60 at the Cattle Barn

Well, that was abrupt.  Even the coolish days of mid-July had nothing to offer to compare to today's first day of fall.  60 at the Cattle Barn at about 2pm.

There hasn't been much bicycle content here for a while.  There almost was some content yesterday though.  It was about 15 degrees warmer yesterday than it was today and the usual ride time featured an outdoors that invited me to resume the season.  I got my full costume on and headed out to the garage to discover a flat front tire.

Well . . .

Particularly nasty weather.  That's part of an extremely old joke I used to tell long, long ago.

This time I went full contact, no holds barred, this has got to stop tire repair.  I removed the tube, located the tiny, tiny hole.  To do this I had to inflate the tube (it seemed to hold air just fine), and then pass the entire tube underneath the surface of the pan full of water I had drawn in the laundry tubs.  You might not be able to feel or hear the air escaping from a tube but it is nearly impossible to miss the tell tale trail of bubbles coming from underneath the water.

Now knowing where approximately on the tire the flat had occurred and considering that it was similarly enough situated on the tube to indicate that this was likely a recurrence, not a new problem, I went to defcon about 2.  I completely removed the tire from the rim.  I turned the tire inside out and started running my finger along the area where the flat HAD to be.  Soon enough, bingo, small sharp thing.  I worked on it with thumbnail and fingernail and soon enough was unable to feel anything sharp above the inside surface of the tire.

Not good enough, this is exactly where I was the last time the front tire flatted and at which time I declared the problem solved.  I couldn't feel anything but I hadn't actually seen the piece of whatever it was that had caused the flat.

I turned the tire right side out and examined the same area looking for some evidence of something on the outside.  I could find nothing.

Back to the inside I started working with my pocket knife and then eventually with GRider's tweezers to try and find something that could be pulled up to that inner surface.  Eventually I changed strategy and pushed the point of the tweezers down into the area where the sharp thing had been and at last felt something like a tiny bit of resistance.  Back on the outside I now had a protrusion.  Tweezers already at the ready I grasped and removed a 1.5mm or so piece of wire of about the size or a bit smaller than a paper staple.  A tiny, tiny piece of metal, so small as to be nearly invisible when I placed it down on the kitchen counter thinking to try to get a photograph (which proved to be outside the capabilities of my photographic equipment).

Count this as an hour well spent.

I now have a tube on my front wheel with TWO patches.  Unprecedented in my bicycling history.

Outdoors, the front passed through overnight.

Today was jacket weather.

60 at the Cattle Barn.

We know this because that's where we went, our third trip in the last week and a half or so to the State Fair.

This is one of my annual favorites, the view of the sidewalk in front of one the heavy duty greasy food establishments, in this case the Fresh French Fries stand visible in the above photo.  Keep in mind that there was heavy rain one of the final days of the Fair and that it has rained a couple of times (at least one time a hard rain) since the completion of the 12 days of fun.

So probably a lot of grease has already been washed away but that still seems to me to be a pretty impressive grease spot.

My last post includes a shot of Andy's Grille from fairly close to the same angle as this.  Life has changed at the Fairgrounds.

An example of just how radically life has changed is this picture of the intersection by the DNR building, looking uphill towards Martha's Cookies and at the end of the block the Food Building.

Our gang of three passed through there on the day that a new single day attendance record was set and any of us will attest that it was an absolute chore to work your way through the teeming mass of humanity.  The cookie place up there on the right greatly contributes to the traffic problem there.  People waiting to purchase a bucket of chocolate chip cookies are backed up 20 or 30 deep in front of the stand effectively blocking off at least half of the street.

Our collective view is that the cookies are not even that good.  We do not dispute, however, that they are popular.

So, up at the Food Building here is the location of one of our absolutely top of the list must have concessions, the Danielson and Daughters Onion Rings stand.

You can almost exactly pinpoint the location of the stand by noting the grease stains.  That corner of grease slightly left of frame center is the location of the pick up window.  You order and pay over here closer to the camera (you know, the no grease area), and then move down to that other location to receive your greasy onion rings.

We were mostly on a fact finding expedition but a once in a life time opportunity became available.  Well actually for me it was the second time I have had this opportunity so maybe . . .

Usually any opportunity to get inside the Cattle Barn occurs when the floor is covered with straw and . . . well . . . manure.  Today the clean up was nearly complete.

Wanna guess what we did next?  We rode our bicycles through the barn, exiting at the far end in front of the Swine Barn.

The temperature report at the CB was as I have said 60.  We tried to get a report from the EG or the AOWG but those message boards have not been set back to time and temperature.  Instead you get what we found today at the west end.

The next slide in the display said see you next year.

Probably true, we love the Fair.  We will probably be there again for the 12 days of fun ending September 7, 2015, Labor Day.  This year had the earliest possible Labor Day and therefore the earliest possible last day of the Fair.  Next year will be the latest possible, as I write the end of next year's Fair is still 367 days, more than a year, away.