Sprinkled on

I was getting ready to self congratulate for not having had any flat tires when suddenly I had to repair the Guest Rider's tire.  Still, that didn't seem that bad.  Today I had one of my own.

It was the best kind of flat tire though, something punctured the tire yesterday but only a slow leak.  I got home without noticing but when I went out today the slow leak had translated into completely flat.  Only on the bottom of course, but completely flat.

I had already delayed the start because of really threatening looking skies and radar weather all morning.  Stopping to fix the tire set me back even more.

If I had gotten started on time I almost certainly could have avoided this.

But I waited in the garage for long enough to eat a banana and there wasn't any more.

I rode some more and within about a mile of home discovered some pavement that was completely wet, so wet that I turned back.

I turn back for lots of pavement conditions, wet doesn't occur very often.

The season of uncertainty continues.  But July was good for the most part, lots of miles, I feel pretty fit, I feel pretty good.

Another day, another man, another machine

The current front runner for replacement tree is the eastern white pine.  It is an attractive tree with a softer green than the Norway pine.  When planted in plantations it stretches for the sky and gradually loses its lower branches.  We have seen several examples around and about here where the tree is a single planting and forms a symmetrical and attractive tree.

According to Wikipedia the tree is the Iroquois nation tree of peace.  Native Americans (both the Iroquois and the Anishinabe) used the tree for medicinal purposes and also as a source of food.  The Iroquois used a pounding of the inner bark as an emergency source of starch when starvation threatened, apparently the Anishinabe stewed the young cones with meat producing something described as sweet and not pitchy.  The pine needles contain five times the amount of vitamin C as lemons (by weight) and apparently can be used to brew an herbal tea.  

That is only the current front runner though, who knows?  It seems possible that we might at some point investigate the tea but probably not the emergency starch use.

Another man showed up today with a machine I had never seen in action before.  One of the primary benefits of having no actual job is that you can stand around your front yard and watch machines that in your previous life you had only seen the results of their work but now you can watch them actually in the process.

Go ahead and replace you with I at every usage in that last sentence.

I got to stand around and watch it work.

I believe it was Larry the stump grinder but that seems too easy, can every workman actually be named Larry?

We eventually got out to ride.  This only happens once every thousand miles so I tried to get a picture yet again.

The focus is better than usual but I somehow got a glare obscuring that key first number.  Today was the eighth time I have passed a thousand mile milestone.  To recount, three bicycles all with at least eight thousand miles, total mileage for the three bicycles currently more than 38,000 miles.

I had to do most of the ride alone because within about four tenths of a mile of home the GRider experienced her FIRST FLAT TIRE EVER.

It comes to every single bicyclist sooner or later.

She walked the bicycle home, we decided that there wasn't time to fix the flat and for her to still have enough time before work (a job?) to finish the ride.  I didn't get it all done before she got home but by shortly after dinner she is again operational.  I found the hole in the tube and easily cross referenced it to a piercing of the outer tire but found no physical remnant of whatever it was that caused the flat.

So tomorrow she will be riding around for the first time ever with a patch on her inner tube.

Do I feel any pressure?

Of course I do.

Soliciting

Anyone who has an opinion is welcome, even requested to express it.

I walked around the neighborhood a bit this afternoon (after my bike ride) and got some photos of trees that are competing successfully within a few hundred feet of where the old tree was (and quite close to where the new one will be).

That root sticking out of the ground didn't used to be visible.  The tree didn't go down but it WAS quite severely yanked to the side.

This is a blue spruce in the yard across the street.

We now think that ours had cytospora canker, replanting the same tree in the same spot doesn't seem prudent.

Halfway down the block there is this handsome white spruce.

I am fairly confident that it is a spruce and not a balsam fir, which it very much resembles.  Green cones was the decider for me indicating spruce not fir.

Down at the end of the block is a Norway pine.

 And just across the back yard from us is a white pine.

I learned to identify Norway from white from my grandfather although perhaps not directly.  He may have taught my older brother who later taught me.  At least that's the way he remembers it.

*sigh*  Everyone has their own personal version of history but I suspect he is correct about this story.  That does not however mean that that is the version I will always tell.  NNTRAGSJFTSOTT.

