Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Nice biked by a small person

We rode some pavement that we don't ride very often.  A south wind made us want to head out in that direction but a complete reconstruction of Raymond Avenue and the Raymond Avenue bridge OVER the railroad tracks on the other side of Deadman's Curve (where Raymond goes UNDER another set of tracks) means that there is a severe shortage of routes that get us more than about two miles south.

We crossed the tracks (under at McMurray and then over at Pierce Butler) using the MUT along Lexington.  This led us to an ash tree for which we have great affection.  The ash trees are just starting to go yellow, the Emily Tree was today starting to show some yellow against another beautiful blue sky.
That maple tree in Kathy and Larrie's yard (they don't live there anymore either) is starting to show some interesting red.

On the way home we passed through a family bicycling on the sidewalk along Hoyt.  In this case bicycling on the sidewalk is totally acceptable as the two members of the family actually on bicycles where about 6 and 4 years old respectively.  The smaller of the two, on one of those tiny kid purple bikes with training wheels remarked to her father (who was on foot) that "that's a pretty cool bike".

So I got "Nice Biked" by a four year old.

I think it is the new tires.  Green, don't you know.

On FirstLOOK I palp tires in a green colorway.

Further Gino saith not.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

More bicycle content

This actually occurred yesterday when morning showers convinced me to keep my bicycle in the garage and perform some necessary maintenance tasks.

I am halfway done, one orange tire and one green tire.
Today was the first long pants day of the fall season.  The high for the day was actually pretty close to average for the day but I started my ride at a temperature about 20 degrees F below the tempeature at which I finished my last ride two days ago.

There was also a nice fresh north wind, perfect conditions to make it chilly.

Long pants and full fingered gloves, long sleeve jersey and a jacket.

But at the water level at Lake Vadnais has rebounded about two feet of the three or so that it was down the last time I was out there.  That shallow area just off shore was dry land on Sunday.
FirstLOOK for scale.

On FirstLOOK I palp tires in a green colorway.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Signs of Fall

These trees do not look very healthy, I suspect that might be part of the reason why parts of the trees are fully changed colors and have even lost most of the leaves.  But it was a pretty day and the juxtaposition of the wonderful fall lighting with the green and the orange and the blue sky appealed to me.
Here's an irritating sign of Fall, the first of the year but almost certainly not the last, a leaf that got caught in my brake creating an unpleasant scratching miscellaneous noise.
And as is often the case it turned out to be not quite that easy to remove it as it seems like pulling a leaf off the front fork should be.  I had to reach around on the inside to get a hold on the stem before the thing would relent and leave my bicycle alone.

Chapeau to my geology friends for teaching me to include an ordinary object from daily life to establish scale.  That's my foot.  It was a small leaf.

Lake Mead

Two days of rain and a dreary morning had us as late as 12:15 thinking that no ride was the order of the day.  But I had lunch, checked the radar one last time, went out the front door and stood on the driveway for a bit . . .

Pretty soon we were on our bicycles heading north.

Today was my first ride this year on this bicycle.  I have over 20,000 miles on FirstLOOK, I know that it fits.  I also have over 14,000 miles on the bicycle that I have ridden the most over the past five years.

So . . .

The fit is slightly different.  I felt slightly more upright today but I also noticed that I have a KOP (knee over pedal) position that is more in line with what is recommended.  I don't know for sure (and won't for at least a few hundred miles) exactly what this means but I do know that today we were (for us) fast.

We repeated the hybrid 8 lakes tour route that I rode for my last ride.  Three days later something has happened out there.  We have been riding to Lake Vadnais for several years and this is the first time we have seen this bit of lake bed.
The lake is very significantly down from ordinary water levels.  Usually the water beings right beyond the bushes.  A fairly important side effect is that it smells pretty bad.

Just a bicycle note here, an orange colorway in the tires that I am palping.
 I love this bicycle.  I cannot imagine from my current perspective any good reason for not having ridden it very much recently.

We were trying to leave the area when this very Lake Mead-like photo opportunity presented itself.
Checking the water marks on the side of that structure it looks to me to be fairly evident that Lake Vadnais is down about three feet from its ordinary high water mark.  It may not be quite time for the Lake Mead panic but on the other hand Lake Vadnais IS the source of water for the Saint Paul water works, the source of water for the water we drink.

