quite here yet after all.  Today was gray and windy, definitely not a summer day.  It was still warm enough but when I went out and stood in the driveway to gauge conditions I found that the wind had a definite chill.

I announced to TOPWLH that it had been too nice, that I just couldn't get myself to go in conditions clearly marginal.

She went to work.  The Champions League football came on TV.  I kept checking the weather channel.  The weather channel kept saying that it was going to rain but it didn't actually rain.

Everyone sees where this is going, right?

I got a very late start although I suppose it was still about 3 hours before I would have started if I had a job.  With a late start I took reduced mileage.  With the former yearly mileage goal clearly out of range I was pleased to find that I was plenty good with reduced mileage.  I got out, I rode around for a while, it was all pretty good.

I stayed close to home for two reasons.  Every time I checked the weather before I left home the radar showed blobs of green moving in from the west and when I got out there it felt and looked like rain moving in from the west.  The other reason for staying close to home was that I broke a spoke yesterday and it took me a while to reestablish confidence in the equipment.  I stayed close to home waiting for the ping of another broken spoke, not wanting to walk 8 miles in bike shoes carrying a bicycle with a wheel that wouldn't turn.  I broke no spokes but staying close to home ALWAYS means a complete tour of the Fairgrounds.

The street construction next to the DNR building is done allowing me to ride down that street to get a closer look and find out what the heck is going on.  The old rest room building is gone.

Based on the fact that the street construction was by a plumbing company and on the fact that the events coming during the 12 days of fun ending on Labor Day very definitely need a public restroom over in what is probably the mostly heavily visited quadrant of the Fair, I am going to go ahead and guess that the construction is of a major new and much larger public restroom.

The other reason why I HAD to ride today:  Weather prediction for tomorrow is for a high of 45 with cold rain and a possibility of a mixture of sleet and/or snow, an outside chance of an accumulation of a couple of inches.  Not good biking weather.

8 lake tour

OK, season report:  Fully up to speed (pretty slow) but completion of one of the main regular rides.  I rode all the way out to Highway 96 and came back through the newly completed path next to Sucker Lake and Lake Vadnais, a ride commonly known as the 8 lake tour (although it may actually be 10 lakes).  The season is no longer in the preliminary stages, it is now full on.

Of course a check of the log reveals that this year is the first time since 2002 that ZERO miles were ridden in March and that April will be the all time lowest number of miles ridden.  So, well, nothing to be done about that, for what it's worth, the season is now on.

I swung into Sucker Lake expecting to be blocked by the incomplete construction.  Instead, the path project at Sucker and Vadnais Lakes is complete.  All new pavement (albeit significantly more narrow than last year) and an April Monday dearth of fellow citizens,  it all seems pretty good, I found myself down next to the lake.

The construction project still needs some details completed as is still visible in the foreground.  Incidentally, we have a quite similar fabric fence bordering our front yard.  For the record, ice out at Sucker Lake.

It doesn't look like the culvert where the beavers caused such a problem last summer has been upgraded, what I could see of the pipe looked the same.  It will maybe be all right because fairly obviously the beavers have been downgraded.

The water is down at least a couple of feet from where it was last year.  Last year that was each and every possible bit a shallow lake.  It has reverted to a low spot with visible creeks and patches of dry high ground.

So, down onto the new path around Lake Vadnais.  It was good to be back at my favorite lake.  This is the only patch of ice I found on any of the 8 lakes.  There is a goodly bit hanging on the shore there (north facing and in the shade of that nice stand of pine) and a few middling bits floating in the lake.

Even so I am going to go ahead and declare ice out at Lake Vadnais.

I know at least one Guest Rider will be interested in this, the view of what the new parking area at the bottom end of the lake looks like.

Parking will definitely be more organized (and paved) out there.  I am uncertain where the picnic table will be but I suspect the porta potties will be behind the trash location visible on the left.  There are two stone fishing platforms out there at the end.  The trees along the north side of the lot have survived and one of the trees out at the fishing platforms is still there.  The big cottonwoods which would be off to the right of this photo are gone.  All in all, I approve.  Of course, the path is 10 feet wide instead of a 22 foot roadway and pedestrians ARE going to be a bigger problem, I had a slight issue with one today.  But I ride out there in times of low traffic, both pedestrian and bicycle and I think it will be OK.

So, enough about the northern lakes, how about a little bicycle content?