Probably pronounced double N trags J foot sot.

A new one, but probably too long to be useful very often.

Norway or red pine has clusters of needles in twos.  White pine has clusters of needles in fives.  White has five letters, five needles, white pine.  Norway is also known as red pine, smaller number of letters in red, smaller number of needles in the cluster.

Did I get that right?

I currently am taking tree recommendations mostly from the University of Minnesota Extension service.  They have a PDF of trees recommended for where I live.

On the subject of hemlocks, the service  says they are for limited use where I live as the tree requires a site protected from winds, full sun exposure, and well-drained soils.  Our soil is NOT well drained and the tree we want out in the front yard is going to be expected to provide some protection for us from the wind, not protection from us against the wind.

Yesterday featured a record for since we have been keeping records here of the lowest ever high temperature for the day.

And most of the time it was raining.

I wore a jacket today but at least I got to ride.

More storm damage

70 percent chance of rain and skies that looked and felt like that percentage might be a trifle low kept me off my bicycle today.  It's OK, everyone needs a rest day from time to time.

I was home and got this photo of the tree in front of our house.

That's the next to last one ever.

It was planted WAY too close to the house and the bottom layers of the tree just can't make it from where they are.  The bottom branches have been dying for years.  It doesn't really look way healthy anyway.

But I hate cutting down trees, they take so long to grow.

The storm changed our collective opinion on that.

We had a man out this spring to trim back the parts of the branches that were touching the house on the general belief that spruce tree to shingle contact isn't ever going to be helpful for shingle life.

After the big wind the tree was touching the house again.  It used to be pretty much straight up and down, which is, of course, the way trees generally grow.

The tree is now at a fairly distinct angle off the perpendicular and is definitely touching the shingles.

I was having some second thoughts right up until the moment when the men attached the rope to the upper levels of the tree and pulled on it to make sure that when the actions of the man with the chainsaw at the base of the tree began to take effect that the tree would fall away from the house.  The tree wobbled back and forth like a drunken sailor, very clearly no longer firmly moored to the ground which has been its firm base all these many years.

The tree had outlived its useful life and just in case we weren't going to notice, the big wind detached it from the ground.  As of this moment there is a stump out there.

Stump grinder coming next week, fall is a good time to plant trees anyway.

20C

Some will recognize that one of my early season rules is that I will not ride without full leg covering until the temperature reaches 20C.

Today I had to sit around for about an hour after my preferred starting time (until nearly 1:30) because the reported temperature outside had not reached 20C and because when I walked out onto the driveway to gauge conditions it felt just too dang cool.

Is it still July?

I didn't want to miss today as tomorrow's forecast is for thunderstorms.

Even so, I had pretty much decided to bag it for today and come back again for a try tomorrow when without much in the way of warning the heavy layer of clouds parted and the sun came out.

I hustled out and participated after all even though that late a start throws a wrench into my otherwise carefully scripted schedule.  The sun stayed out for a bit over an hour.

It was fine.

It was maybe even pretty nice.

Is it still July?

All things considered I stayed within the longer loops from home.  The wind changed directions while I was out which forced me to turn back from a direction I was having fun with but as seems always to be the case when the weather is iffy I ended up doing a lap around the Fairgrounds.

This is on the corner kitty corner from the DNR building and just in front of the big yellow slide.

It is yet another example of how the Fair continues to change from the farmer's exposition that I remember from years past to a commercial eating festival.

The church dining halls which offered full meals are gradually falling by the wayside and in their place the rising powers are local restaurants.  Mancini's is a popular local eatery (famous for their steaks).  They knocked down something less permanent at that corner and what is going up looks like it will be a rival to O"Gara's (another popular local eatery) for the partial meal (and a beer to go with it) crowd.

I don't know, it's all good with me I suppose except I lament the loss of those old style church dining halls.

Only two left.

As the photo shows the sun WAS out for a while.  It ended up being warm enough and it was a nice day to be outside for a couple of hours on my bicycle.

Pretty much like lots and lots of days.

Problem with cheap cameras and autofocus

Today I found out where all of the big white birds are hanging out.