I think Nevada and California have bigger problems than the problems we have.

In unrelated completely non-bicycle content, hockey returned to our lives today as the Gophers won an exhibition game against a non-NCAA team featuring 13 former Gophers.  A team with that many former Gophers should be expected to be a formidable opponent and they were.  Minnesota won by a score of 5-4.  And we had fun.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Today's bicycle content

We are experiencing our second consecutive day of rain.  The evidence that I have been able to compile indicates that it now rains EVERY day after the autumnal equinox.

But I got one bicycle moved down into the basement and one bicycle moved out to the garage.  I looked at the orange tires and they don't actually seem THAT bad so I am going to try to ride them for a while.  I like palping tires in an orange colorway.  They pumped up just fine.

In the passage of bicycles I noticed some rusty thumb screws on the water bottle holders.  So tire pumping and water bottle screw replacement is all I got done today.  At least it is something.
And yes, the water bottle holders look a little crusty too but they are just plastic.  I cleaned them up a tiny bit but the truth is most of the time the unsightly parts will be covered up by a water bottle.

And to answer the question in the comments.  Yes indeed, I have ridden 14,014 miles on the bicycle I just put into the basement.  Most years I put more miles on my bicycle than I put on my car.

I ride a lot, it adds up.

But . . . Here is the odometer on the bicycle I moved out to the garage.
I originally retired that one because I just thought 20,000 miles was ENOUGH on any bicycle.

I have changed my mind, I assembled this bicycle from parts, this is the bicycle I should be riding.

And after a few more rides I will be palping tires in a shocking chartreuse green colorway.  I promise.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Retirement ride

No, not me, silly.  I am already retired.

No, today was a ride to mark the retirement from primary equipment of NewLOOK.

It rained this morning and I was pretty sure there wouldn't be a ride.  As I was having lunch I noticed that the sun was out and by golly the street looked dry, there just wasn't any reason at all NOT to ride.

By about 4pm it was starting to cloud up again, the forecast says 60 percent chance of thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow (and tomorrow night).  So today's ride was a bonus and also a thing of beauty during a small window of the day when it was really quite nice out there.  I rode north out to the many lakes, mostly the traditional Vadnais ride (I had'nt been there for a while) although I did hybridize the thing by trying to ride on the way back the reverse of the new route which we have been riding this summer.  I wanted to ride that bit to see if it was flatter.  It wasn't.

A person who rides with me frequently might well recognize this location, this is where I was when the mandatory retirement mileage was reached.
I had reached mandatory retirement mileage but I was quite a ways from home.  I had to ride a few more miles (sort of like working a couple of months beyond retirement age, something I also did).  That's Snail  Lake Road approaching the intersection with Rice Street.  That business straight ahead is the Sucker Lake portion of the Vadnais/Sucker Lake park complex.  You know, the frequent destination for the northern many lakes ride.

It was very, very pretty there for a while.  This was taken while I was riding the entry road into Sucker Lake.
We are still very early in the process but the trees are starting to show some yellow.  This is a look at the north end of Lake Vadnais.
So here you go, a look at my bicycle odometer taken after I arrived back at my garage.
Note that I have gone with the double 14s meaning that that least favored number has been jumped past in two separate ways.  A twofer.

Also note that that really unsightly bar tape problem has now been reduced to an off-season (aka winter) project.

I really like that bike and I am going to miss it.  But I have a bicycle in the basement that I personally assembled.  I have reached a point where that now seems to me to be the most appropriate bicycle for me to be riding.  I am going to have to pump some tires as a minimum but that (and carrying it out of the basement) is all that is required before I can put FirstLOOK back on the road.

If you check that info area over on the left you can reaffirm that on FirstLOOK I palp tires in an orange colorway.  Unfortunately, the orange tires currently on the bicycle are beyond mandatory retirement mileage so at the first opportunity I will be changing them.  At that time I will also be changing the blog description to indicate that on FirstLOOK I will be palping tires in a really shocking chartreuse green colorway.

Stay tuned.

Monday, September 21, 2015

What? No equinox?

It says elsewhere on the internet that TOMORROW is the official sun crosses the equator day.  I didn't know that and sort of thought it was a big day for a ride.