Today I passed through 52,000 miles cumulative since I started keeping track and two miles later broke a spoke for the first time.  I was turning into my driveway when it happened.  I hit that bump at the bottom of the driveway and PING.  Quite loudly and resoundingly, PING.

I was only doing about 3 mph which turns out to be a good thing because when a spoke breaks your wheel goes instantaneously out of round and when one of the newly projecting pieces of the rim comes up to where the brake pads are located . . . well, your wheel stops and so do you.  I propose this as another possibility of what happened to Justice Breyer.

Fortunately for me, I was already pretty much stopped, no problem.

Find the big gap where there aren't any spokes, there used to be a spoke there.

The wheel is pretty fancy though, don't you agree?

I headed over to County Cycles, a new employee greeted me at the counter, glanced at the wheel and expressed confidence that this could be fixed.  She took the wheel into the back room mechanic's area through the front of the store ingress point.  As it happened, my preferred mechanic was in and he came out through the back way leading the new employee over to the wooden cabinet where spokes are stored (on the job training).  He saw me and proclaimed, "Gene!  Is this your wheel?"

The part was in stock but quite pricey for a spoke.  I knew this was going to be so but still remarked to Scott that I could get a new wheel for the price of the spoke.  Scott quite correctly replied that although technically that was true that I couldn't get this wheel at anywhere near that price.  If you have a really pricey wheel set you have to expect that repairs to the wheels are going to be really pricey.

The replacement part was located and Scott asked me if I had a few minutes.

Long story short, bike fixed.

Thanks County Cycles.

I've got a couple of other things but I note that the weather forecast includes quite coolish temperatures for later in the week including a possibility of flurries.  I think I will save that other stuff for later.

For today, I wore out a bicycle part.  No matter the financial aspects, I am pleased.  It means I ride a lot.

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.

Thumb levers

I was out riding a bicycle today and miraculously discovered beneath my thumbs these little levers which when depressed shifted the gears.

Gear heads will know that after an extremely brief fling with my only locally owned Shimano equipped bicycle that today I resumed my long standing cooperative agreement with Campagnolo and Campagnolo equipped bicycles.  I love my thumb levers.

If I was riding a road bike that means I must have got those tires changed.  I don't know what I was riding around in the last time I was out last fall but the tire change that I completed yesterday was an eye opener.  I usually do a wear inspection of the old tires as I change them out to see if the old ones merit being kept around the garage as emergency tires.  This time the inspection revealed glass embedded in both tires.  The front tire already had a tiny break in the cord and a resultant incipient bulge that I knew about but the glass was a surprise.  Even after removal of the glass bits neither tire looked like a keeper and both went into the trash.

Riding through glass.  Ugh, makes me shiver just to thing about it.

I noted yesterday that the remaining ice in that shard of Island Lake would likely be gone today.  And it was.  That's my first official ice out announcement of this summer.

Since it IS summer I thought I might go by the beach for a view of citizens at play.  Here is the Lake Owasso north end beach.

Down there next to the lake it is actually still pretty brisk.

It was only a tiny bit further out to get a view of Lake Vadnais, undoubtedly the first of many this season.

It was a tiny bit brisk there, too.  I watched for a bit and did not notice any citizens making use of the new multi-use trail between the two lobes of the lake which I take to mean that the trail is not yet officially open.

The real problem at Lake Vadnais today was that to get to that vantage point I had to right a mile and a half outside what had to be considered to be a reasonable riding radius given early season fitness level.  I was officially too far from home.

But I made a stop a the bike shop for a chat and a breather on the way home, and a look at the new fire station going up across the street.

And, made it home.

I love my thumb levers.  And did I mention?  That bicycle is SCARY LIGHT.  It weighs nothing at all.

Here is the long awaited football update:  FC Nantes held first place at the half way mark of the Ligue 2 season but has not fared quite as well since football resumed after the winter break in January.  Nantes had only 2 losses in the first half but has recorded 4 losses in 15 games thus far in the spring campaign.  Meanwhile, AS Monaco, second at the break is on a 16 game unbeaten streak, last losing in week 17 on November 12.  Monaco is now first, leading second place Nantes by 7 points with four games to go.

All is not lost as the top three will be promoted to Ligue 1.  In its most recent outing on Friday FC Nantes picked up a much needed away victory winning 0-1 at Chamois Niortais.  FC Nantes is now 6 points ahead of the fourth place team and only a major collapse could deny them promotion.