Joe Valentinetti, the guy who taught the photography course I once took, introduced me to the concept of "interfere with the image".  By which he meant put something in front of the primary image.  It adds important depth to any photograph.

When you do that with a cheap pocket camera the autofocus gives a really sharp edge to the leaves in the foreground and kinda blurs out the big white birds.

I got even closer and stood on top of a bench but this time the camera went for the grass.

Even so, it was pretty extraordinary.  I haven't seen that many of those big white birds together ever before, not even in Florida.

With that many together it is easy to pick out which of the noises which might not otherwise be associated with the birds is actually the birdcall.

They sorta croak, somewhere between a quack and a groan.

But finally I was too close and ended up disturbing the wildlife.  And thereby getting the best photo of the birds.

This is what you get when you ride around with a cheap camera in the pocket of your bicycle jersey.  There is plenty of good but sometimes you get the short end.

The big white birds are congregating en masse at Grass Lake.  The lake is deep enough this year to support an entire rookery.  That swamp down there that they were in when I found them has always been dry every other time I have been there, a measure of how high the water is in that watershed, a swamp on what has previously been dry land.  In the first photo you can see a little bit of the trail underpass over the road.  That's the route I usually follow when I am on this bit of pavement but the underpass is currently a victim of the same high water that created that swamp.  There is still, after more than two weeks since the last big storm, about two feet of water in that little tunnel.

Nice ride, 70s, sunny, light winds, maybe just a tiny bit of a hint of fall in the air.  Too early for that, but a very nice day.

Another Finnegan day

The forecast said 30 percent chance.  It hasn't actually yet but during the time I was out it was off again on again mostly on again cloud cover.  For way more than 30 percent of the time rain seemed imminent, but eventually precipitation was limited to two separate occasions of feeling a drop.

The point of all of that is that an assessment of whether I rode or not could easily if ungrammatically be I gone again.

Particularly early in the ride the clouds were on again leaving only a hint of where the sun might be as it sorta but not really casts a shadow over the cows.

Finally at the very end of the ride it was mostly off again which seems a little out of sync as the picture I got at the end was of my favorite rain garden.  Possibly a rain garden should have at least the hint of rain somewhere in the photo.

This time it looks like conditions were sunny and bright.

There is lots going on in the garden right now but no appearance yet of the signature cardinal flowers.

I've got a new problem related to being past my prime.

I have at long last joined the ranks of sun screeners.  I mean, after all, I am out there most often in pretty much the middle of the day when the sun is strongest.  Some days it seems like the lathering up lasts longer than the actual time I am out riding but sun screen I now do do.

Several times recently I have come back from my ride, sat around for a while doing nothing much in particular and then without any warning that I am aware of my eyes start to burn.

The solution?  When I get back from riding I have an orange after which I need to wash my hands.  While I am at it I also wash my face.  Clean face, no sunscreen, eyes no longer burning.

This never happened before any time ever in my life.

Something new.

Spectacular day in Paris

By which of course I mean the weather was superior and the city looked FABULOUS.

They've definitely got problems though.  As alluded to by I believe Bobke during the stage it is imperative that the sport reach a point where the public can believe that the race is being ridden by riders who are clean.  Failure to deliver a product that the public can believe in will be fatal to even as great a spectacle as le Tour de France.

Today they do not have the product that they need to survive.

Just my opinion I could be wrong.

I watched the TV program only until they showed the slow motion replay of the finish and then I clicked off and went out to ride for myself.  I must admit that I do not lament the apparent end of the Age of Cav which I believe has been definitively Kittel-ed.  And also totally Sagan-ed, Cav was simply not even a minor annoyance to the winner of the green jersey competition, the Manx Missile never had a chance.  I was never that big a fan of Cavendish, I don't know why.  Sometimes it is hard to root for someone who is so overwhelmingly superior to the competition.

Are both of these huge sprinting dudes German?  Greipel must be seeing as he is wearing the jersey of the German national champion, but if Kittel is also German how in the world did Greipel ever beat him for the national championship?

There's that phrase again, how in the world?

So I didn't see the post race stuff and will now have to for the first time of the entire tour sit down and watch what that whole NBCSN crew refers to as "the prime time show" to see the fireworks etc.