Well, 77 at the Cattle Barn on the day that usually is the equinox IS a big day for a ride.  There won't be many more of these before June.

I tried to find an alternative route down to the Capitol.  The direct route features heavier traffic than a like and as is always the case on streets with heavier traffic, too much broken glass.

I found a way down into the city and tried the new Charles Avenue bicycle boulevard.  I found couple of really large brick churches, a Lutheran and a Catholic, pavement (always a good thing on a road bike), but not a very satisfying route.

The big building looks a lot cleaner to me but note that the sign says that it is still closed.
I am fully aware that it is remodeling but there is something vaguely troublesome to me to find the seat of government closed.  I sometimes agree, I sometimes disagree with what they are doing down there but in either case it seems better for all concerned if they are open for business.

It was a very pretty day at the Capitol grounds.

Here is another bench and some more mystery ice at the Fairgrounds. 
That ice isn't as mysterious as the last bit.  Lots of people might dump a cooler into the gutter there, especially if they had been, for example, sitting on that bench.

That's the Cattle Barn in the background.  As noted, 77 at about 2:45.

Warm for the unequinox.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Equipment failure

I promised to post a photo of this and I really intended to include it yesterday.  But yesterday I tried to take the photo with my pocket camera and once again entered the lost world of attempting to overcome the tyranny of autofocus.  I failed.

Today I took my other camera out in front of the garage before we started.
First, that tape is epically dirty (check the bit just beneath the shifter hood).  But the real story there is that the tape is just plain coming apart.  I have never seen this before.

It was warm enough today (the average high temperature for this date is 70F) but just about the time we started out the wind suddenly perked up.

It was hard.

But we are both happy to have gotten out.  We rode during the time when the local professional football team was playing.  The game is also on the TV (of course) and while the game is in progress the streets are about as deserted as they ever get during the day time no matter what the day of the week.  So a Sunday mid-day ride was made without a lot of outside interference (very few cars).

It was windy but even with the wind we made on the way home a slight deviation from the most direct path.  She doesn't ride nearly as much as I do and I was pretty sure she hadn't seen the exotic flora lately.  The plants are quite spectacular now at near the very end of growing season but the real news over there was that at last it was someone else who is going to have to change a flat.
It looks to me like it is only flat on the bottom.

Temperature a couple of degrees above average, wind several miles per hour too brisk.

But . . . nice day, nice ride.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

September bicycle JRA

The morning newspaper reported that September is the fourth warmest month (as measured by average temperature).  Well, OK then, that helps to explain a bit, I guess.  Today was a nice day, noteworthy because we have had a few days of chilly.  Today was certainly not a day from one of the three warmer months but it would have been a very nice day in May.  And it was a very nice day for slightly past the middle of September, a couple of days before the equinox.

For example, it is probably relevant to report that yesterday I donned long pants for the first time (with the exception of ride on airplane days, I personally take exception to people riding on airplanes with their unsightly thighs hanging out of ill fitting shorts, I don't do that) since returning from our spring road trip to Niagara.  And I do not mean long pants for a bicycle ride, I mean long pants for hanging around my house doing not too much in view of the fact that it was raining, raining really hard.  Warm it was NOT.

On the subject of long pants I am dismayed to report that the brand that has provided me with the long pants that I have worn for a huge majority of the times when I was wearing long pants throughout my adult life has totally abandoned my demographic.  What that means in English is that Levi's no longer makes a pair of jeans that suits me.  Mostly the styles are for people far heavier than me, or far younger (you know, skinny jeans in odd shades of blue).  Even the denim itself is suddenly radically altered, it now seems to be about the weight of one of those cheap (and I do mean CHEAP) cotton t-shirts.

Probably if I was shopping for a bicycle I would discover that LOOK no longer makes a bicycle that suits me.  What is painfully evident is that I have passed out of the group of people who buy lots of things so people making things no longer make a huge passel of products that are likely to appeal to me.

*sigh*

So it goes.  So it was meant to go.

I rode my bicycle today and I spent most of the time trying to dodge the wind.  Wind avoidance has gradually evolved into a lot of direction changes.  I try not to ride directly into the wind for too long.  The wind becomes onerous, I take a 90 degree turn.  And then another and then another, breaking the ride up into segments.  I used to refer to this as just riding around.