Of course, the football news that most people have heard about is the UEFA Champions League upheaval which saw the two German teams defeat the currently much favored Spanish sides by convincing margins to introduce the strong likelihood of an all German final at Wembley on May 25.

Bayern Munich 4:0 Barcelona

Borussia Dortmund 4:1 Real Madrid

Of course, both games were the first of a home and home series and both were played in Germany.  Even allowing for Barca and Real being at home next week it seems quite unlikely that either will be playing in the final.

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.

Last day of winter

The last day of winter should be a good thing and probably is.  Satisfaction is blunted here this April however, by the fact that there hasn't been any spring and apparently there isn't going to be one.  Lots of us like spring.

Temperatures today are again around 15 degrees below average with temperatures predicted for tomorrow of about 12 degrees ABOVE average.  Yup, straight from the 40s to the 70s missing a few floors on the elevator.

So, here is the last look at what we have left in the front yard.

 That's what a north facing yard gets you.  Note the across the street south facing yard where winter has already passed away.

The early season bicycling pattern is to try to increase the distance a tiny bit each day.  Sometimes this goes fairly well, sometimes even the slightest increase is excruciating.  Today it went OK.  The major surprise was that lots and lots of streets have already been swept.  The usual spring sweeper watch will therefore apparently not be conducted this year.  Which is appropriate, because as I pointed out above, there really wasn't any spring anyway.  And there now isn't going to be one.

10 or 12 degrees below average

As reported elsewhere on the internet we are currently receiving about the same amount of sun light per day as we will be receiving in late August.  Even six inches of new snow doesn't stand much of a chance against that much sun.

The average high for the day now exceeds 60 which would be really nice but about noon today it was sunny and nearly 50.  The weather channel said 70 percent chance of rain turning to snow but a check of the radar showed that the first wave of all of that had passed through already (although it WAS snowing in Brainerd) and the second wave looked to be an evening arrival.  Well, 50.  I have gear for that.  I had to roll through a bit of unmelted snow in the shadow of the garage and a trickle of water at the end of the driveway but I was rolling.

And it turns out to be a good thing I did.  I rolled through the Fairgrounds to discover that the rent a fence is already in place for the first big event of the season.  Jeez, I would have hated to miss the first deployment of the fence.

It's the Minnesota Horse Expo.
 
One thing about the season kicking off this late into the calendar is that the sun is a factor.  I don't usually have to find the SPF 40 for the first rides of the year.  Today I went looking for it.  So, there I suddenly was, out there riding around with sun screen on my face.  Pretty much all of the rest of my epidermis was concealed by at least one and often two or three layers of cloth.

Really, really keen and hyper aware observers may note from this photo that the chamber orchestra musician strike seems to have been settled.  At least the last time I was at this location there was a sign in the yard supporting the musicians.

Anyone who knows me at all well knows where I line up in each and every dispute between labor and management (Kevin Garnett famously said when some complained about his $116 million contract, "If the man is willing to pay me that much money, how much money must the man have?").  I don't much follow the chamber orchestra but up with labor.

But the interesting bit for me there today (other than the presence of still quite a bit of snow) was that the photo location is the turn back point on what I refer to (when talking to myself, not a single other person cares about this) as the out and back Library 3 miler.

That makes it pretty darn close to one and a half miles from my house as the crow flies.  Today I paused for the photo with just over 10 miles on the odometer.

So the second ride of the year.  How did it feel?  Almost exactly the same as the first one, to tell the truth.  Of course, a fifteen day lay off between first and second ride is quite likely to dull the fitness benefits, whatever they might be, of the first ride.

Most years I have average goals in each month that on a short hand basis works out to I try to keep my average miles per day for the month up to 20 or as near to that as I can manage.  With today's ride I am now averaging over 1 mile per day for the month.  If I can manage to maintain this pace I can reach, indeed, somewhere over 30 miles this month.

4,000 miles for the year is officially, undoubtedly, off the books.  It's OK, 4,000 was starting to be a bit of burden.  3,000 this year.

And maybe, just maybe, I have finally gotten started.

April 23

The sun is so high in the sky that even with temperatures 20 degrees below average that snow we got last week was nearly all gone.  Yesterday afternoon it started up again.

That looks like about six inches of new snow to me.

April 19 snow

Of course, it hadn't really stopped snowing at the time this photo was taken last night.

It continued to snow all night.

The morning newspaper reports that the average high for this date is 60, another milestone reached.

Something you might see if you rent a bicycle in Vancouver

Just saying. In case anyone might be going there.