Here it rained overnight, for a while there I wasn't actually sure I was going to get to ride.  But by about the time the race reached Paris and began the first circuit of the Champs-Élysées it was apparent to me that I would have time to ride if I left immediately after the actual end of the race.

It was in the 70s, sunny, light winds, plenty dry by 2:30pm, a glorious day for a ride.

It was a spectacular day in the northern suburbs.

By which of course I mean that the weather was superior and the riding route looked FABULOUS.

Today at Lake Vadnais there was time to pause and enjoy the spectacular view.

I rode pretty much the same route as the GRider and I rode yesterday except today I rode my normal little detours off the most direct route.  I skipped those yesterday in deference to her conditioning (which incidentally is quite good considering, she finished without problem).  Yesterday after she finished I had to ride a nearby neighborhood loop to get the mileage I wanted.  Today the expanded route was totally satisfactory, I arrived in the within a half mile of home neighborhood almost exactly on the pace for the mileage I wanted.

So it was a spectacular day, both here and there.

Better

The local newspaper called it the return of "summer weather" as opposed to what we have had recently, "tropical weather".

It has been nice the past couple of days although windy yesterday.  Today was just mostly very pleasant.

And the corn is better too.

We rode out to Lake Vadnais, an excursion probably too far for the under trained Guest Rider.  It was a mostly very nice day except for a few brief moments when it seemed possible that the 10 percent chance was going to produce rain.  Those moments pretty much occurred when we were WAY too far from home.

We didn't spend much time at the lake, we didn't even stop for a picture.  We got home without getting wet and several hours later it hasn't rained.

But getting home seemed like a really good idea.

It was her first view of the new pavement and other improvements at those lakes out there.

We had fun.

Mid-season

July 16 is the exact middle day of the middle month of the seven month Minnesota bicycling season.  I watched the Tour de France this morning.  The coverage featured some footage of Froomie after the completion of the Mont Ventoux stage in apparent distress.  My comment on that is that PEDs aren't supposed to make it easy, they only make it possible.  Even if Froome is clean how do you explain his new second best guy on all of the climbs Porte?

It was too late by the time the stage was over to get an early start.  A mid-day ride seemed a little foolhardy considering that the National Weather Service issued a Heat Advisory, a keep the children and old people indoors suggestion.

It seemed vaguely appropriate that in a season dominated in the first half by conditions in which riding was not possible that the mid point should be just another such day among the many.

But I wanted SOME exercise so I was going to go for a walk anyway, walking can be done slowly and mostly in the shade.  I did that the last time it was too hot and I thought I could do it again.

After due consideration I decided that being outside walking for an hour was at least as hard and probably harder than being outside riding a bicycle for an hour.  The whole issue with my usual bicycle ride is that I ride for two hours.  I decided to try a one hour ride.

My plan was to take a loop downhill and around and over to the cattle barn, and then home.  I figured that for about 12 miles.  Here's the cattle barn.

And, of course, that's not even counting the humidity, dew point in the 70s.

So the mid-season has come and gone and I am 600 or so miles behind the pace to reach the mileage goal that last winter I thought would be trying to attain.  In fact, I am STILL 100 or so miles behind the pace to reach the new goal.

But I rode today.

TOPWLH asked me how it was.  I responded truthfully that most of the time it was unbearable with the occasional brutally punishing.

Rest day

In the Tour de France that is. If you cheat that outrageously you need to take a day off every now and again. In related news American national sprint champion Tyson Gay and FOUR Jamaican sprinters have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Lance ALWAYS said he was innocent and clean.  Is anyone going to be surprised by the eventual positive test for Usain Bolt?  Not me.

Here is a view of our backyard this morning after Bastille Day.

That's pretty early morning making for a nice sun angle on the lantern that just isn't going to be available any time later in the day.  And, of course, that paper lantern isn't going to last long out there in the elements.

It's a paper lantern.  It isn't supposed to last very long.

It wasn't a rest day for us.  The day was already hot and muggy by 9:30AM which really meant mostly that it was going to be a lot worse later.  We got out the door shortly before 10.