 I did get what I think is a nice addition to the bench series.  This is a pile of benches.
Possibly detectable but not totally obvious is that there is an open area just behind that pile of benches.  During the Fair they set up a stage there and benches (the ones pictured) for folks to sit upon.  I do not believe that we have ever actually partaken of any exposition at that spot and on those benches although we certainly pass by within a few yards.  I think I heard the announcer once this year and I think it was a dog show.  I could be wrong.

Even though the Fairgrounds is now open and available for riding a new obstacle has been thrown up in the way of any ride I may want to take to the big city just to our south.  They have closed the road at Deadman's Curve.
Note that Deadman's Curve advertises that there is a bike lane ahead.  This is noteworthy in that there is not actually a bike lane under those two bridges with the two turns.  There is a bike lane ahead, but not under the bridges through the turns.
That's why I call it Deadman's Curve.

But not today, today what they have is road closed and a look out from under the bridge proves that they are serious.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Four days in a row

Well.  It has really been quite a long time since that happened.

81 at the Cattle Barn, quite warm for mid-September and as is usual for days when the temperature is quite a bit above or below the average, today was VERY windy.

Did not affect the cow even the slightest bit.

Cows in Fall:
Contrast with Cows in Spring (March 16):
I am on the verge of retiring a bicycle but as will often be the case at moments such as this the bicycle is demanding maintenance.  I only need four more times on the bicycle to put NewLook out to pasture and it looks like I won't be able to get there without probably two maintenance procedures.

The front tire, the one that I can always see, is starting to make me nervous.   Which means probably that the rear tire is worse.  Ignore worn tires at peril of being an hour's ride from home with a beside the road puncture.  We all know how much we hate that.

Even uglier is that the bar tape is literally falling off the bar at the right hand shifter.

I have had bar tape get ugly before, this is a first time of bar tape actually failing to cover the bar.  I promise a photo.

If only I can get those four more rides I need to not ever again care about the bar tape on this particular bicycle.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Three days in a row

I rode again today, making three days in a row for the first time since August in Michigan.

It isn't going to be a big mileage year but that's going to have to be OK.  There might be as little as a month left before the last ride, naturally I am hoping for at least two months.

The Fair is over, a giant traffic blockade no longer exists.  The wind was from the south.  Two good reasons, I headed off towards the big city to the south.

I was riding down Como past the Fairgrounds when I was overtaken by what used to be a fat guy riding a nice hybrid.  It was a guy I used to play softball with (many years ago) who has reached retirement age and has acquired a bicycle and a habit.

He looks great.  Almost unrecognizable.

His son lives in Paris.  I was wearing my CyclesLaurent Paris jersey.  We had a nice chat.

And then off towards the Falls.
Looks like a nice day, right?  I was accosted at the Falls by a woman who wanted to know the approximate time.  She had taken work to the park but found herself unable to concentrate on anything other than what a nice day it was.  It was 2:06.

It WAS a nice day, 77 at the Cattle Barn, later on it reached 82F.

Having been to the Falls it seems obvious that the south side intersection study must have a new chapter.  38th and 38th.
That's actually a fairly busy intersection, 38th Street is a major cross town arterial, a major enough street to host a 42nd Street detour.

 Another continuing series, benches.  An orange bench at the Fairgrounds.
With a wooden train in the background.  And the Fine Arts Building, originally constructed (in the 30s I believe) as a Dairy exposition building.  Cows.

Not far from there I came across this.  Nothing anywhere around, no concession stand being dismantled, far from the nearest building, mystery ice.
That might be me, or at least my shadow frame bottom left.

Self portraiture is its own reward.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

2,016 miles this bicycle this year

My plan at the start of the season was to get the mileage on this bicycle high enough to allow for me to retire it (for now) and to then ride the bicycle that I built myself for the rest of this season and for the foreseeable future.  Well the future turns out to be not very foreseeable but it does look like I will reach the mileage goal for this bicycle.  How much my other bicycle gets ridden remains to be seen.

It was a stone beautiful blue sky today, yet more evidence that Fall is here.  The Fall lighting can make a sky just beyond the capacity of spring or summer lighting.  It probably does need to be said that those extremely cold and crisp days in mid-winter CAN produce a sky blue about as pretty as today.  But today was really a pretty blue and the temperature was 71F.

