Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Still plugging along

Which is actually significant.  According to my bike log last season's final ride occurred on October 24.

I did not ride on the 24th this year, hockey.  I did ride on the 25th and the 27th though.  So in that one respect the season is much more successful than last year.  Regrettably, in actual miles ridden I still have some work to do.

*sigh*

Because I may be out later than last year but all signs indicate that it won't be long now.  Here is an unmistakable harbinger of the dark season, the hockey boards are up at Langford Park.
That scene is just around the corner from Dead Man's Curve so I took a check in on contruction progress over there.  It appears to be rideable although I don't believe I would try to ride it with all of those workmen present.  They have a job to do after all and it isn't in their conditions of employment to have to dodge around geezer bicyclists while carrying out their tasks.
But the first layer of asphalt has been laid, there no longer is any bare dirt.

They are working on the intersection of Raymond and Energy Park Drive.  We are little concerned that once the intersection is complete construction may continue on down toward the actual double overpass with double turn.  Certainly the pavement down there is a mess but we mostly expect that this is going to be about it for this paving season.  The mess under the overpass will probably be done next year.

Lateness of season didn't stop these guys though.  There used to be large mature trees all the way down the block there in front of the apartment buildings on the right and at the end of the street where now all you can see is a dirt patch.
The new sidewalk is the probable cause of the demise of the mostly cottonwoods along there.  Down at the end there is another leg of new sidewalk coming in along the street leading off to the left.

Very overcast, a little bit too windy, CB 52.

All in all, a pretty nice day to be riding three days after the anniversary of the end of last year's season.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Back to the future day

Actually it is in the sequel, Back to the Future II where all the references to October 21, 2015 occur.

Just sayin'

When I had guest riders (plural form includes lower case) I promised that before the season was over this would be one of the prettiest trees in the woods.
Today was my first time back to that location since that day and this maple is starting to put on a show.

The scuttlebutt circulated by the tourism folks was that the colors this year might be the most spectacular in years, due, they said, to ample rainfall.

Well, timing is everything.

The maples are coming into their own now and they promise to be pretty spectacular.  But to me it looks like we are already way past peak.  All of the yellows are gone, those trees are bare.  You can see several of those in the above picture.

There is also an oak just frame right of the feature tree that while certainly red, is a duller red than is often the case.

C+.

I have seen three wooly bears so far this year but missed for various reasons photographing the first two.  Here is number three, photographed yesterday.
This one appeared in the driveway right outside my garage.  There is a problem, however.  There was a wooly bear in the exact same spot today.

Two possibilities of course.  Coincidence is one, the other is that's a former caterpillar never to ever become an Isabella Tiger Moth.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Out and about

Funny how a day that a couple of weeks ago probably would have seemed a little too chilly for a ride seemed just right today.

Sunny but windy, 59 at the Cattle Barn.

The Cattle Barn is relevant here today as the Beef Expo is winding up.  Friday afternoon a cow escaped and eventually police had to euthanize the beast.  Not making it up.

The TV coverage is precious.

Expect plenty more of these before I am done for the season.
Car2Go for perspective.

Here's something I had not noticed. There used to be a pretty pricey bicycle shop here.
That was World Cycling Productions.  When I first visited there several years ago the show room featured about 35 Colnago frames.

They used to have a warehouse sale in late spring, I have bought plenty of stuff there.

But not any more.

To get there I had to ride through DeadMan's Curve.
The road is still officially closed but I am able to report that it is now bicycle passable.  The pavement at both ends of the bridge is in, the sidewalks have been replaced.  It is still necessary to ride across a 30 or so foot wide patch of dirt but the dirt is hard packed, totally doable, even on a road bike.

With that road reopened it now becomes possible again to ride to the big city, perhaps even over to the Falls.  Which we may well do tomorrow when temperature predictions indicate a return to early September like temperatures.  You know, the kind where you do NOT have to wear long pants and full finger gloves in order to ride.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

First frost

I wasn't up even particularly early this morning but I was up in time to get a photograph of frost on the grass, first time this fall.
So that's another first for this year now checked off, something we no longer have to wait for.  The atmosphere has been cold enough to form ice crystals.