A south wind and a desire to ride as much as possible in the shade led us down into the big city, across the Marshall Avenue bridge and south to the Falls.  A Monday late morning produces a considerably tamer crowd at the Falls than other crowds we have seen there recently.  The amazing amount of rain we have had AGAIN of late has produced an improbable for July torrent cascading over the limestone ledge.

 The most recent appearances of the Falls on this blog were June 19 and May 7.  In a departure from the ordinary the flow seems greater in June than in May and greater in July than in June.  It has been a strange year.

And despite everything the corn has endeavored to persevere.

She complained that it was still wet in there.

Doesn't that look like my car going down the street?

It was too hot, it was too humid, it was hard.

It was great.

14th of July

Most Americans don't usually say Independence Day, we mostly just go with 4th of July.  Something similar is going on in France, according to Wikipedia, Bastille Day is the name given in English speaking countries to the French National Day, what the French usually refer to as Quatorze Juillet.

We had a very nice Bastille Day dinner and celebration last night.  We were not required to provide anything at all and its a good thing because anything we would have brought would not have been up to the standards of what was provided.

One thing we did do though was show up with a fire work.  The basement clean up turned up three "Chinese lanterns" purchased several years ago which had been forgotten about.  These lanterns are my personal favorite and we brought one along.  It spun around really well and provided most excellent shooting sparks but failed to "drop" at the end of the cycle.

I have shot off a bunch of these things over the years and I had experienced this failure one other time.

We had two more and today was the actual 14th of July so we tried again.

There is a string in the middle of the firework which when the whole thing goes off properly is burned through by the fire and sparks thing, at the end it is supposed to drop.

Today it dropped, I was, like totally prepared this time, I took a video.

Two posts in one day.

Quatorze Juillet

I was thinking about going yesterday when a guy with tools called me up and proclaimed that he could easily deal with my license plate bolt issue.

It was too muggy anyway and it sure felt like rain.  I invited GWT to come on down and have at it.

Well, he has REAL tools and pretty conclusively demonstrated how to undo frozen with rust license plate bolts.  I watched and I feel pretty confident that I could do it myself if need be.  Except for one pretty major thing.

I don't have the tools.

So, merci beaucoup et chapeau to GWT.  Thank you very much and a tip of the hat.

This morning I and the other viewer of the Tour de France who lives here watched that abomination of the guy on drugs raising his cadence by about a third while riding up what Bobke says is the hardest climb in bicycling.  TOVOTTDFWLH will be able to no doubt confirm that I pretty much immediately proclaimed that the spectacle was "ridiculous".

Spectacularly unbelievable.

After that I felt like riding myself.  I tried to get an early start but it was still noonish when I reached the door and it already felt pretty warm and on its way to being pretty muggy.  It turned out OK though as there was enough breeze to keep the humidity from getting completely out of control and the miracle of evaporative cooling mostly kept me from overheating.

There was one problem, however.  Apparently when I skip a day of bicycling I instantly and completely forget the routine.

I was lucky today in following part of the routine.  The part that I followed is when the weather is iffy I often take a loop near home to kinda assess the conditions.  With a mostly south wind I was bent on riding as much as possible east and west so I started off with a loop downhill towards the west.  It was hot, it was muggy but I was finding it tolerable when I followed another part of my usual routine by at the 5 mile mark of the ride of reaching down for a water bottle.  I keep from forgetting to drink by drinking at every 5 mile mark of the ride.  Drinking is extremely important, particularly when conditions are contributing to possible rapid dehydration.

Here's what I found.

The good thing about riding a loop early in the ride is the 5 mile mark of the ride occurs within only a couple of miles by the shortest possible route of my house.  I was home by less than 8 miles and soon enough started out again.

Today's camera gear note:  For the first photo I was apparently disoriented enough already to fail to keep the camera wrist strap out of the shot.

Today's bicycle clothing note:  Who doesn't love Castelli?

Today's bicycle gear note:  The first photo was on an uphill and slightly into the wind.  Small ring.  Second photo was 100 feet from my garage.  Big ring.

Additional note:  I have noticed very many riders in le Tour this year riding with Speedplay pedals.

Today's elitist bicyclist snob note:  No, I do not shave my legs.