So that's a vote for today.

It was a little windy but I had a nice ride.  I am still looking around the newly crowd bereft Fairgrounds and still finding things that I think are interesting.  There were two of them today.

Here is the Fairgrounds contribution to the ongoing bench series.
Dedicated to a person who loved the Fair (according to the notes on the white attachments), Barbara Brown.  Anyone can buy naming rights to a bench and have it placed on the grounds during the 12 day run.  They put these things away for the rest of the year though so while this particular bench notes that for B. Brown there were never enough places to sit during the Fair this bench does nothing to alleviate the extreme shortage of places to sit anywhere outdoors on the Fairgrounds anytime during the non-Fair 353 days of the year.

Of course, there also aren't very many people over there competing for the few spots that ARE available during those days.

I like this one, a delivery that came too late.
I rode up close and took a look, that is a pallet of root beer fountain syrup.  Each of those boxes contains (according to the outside of the box) 2.5 gallons of syrup.  So there is enough syrup there to produce several hundred gallons of root beer.

Too late, there just isn't going to be any demand for that much root beer over there until about 12 days before next Labor Day.

I rode down to Saint Thomas to see if I could see anything about that big bicycle ride they had today.  I was at least a couple of hours too late, I was there about 2pm.  There were still a few stragglers about but for the most part the ride was over.

I rode on down Finn Street because it is flat and because it was into the wind looking for a logical turnaround point to start back towards home.

Finn Street comes to a T when it meets Niles Avenue, I turned around.

This is the corner of Berkeley and Finn, another spot where if I wish I can "ride the pave". 
During Paris-Roubaix or the occasional pave segment of le Tour de France they pronounce that pav-ay.

The natives there speak Francais don't you know.

Furthermore I note that there is a roundabout at the corner of Finn and Lincoln.

Beautiful day for a ride, another day I am thankful I was able to enjoy.  There aren't ever enough days as pretty and nice as today.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Kraut update

I used to ride in the Saint Paul Classic.  That tradition was an early casualty of my decision that riding with large numbers of my fellow citizens was not safe.  It is on for tomorrow and today I rode over to the course to just kind of look around.  I rode down to the top of the Wheelock Parkway hill and started following the course back towards Como Park and the Fairgrounds.  I was surprised that it took me more than a mile to come to one of these official notices that the ride is tomorrow.
This affects me not at all as not only will I not be riding in the bike tour I won't be trying to find a place to park anywhere along the route and in fact given that tomorrow is Sunday I may not even be leaving the house at any time that qualifies as A.M.

But along the route I came across the previously featured Como streetcar route bridge.  This has been reconstructed this year and as of today all indications are that the project has been completed.
The bike tour doesn't actually ride over, or for that matter, under the bridge.  It comes down the path leading off to the photo right just on the other side of the bridge and then turns right leading out through those trees visible photo center.

The big news here today, though, is the major expansion of my kraut franchise.
WARNING SHARP BLADES!

I made sauerkraut last year using that shredder deal that very many people already have in their kitchen, the one on the back side of that four sided thing that we all sometimes use to shred cheese or orange peel.  It worked OK but I am serious about this sauerkraut thing.  I like kraut and I am determined to make my own.  Last year I bought a fermenting crock, this year I got a REAL cabbage shredder.

I can testify that it is certainly possible to shred enough cabbage with one of those kitchen utensils to make kraut.  This deal is going to make it a lot more efficient.

That deal on the right is my kraut tamper.  Usually early in the process you have to tamp down the shredded cabbage so that the liquid which weeps out of the shreds will cover the whole business, a step which is necessary to be certain that the all important fermentation will occur.

Last year I made enough kraut to learn the basic steps.

This year I am going to try to make kraut at least one step above beginner kraut.

WARNING SHARP BLADES!

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Fairgrounds reopen

The inevitable but unwelcome news for today was the first day of fall.  Temperatures descended into the 50s overnight and the weakened sun had a very difficult time  heating the atmosphere to a level where I felt comfortable riding my bicycle outside.

Yes, unmistakably fallish, before I even got out of my driveway I had evidence with a look at my neighbor's gives up too soon maple.
Mostly what I liked about that angle is how healthy and vibrant the big new tree looks.  Two years in that spot, coming around to its third episode of one third of the needles turn yellow and drop, about a foot taller than when we put it in, we love that tree.