*sigh*

For anyone keeping track that is DSC_0002, the second exposure on the new camera.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Hiatus

That's the longest I have gone without posting since I started posting, I think.  Maybe not but in any case it feels like it has been a long time.

I wasn't posting but I did do some riding.  It is only October, October is a full month of the 7 month riding season.  November is speculative but if you ride (and I do) then you ride in October.

Particularly in early October when we had some spectacularly nice days.

I have a bunch of photos.  I am just going to post them with probably mostly pretty brief comments and that is going to be it for now.  I think I may now be resuming the regular routine.

So here we go.

This one is early in the hiatus but it is still almost a month after the end of the Fair.  This POS has been locked to that street sign since the Fair ended.
The working hypotheses from this end of OUR STREET is that some citizen rode that bicycle to the Fair, but for whatever reason, accepted a ride home from a friend and now cannot remember where that damn bicycle is.

It's OK, losing that particular bicycle is no particular loss.

A couple of day later I got this one actually inside the Fairgrounds.
This is a different story.  Not locked, just leaned up against the post.

Someone stole that bicycle and just abandoned it when it was no longer useful.

I note that this one is also a Schwinn.  This one however, is an old school Chicago Schwinn, not really a very nice bicycle by modern standards but a nice bike in its day.  That other one above has never ever for even a second of its existence been anything other than a POS.

Lots of talk around here lately about oil trains.  Here is an oil train crossing 694 in Shoreview.
I did not attempt to count the cars but it was a big train, probably at least 100 cars.  It is interesting to me because the major concern as expressed in the newspapers is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (forever hereafter in this blog BNSF) trains coming into the metro area from the northwest.

Here is a Great Northern digression, when I worked there the three giant freight trains leaving westbound each day were called by the yard crews by their destination.  There were two Willmars and a Saint Cloud leaving every evening.  And a couple of other Willmars and another Saint Cloud earlier in the day.

I several times worked the switchtender job at the Lyndale yards junction where the route was determined.  If the switch wasn't lined up correctly the Willmars would go to Saint Cloud and vice versa.

Much of the current brouhaha about oil trains in the city is because of that switching spot.  The BNSF hauls most of the oil and they are mostly using the Moorhead to Saint Cloud to Minneapolis routing.  Track maintenance this summer has caused a lot of the traffic to be switched over to a Willmar routing.  Trains coming from Willmar run through the most affluent section of Twin Cities suburbs.  Trains from Saint Cloud run through Anoka and Columbia Heights.

The point of this digression is that the tracks pictured above are Soo Line.  This isn't even the spots where people are concerned about big oil trains and yet a job with at least 100 cars ran through Shoreview that day.

So we had a visitor and she wanted to ride.  The regular GRider and I took her out on a spectacularly nice day to the nearby regional park (Como).
Pretty nice day in the park.  October 11 and short sleeves and shorts.

This is an angle towards Lake Como that I have used many times.  Every time is different.
Very nice today, I think most would agree.

I had an event in there which allowed me to buy myself a present.  I got a new camera.  Here is DSC_0001, the very first ever shot with the new equipment.
I already had a really nice camera but the old one did not do video.  It is a great camera, I could post that photo of the FT in front of our Paris apartment with Notre Dame in the background again, or any of the several Niagara Falls photos if you don't believe me, but that is a great camera.

But it doesn't do video and it appears that ability to do video is about to be important to me in a way that it has not previously been.

We had another ride on a day not as nice as the first day when we rode.  And yet in some ways it was at least as nice as the first day.  The weather wasn't quite as nice but the bicycling was spectacularly successful.

My riding companions at Lake Vadnais.
It was pretty out there that day.

Roseville is hilly.  No mountains, not making that claim.  Hilly.

And I have ridden a couple of times since.

This is within about a half a mile from home.  The corn fields are within a half a mile of home.  At this time of year there is a lot of corn on the ground after harvest.  The geese show up for the food.  And they also need water.
Name one person who might be reading this blog who doesn't love the cows.
Hiatus over.

I love my bicycle, I enjoy the photography and the writing.

Most probably, but not definitely, blogging will now resume on what was previously the normal schedule.

Further Gino saith not.