So I made it home OK.

This beanie baby thing continues to heat up.

Variations in color are a big deal.  Variable colors were issued in very limited quantities for the most part and any variation contributes significantly to value.

The two cats on the left are Nip.  Nip has three variations in the standard form, all pretty similar to the brown one there.  One has a brown face, one has white paws.  The most valuable is the brown face but also very valuable (according to my book) is the white face brown paw version.

I have been scouring the net but have not yet located any reference at all to the next cat who is very clearly Nip but is somehow black.  No references.

The next one is Cubbie, previously pictured.

Then there's Patti and Inch.  Inch has the less valuable yarn antennae, the valuable version has felt.  Patti was mentioned previously as being possibly valuable depending upon whether she was raspberry or fuchsia.

Well, I found a website that says one way to determine Patti's color is to compare her to the final tail segment of Inch.  I just happen to have Inch.  Inch's tail is fuchsia.  If Patti's color doesn't match the color of that tail segment she is the very, very much more rare and therefore valuable raspberry.  In case it isn't clear from the photograph, that is NOT a match.

Raspberry.

We never intended to be beanie baby collectors.  But when they first appeared on the market TOPWLH bought quite a few of them for our beloved dafter to play with.  Many of the toys the girl did, in fact, play with.  After approximately the 3rd generation of toys the collectors market suddenly appeared resulting in a large increase in number of toys produced and collected.

By then we were pretty much (and totally accidentally) out of the market.  The toys we have are mostly pretty old and relatively rare.

That's our entire collection, a photograph I took when originally we thought we might put the whole collection on Chad's list (or something similar) and ask for $20 or $30.

Not anymore.

Chad gets a new number

At least Chad COULD get a new number if I can ever figure out a way to get the old number off.  I don't know what exactly the rotation is but every few years new license plates are issued.  I went over to the license bureau and only while at the counter discovered that the rotation is complete for the car formerly known as Chad.

Those license plate bolts look awfully rusty though.  So far I can't budge them even a teensy tiny bit.  Rusted hard, absolutely rock hard.

But I went out to the auto parts store this afternoon and got some stuff which has a theoretical chance of loosening the bolts.  The truth is though that the auto parts guy said I would probably have to have them drilled out.

There is a serious flaw here somewhere.  The car is going to last long enough to require new license plates but the license plate attachment system isn't going to be functioning at the moment when the new plates need to be attached.

Stay tuned.

TOPWLH said she wished she could have gone on yesterday's ride.  She was guest riding today, the wind conditions were similar to yesterday, we took most of the same ride.  Here she is posed in front of the Emily tree.

We turned back at Summit instead of Highland Parkway, knocking several miles off the ride distance.

It turns out that distance wasn't the biggest problem today.  Mostly today it was TOO HOT.

And TOO WINDY.

We rode past Merriam Park on the way home.  I had not been past this park since the big storm.  Merriam Park is a grassy knoll with a nice stand of aged oaks.  As of today it has two fewer oaks.

This wreckage is striking because all of the other trees we have seen come down came down as a result of the ground being saturated.  The trees were all blown over root ball included.  These two large oak trees were broken off a fairly large distance above the ground.

Stuff goes on here, the washer and dryer got maintenance today, the generator guy came out and made a preliminary assessment of what we need, and I bought a beanie baby book.  We have quite a few beanie babies as a result of having had a child.  She doesn't want them, they were in storage in the basement, the recent basement issues has resulted in an assessment of every thing formerly in the basement.

We were going to perhaps throw them away, or perhaps give them to Goodwill.  Today I bought a beanie baby book.

The dog on the left is named Spot.  He has his "tush tag" but is missing his ear tag.  If he had the ear tag he would stand a chance of being worth about $900.  With the missing ear tag the value is reduced by at least half.

Still, a few bucks for Spot would certainly pay for the $14 beanie baby book.

The brown bear is Cubbie.  The book spends a lot of time on identifying the "generation" of the toys based on the characteristics of the "tush tag" and the "ear tag".  Cubbie seems to fit all of the characteristics of a "2nd generation" beanie baby.  A 2nd generation Cubbie is listed by the book as having a value of $300.