Before I even left the neighborhood there were additional instances of fall foliage.  There are never enough purple plants.
That spot is also interesting, to me, because it is exactly 0.50 miles from home.  This is helpful information if you are trying to end your rides on an even number without doing laps around the cul-de-sac.

I discovered that the Fairgrounds have reopened so I headed in.  After the Fair there is just so much to look at in there as the various vendors and exhibitors dismantle the part of the Fair that only last for the 12 days when the Fair is running.  Here is my favorite photo proving that the Fair is over, the grease spot at the onion ring stand right outside the door of the Food Building.
Once a year, Danielson and Daughters, onion rings, the best of the Fair.

Recently seen with a crowd I thought it worthwhile to again display the Cattle Barn.
Twenty degrees cooler, virtually no humidity, no fellow citizens, a complete different feeling.

But the dining halls still exist.  Hamline, one of only two remaining.
I suspect that whatever it is they serve inside that building it is almost certainly tastier than the fare at Donna's Bar-B-Q.

It was a little cool but it was a very, very pretty day, the first of many with that beautiful diffuse fall lighting that makes a person want to take some photographs.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Summer's almost gone

It is very late this year but here it is, summer's almost gone.

We had rain yesterday in the aftermath of that horrible, awful day when we went to the Fair.  Today the pattern has broken, the humidity has gone.  Today was still warm, very, very nice, still very clearly not Fall.  But there aren't going to be many more of these.

So we rode our bicycles.  We got all the way out to Lake Vadnais, our first appearance out there in quite some time.
It is undeniably pretty out there, such a very nice spot to be located well within the limits of a giant city.  It pleases us each and every time how much this place looks like a spot in the country.

On the way home we passed another windstorm casualty.  Neither of us remember much in the way of a big storm that should have taken this major portion of a pretty large maple tree down.
On the other hand the tree looks pretty rotten at the core and may not have required much in the way of storm power to produce this bit of destruction.  The rest of the tree will be gone the next time the wind blows unless the homeowner proactively has it removed.

So we had a Labor Day feast at our house.  The two persons who we sometimes refer to in their absence, although I don't think we call them that in front of them, as the children, joined us.  Corn on the cob, sliced fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, chicken on the grill, polish sausage and kraut, several of my favorite foods, all of it fresh, a feast.

Summer's almost gone.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Also too hot but we went to the Fair

TCWUTH still consents to a day at the Fair with her parents.  Or perhaps she needs a day at the Fair with her parents because when she goes with us she gets to do all of the things SHE wants to do.  It was really hot today, too hot, but now that she has a job (and we don't) days at the Fair have to be scheduled when she is available.  We may prefer Wednesday when it is cooler but the last Saturday when it was too hot was what we got today.

And all of us had a fabulous time.

So there.

We tried something completely new just inside the entrance that we use to enter the grounds and got a picture taken of ourselves with Les Paul.  This is actually pretty cool although most of you don't realize it.
There is apparently either some digital trickery going on or else some time travel as Les is looking pretty young in this photo.  I think that is actually in his Red Hot Red period.

Our corporate spokesperson wanted a photo with what is an important historical relic of her current employer.  The company never made full size tractors and made even this smaller tractor for only a very short period of time.  This is the Toro Bullet from 1946.
Here is a scene that makes it into my blog with some regularity but never ever before with this many of our fellow citizens.  Today at 1:53 it was 86F at the cattle barn.
And about 76 percent humidity, one of the ugliest most miserable outdoor days in the history of the days.

It took a couple of minutes to line up that photo, first for me to find my usual photographic angle and then for the models to find an appropriate posing station and then for the crowd to finally produce a gap allowing the photo to occur.

We went inside.  Inside the cattle barn there are like, lots of cows.  Cows are like, not happy when it is hot and humid.  These are like, valuable cows.  Which means that the humans do not want the cows to be too uncomfortable.  There are about a million and a half fans in the cattle barn.  It is not air conditioned but by golly the air is at least in motion.  Even at 86F with 76 humidity it is passable inside the cattle barn.  Even so most of the valuable livestock was lying down.
That particular valuable livestock might as well rest now, the sign indicates that he has been purchased by the sorts of people who are probably not interested in that steer having a long and happy life.  I presume that Malory, like most well adjusted farm children, was not too terribly attached to her holstein steer.  She raised him and sold him, almost certainly making a pretty penny for her efforts.  In turn the Grand Champion will very soon be reduced to what the sign hints at: beef.