The Harry Jerome sculpture in Stanley Park.

And these fellows are probably still standing around down at English Bay.

The Marine Building at 355 Burrard Street.

But the real reason why I am here is because of something I read in one of the Kidd novels. I am engaged in a marathon re-reading of the novels written by John Camp (Sandford) and have come to a new appreciation of the the non-Davenport series. I can wax boring about all of this and probably at some time will but for now I was just really amused by a short passage I read in the Devil's Code.

In the Kidd novels the protagonist (Kidd) is a computer semi-nerd. He interacts with a full on computer nerd who has in the eyes of the nerd succeeded, he has made the big time. The nerd knows that Kidd doubted that the nerd's chosen path would ever succeed, here is his description of what it means to have hit the big time:

"You were one of the naysayers. You were one of the guys who said (I) was going to be eating frozen cheese pizzas for the rest of (my) life. Well, I'll tell you what, pal, it's nothing but order out pepperoni and mushroom from now on."

Emphasis added:

"And a private booth at Taco Bell."

Be very careful what you wish for.

More news about spring

Here is the view out the back window this morning.

The bad news, of course, is that much, much worse is predicted for overnight tonight.

Some are saying a foot.

We had feta fish for dinner tonight and in a departure used cod and salmon as the fish. Both work OK, the salmon is really good and has a strong enough flavor to stand up to the cheese, the cod is just a higher quality white fish.

I've been waiting for 50

The average high temperature for the day has reached 54 and we now have more than 13 hours of daylight.  That high sun has punished the snowpack, what is still hanging around is anemic and on the edge of extinction.  As a result the streets are mostly dry.

We had that one day when it was I think 58 but other than that it has been grim.

Still, Sunday was the traditional starting date for DST and if you can't ride when daylight is being saved for you, well, when the heck are you going to ride?

I have become increasingly impatient and yesterday I wandered out to the garage, rearranged the hanging bicycles to get the one I want to ride out from behind one of the others and into the clear where I could ride it without extra annoyances if I should ever conclude that I could actually ride.  While I was at it I pumped up the tires.

But it was rainy yesterday, no riding, and today was still cold.

But after I waved (we are the waving family) to the TOPWLH as she left for work I stood looking at the street.  Mostly dry.  Tires pumped.  Only about 40 but I have ridden plenty of times in the 40s.  I mean, for crying out loud, the tires were pumped!

It took me about 40 minutes to gather all my gear (I had to retrieve pieces from three of the four floors that we have in our house (suburban split level don't you know?) but soon enough I actually found myself out riding my bicycle.

I had to make a short loop near home to check to be sure that I had the layers right and in fact returned home once (needed an extra layer on my head and you know, mittens are still a good idea at 40).  But I was pretty rapidly outside the radius of winter time walking distance and found myself revisiting old friends.

At least today I had the right bicycle for the small amount of cycle crossing necessary to actually pose the bicycle with the big bronze bovines.  Name that literary device.

I was going to head back over towards the Library but I was in the neighborhood and TOPWLH and I had had a recent conversation about the disappearing piles of snow in our front yard where she mentioned that they still might have a pile at the Fairgrounds.

It is quite a disappointment when compared to the record snow pile, was that last year?  I have a video somewhere.  But they do indeed still have a pretty big pile of snow.


There is some glass work going on at the cattle barn but really I am just proving that the high for today was still a major disappointment for anyone waiting for the average high, or even waiting for 50.

There is some work going on over there in the street in front of the DNR building, the trucks of the workers say plumbing and heating.  I have no idea what the men are doing but I do notice that they had to cut down three or four of those really nice large red pines next to old fire tower. 

So there you go, a ride report including bicycle content and I used to have a job content.

I rode for about an hour and a half.  My walks over the winter were usually about an hour and ended up being three miles.  You can get quite a bit farther by adding a half hour and a bicycle.

I was tired when I got home, a really good familiar feeling tired.  That bicycle, what a wonderful thing.  Once again it occurs to me that that thing will probably save my life, at least for a while longer.

Bicycle report

Traditional DST begins THIS Sunday.  I have been watching the forecast and the size of the diminishing snow pack and thought that Saturday (tomorrow) was a likely date for the season debut.  The temperatures are predicted to reach the average for the date (low 50s).  The nearby streets as observed on my playing outside activities seemed mostly dry.  Yup, most definitely Saturday.

Well, maybe.

At this moment it is snowing.

I do have some new sunglasses.

No other bicycling news to report at this time.