We have 13 beanies with the crucial ear tag, most are worth less than $10.  We have another 10 or so beanies without the tag, Spottie is the most valuable.  But we also have Patti who depending on her color could have been worth $2,800 with the tag, still quite a bit without.  It all depends on whether the color we have is "raspberry" or "fuchsia".

Of course, this is all very speculative at this point.  They will probably end up being worth little or nothing at all.  But, we were going to give them away, instead we will be looking into finding a professional appraisal.

So that was fun.

Macalester Street

I took an unusual route today, spurred to do so by a wind which I couldn't decide whether it was SE or SW.  I knew I was riding south but the whole east west orientation kept changing.  I rode into the big city on Lexington as opposed to my usual Raymond.  I then rode past the Emily tree and on down to Aldine, then north across University and the freeway.  I found my way back over to Aldine but it got complicated after that as Aldine turned quickly into a one way against me at the crossing of Selby.

I can stomach a certain amount of salmoning but the wrong way on a one way street?  Doesn't seem like a good idea.

Speaking of which I experienced something quite new in salmoning shortly after crossing the new multi-use bridge over the tracks on Lexington.  I turned down Hubbard, I think, and was met by a couple of teenagers, one male, one female.  They were both riding next to the curb but the two of them had each selected a different curb.  The young female person (who was the one salmoning) seemed to be unaware of me until the last minute.  When she noticed me she shot a look of disdain and veered over to where her boyfriend or brother was riding.  I glanced at him but couldn't read anything in particular into his look.

At the crossing of Selby I found my way over to Pierce Street and then on down to Cambridge when Pierce ends at the crossing of Summit.  Cambridge ends at Saint Clair and I found myself on Davern Street.  Davern is a through street and eventually I decided the shade was better on Macalester Street, one more block to the east.

The last time I was over there was last year some time and nearly every street was under construction.  What this means a year later is that there was a bunch of new pavement making for pleasant riding conditions.

I circumnavigated Mattocks Park in there somewhere.   Long ago there was a school there (Mattocks School would be a good guess).  The good folks in that neighborhood seem to be showing off just a tiny bit with this stop sign post.

I bet you have to get special permission to do that.

Up closer it brags about the fact that it is a flower, not just a simple post.

Seems to me with all the effort put into the post that they could maybe, just maybe put a little effort into the grass.

I cheated, this is actually back over on Davern but for most of the time I have been aware of Carbone's (since about 1965) this is what Carbone's was, the, for me, original shop on Randolph.

I got all the way to Highland Parkway but at that point I had passed out of the zone of last year's construction and unexpectedly entered the zone of this year's street patching.

As complained about previously, the Saint Paul patching crews use an extremely oil rich patching material.  You can get stuff on your tires.

I turned back.

This is the corner of Macalester Street and Stanford Avenue.

They must be feeling pretty hoity toity there, I think this roundabout is just showing off.  There certainly aren't enough cars there to justify anything other than a meeting of two extremely low traffic streets.  But it's OK, if they want a roundabout, why shouldn't they have one?

I rode back through the campus, this is extremely picturesque Kirk Hall Commons.

I lived there on the right during the 66-67 academic year.  It never looked as nice any single day of that span as it looked today.

Of course, that was the academic year, not the summertime.

Extremely nice day, very nice ride.

Foibles

Even before the current round of problems I often opined that insurance companies are in the business of NOT paying claims.

This one looks like a legitimate claim to me.

Our contractor counted 18 shingles lost and said usually you need 20 to have a claim.  He further said that since our shingles have been discontinued and that a color match was not available that insurance procedure as HE has experienced over a lifetime of roofing is that no color match means a complete new roof.

The adjuster counted 33 shingles lost and said that you need 28 to have a claim.  He said at this point our claim does not reach the level of our deductible but that if a color match is not available they may offer to pay for a reshingling of THAT SLOPE.

Our contractor claims to never have heard of this concept of "slope".

Insurance companies are in the business of NOT paying claims.

On the other hand, the same guy who said "no" on the roof took this piece of paper, went out to his truck/office and turned it into half of the maximum amount that we could claim under that particular provision of our policy, enabling us to claim the maximum.