We wandered into the swine barn.  I apologize for the focus on this photo but I was excited.  While we were walking up to his pen the big pig stood up.
That's two years in a row we have seen the big pig on his feet.

And of all the years we have been going to see the big pig that now makes two times that we have seen him standing.

So I was pretty excited.

But not quite as excited as this person.
We have been taking her to the Fair for 30 or so years and nearly every year she plays the roll the golf ball into the holes to make the horses move horse race game and the place a frog on the launching pad and whack it with a big rubber hammer trying to make the frog land in one of those things out in the water.  She almost always wins the horse race game but this year she won both games.

She had just enough tickets left to make one more run at the horse race game and won again there.  She played four games and won three stuffed animals.  I have another photo taken after the final victory with all three of her prizes in her grasp but it just isn't quite as nice an exposure as this one.  I have it if historical perspective is required but for now I am going with this one.

It was too hot but we had a very nice day at the Fair.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Too hot

Stop me if you have heard this one before . . .

Well, too late, although I know everyone has heard this before.  Today was TOO HOT.  I made it through a ride but it seriously taxed my ability to persevere.  It was TOO HOT.

Ugly.

Mostly I was JRA, I actually never got any farther away from home than the far side of Lake Como.  To add to the indignity the far side of Lake Como is in that part of the big city to our south where the city streets department laid down major oil and gravel about 6 or 8 weeks ago.  It is sort of marginally rideable now but there is really just too many pieces of less than pea sized rock laying around on each and every street just outside of the area where cars commonly drive.  Which is to say, lots of ugly little bits of vaguely oil covered rock absolutely totally in the area where bicycles commonly drive.

But I got a picture of a tree.
I thought it was interesting that the smaller one in the foreground is about a third of the way into giving up while the apparently same species in the camera left background is still bravely soldiering on.

It was way TOO HOT but with a blue sky and autumn lighting it was a fairly good day for a photograph.

I have done some checking of the archives.  This year's big pig at 1,080 pounds seems like a disappointment to me but maybe it shouldn't be.  Last year's big pig was only 800 pounds and distinguished himself from all other big pigs I have ever seen by being observed actually standing up.  The big pig had NEVER ever done anything but lay on his side and pant.  Standing up was a pretty major phenomenon for any of the big pigs.

But at least as surprising to me was that last year's big pumpkin was also only about 800 pounds.  And further I referred to that 800 pound pumpkin as incomprehensibly huge.

I note for both personal humility purposes and also for historical perspective that this year's big pumpkin came in at over 1,400 pounds, which probably means that 800 pounds is a bit short of incomprehensible.

If weather permits we will make another appearance at the Fair tomorrow, this time with TCWUTH in tow.  Days at the Fair are always fun days and further if tomorrow is anything like today tomorrow will be just plain TOO HOT for a bicycle ride.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Hooray, hooray . . .

Hooray, hooray, the first of . . .

Oops, missed it yet again.

But today I WAS reunited with my thumb levers, first ride since falling off on the River Street bridge.  I experienced some discomfort with BOTH knees, but as is often the case I was able to ride through the initial problem and eventually I felt pretty good.

It was nice to be back, I love my bicycle.

In the time since I last reported on a Minnesota bicycle ride a bunch of this has occurred.
That one has a mark on the trunk indicating some disease so I guess I won't consider it as a give up too early for the season slacker.  I guess it is a goner.

The Fair is in full swing which means parking restrictions on all of the streets within a half mile or so of the grounds.  For example, parking is permitted on only one side of this street which opened up a seldom available view of the exotic flora.
I went to the grocery store a couple of days ago and brought these home.
Most will know that when actually at Bowerman Blueberries in Michigan they will inform you of the variety of blueberry you are purchasing before you hand your money over.  Here in Minnesota most of us are not even aware that there ARE varieties of blueberries.

These are definitely not blue crop.  In fact, they seem a little bit more tart than Eliots.

It is probably best that they remain known here as the unnamed blues.