We just kinda scratched it out.  I was thinking we would have to provide some estimate of values but the guy just took this and came back with about $3K.

Heavy rain this morning but dry by noon.  The skies remained threatening throughout but a ride around and around within sprinting distance of home was accomplished.  Way, WAY better than nothing.

Making it manageable

Yesterday was way, way too hot for bicycling at the time of day when I usually ride.  Daily (or at least nearly daily) exercise is important to me so I decided that I could still walk even in yesterday's midday sauna.

Well.

I walked for about an hour at Miller speed (a casual saunter unrelated to the ruthlessly relentless pace known as Elvecrog speed).  Even just moseying along and making route decisions based on the amount of shade visible down each block I arrived home in a full on sweat.

Unmanageable.

Today that bicycle race going on in France started an hour early due to their having to fly from where they were today to where they will spend the "rest" day tomorrow.  They also therefore finished an hour early.  It was 9:30AM, it wasn't horrible (yet), it seemed like it would be manageable.

It was.

But I am glad I was not planning on attending this event at Como Park's McMurray Fields.  Not enough shade, a huge crowd, steamy conditions, yup, definitely not an event for me.

I was on my way home by the time I got this photo, only about 4 miles to go.

That doesn't seem that bad, it seems manageable.  Did I mention that the dew point was nearly 70?

Here is our new plan to make storage in the new basement much more manageable than the old system which has recently caused us so much grief.

Everything in plastic and up off the floor.

The insurance adjuster was here yesterday and we got that part of the recovery under way.  He counted the number of shingles lost, measured the roof and offered us not a thing.  But this is only the first step, we are not yet completely discouraged.

Stay tuned.

Worst is behind us

TOPWLH had cat feeding duties today and expressed a desire to ride her bicycle over to the cats' residence.  She is free to now admit that attempting this ride on her second outing of the year was a tad too ambitious.  I myself found it to be a hard ride, too windy on the outbound leg.

But we got our corn on the 4th of July photo.

The corn got off to a horrible start.  Lots of water and long days are good for corn though and I am pleased to note that our local corn field has produced plants that are almost waist high as of today.

Friday evening last the big storm blew through where we live.  We have dodged lots of them but this one nailed us big time, a major hit.

The power went off in the early evening.  Daylight brought this view of our deck.

We also lost some shingles but the exterior damage was minor, especially considering what happened around us.

This is our next door neighbor.

Up at the end of the street this one blocked about half of our street.  South from this about a half block another similar event blocked half of Fairview, the main street.

The new drainage facility functioned as designed.  It did NOT keep the street from flooding but it kept the flooding at a lower level.  This is what they told us would happen.  Other neighborhoods in our watershed need similar projects before the drainage will occur rapidly enough to keep us from having, as we did this time, about a foot of water over the street in the low spot down at the middle of the block.

Yes, there was a time there when we were marooned.

By morning the new hole was pretty much empty except for this.  I entertained several of my neighbors as we walked about viewing the damage by telling them I had a dead seal in the hole in the ground next to my house.

The dead seal was amusing only briefly.  Problems at the neighbors house were compounded by the fact that that tree took down the power line from the pole in back to their house.  They were the only customer with an outage as a result of that particular event.  That meant that they were at the back of the line to get reconnected and eventually went almost four days without power.

Ours came on after about 15 hours, too late to save the basement.

But the worst is now behind us, the bad things still ahead mostly involve negotiating with the insurance and writing of large checks to get us back to our comfort zone.

We probably need a new roof, we are going to acquire a back up natural gas generator, the kind that starts automatically upon the interruption of electrical service.  We are determined that this can never happen again on our watch.

That check promises to be large.

Bicycling has been a bit sporadic but I have gotten out.  I ride this path through Grass Lake with some regularity during the week when people on foot are not very numerous.

This day I had to lift my bicycle over the fallen trees to complete the ride.

But the worst is behind us, today I felt enough like blogging to try it again.  We shall see how it goes going forward.  The insurance adjuster is supposed to call within 3 business days to set up an appointment.  The generator guy will come out to give me an estimate on Thursday.

Stay tuned.