Nice bike

There is lots going on around here.

*Norah*

And then the weather has not been the greatest.

But I did get out for a ride and even took a picture.  I think I will just back date the thing and pretend that I posted this the day I actually took the ride.

So here goes.

I had a nice ride that day but when you ride in March on even the nicest of days you are riding without many other bicyclists out there.  My bike log says 60s and sunny, nice but windy.  It was my first ride of the year on my nice bike which was good but I did not get even a single nice bike from anyone else out there. 

So when I got home I stood my bicycle up against the garage door and took a picture.

"Nice bike," I said to myself.

Spring snow

We are getting a couple of inches here today into tonight ending by mid-morning tomorrow.  This will tend to retard the season slightly.  However I have fairly significant progress concerning the season to report as indicated by the view out my window yesterday morning.

With that task having been completed by the municipality's public works department it can only be another ride or two before I get my nice bicycle out.  I need clean streets for the skinny, high air pressure tires, don't you know.

Of course I now also need to get past that whole snow thing.

The other item of interest today is mostly as reported elsewhere on the internet.  To introduce, I had had a really nice digital SLR for several years.  In a perhaps shocking display of lack of appreciation for that really nice camera, I went out late last fall and upgraded.  The old camera, an excellent camera, was old enough that it was photography only.  The new camera, also an excellent camera, can take video.

I told everyone who would listen including the saleswoman at National Camera that I needed video capability because it appeared that I would shortly be in NEED of the capability of shooting really important video.

See elsewhere on the internet for some really important video.

Baby gets dressed and goes home

At the age of 2 (days that is) Norah Opal Rinderknecht made the first big move of her destined to be hugely celebrated life by getting dressed for the first time in her own clothes and going home.  Here mother and daughter pause at the main entrance of the hospital while we wait for Dad to bring the car around.  Norah sports a stunning someone else is going to have to name that color hoodie and socks.

Socks are a new experience for the 2 day old and for sure, that's her first hoodie.

In her own house in the chair in the corner.

I took lots of pictures today but it seems that most of the pictures I took I took with their camera.  I did get this one which may be the one that TOPWLH has been looking for.

Grandma Barbara with Norah, still in the hospital, still while Norah was getting ready to make her first excursion out into the big world.

Welcome Norah.

Tech support

I have been getting warnings from my cable TV provider in the form of offers for "improved" service at reduced prices.  I figured out after ignoring these things for a while that what they really mean is that they are getting ready to discontinue the signal that I have been purchasing in order to upgrade the entire system to something else with it being my assumption that they will make more money on the something else.  I resisted but the most recent missive said that one of my cable boxes was soon going to not be able to operate.

I went over to the storefront and made arrangements.  They gave me two new boxes and two new remotes.  The remotes are "voice" remotes.  Sounds spooky to me.

Anyway I got it all home, got the wires reconnected in appropriate configurations and one of the TVs doesn't work at all,  all I get is an error message.  I called, they are sending out a man on Sunday morning.  I have no signal at all on that TV until at least then.

The other one sorta works but the remote doesn't turn the thing on or off or adjust volume or change station.  I can get other stations by going to the "guide" and scrolling through until I come to the station I want and then "select" but this seems vaguely reminiscent of circa 1960 jumping up to twist the dial to one of the other two stations that we received at that time.

The nice lady on the help line said that there was an issue with some work we had done last fall that involved replacement of our line into the house.  The new line hasn't been buried yet and she says the tech who does the burying has to make some adjustment after that before we can receive the "X1 platform".

The reason why I bring this up on a bicycle blog is all of this cable TV hassle meant I spent an inordinate amount of time today sitting in front of one or the other of our two cable connected TVs waiting for results and not getting them.

*sigh*

I need tech support.

After the first attempted installation had so magnificently failed I postponed action on the second, fearing another multi-hour episode and instead went for a bicycle ride.

It was 68 when I got home.

So THAT was a good choice.

Here I am at the Saint Paul/Falcon Heights city boundary.  I stopped to notice that Saint Paul in that part of town still has those nice old street lamps.

I am on Albert Street there and after proceeding a couple of blocks into Falcon Heights I was rewarded with the view I was expecting to find, the somewhat less picturesque fixture deployed by Falcon Heights to provide night time illumination.

After arriving at home I was amazed to discover that I can actually receive programming on the second cable box.  That should be good but alas it appears that I have no control over either of the remotes.  This seems so weird in that there just shouldn't be anything about the cable installation that should stop the remote that came with the TV from turning that device on and/or off.

The good news though is that I am fairly confident that the company tech will be able to render all of this operable and my monthly cable bill will, in fact, be quite a bit reduced.

Stay tuned.

Accumulation begins

It was even warmer today.  Today for example, I didn't even bring a jacket with me.  The wind from the south was a little too much and before I got warmed up it was a little brisk.  But eventually when I arrived at the Cattle Barn the time/temperature read 66F.

So yesterday I had to work all of the kinks out of my digital bike log but all of my totals were in fact just that one day total.  Today I moved into multiples.  Things like average length per ride are now relevant.

Average length per ride is still pretty small but at least now the spread sheet has to calculate it.

Here is a sure sign that the dark season is over.  The skating rink is COMPLETELY gone, all the way down to bare dirt.

See the guy over there near the left margin in the red coat?  I know what he is doing because I have done it myself in the past.  He is looking for hockey pucks.  During the skating season lots of pucks get shot over the boards and then disappear into the snow piles.  The big thaw exposes a bounty of pucks.

I will say, however, that this guy is way, way too late.  The ice and snow is all gone now.  The kids who lost those hockey pucks have had plenty of opportunity to come down and look around.

When you have to look is on the first really warm day.  Pucks are black, they melt out of the snowbanks at the first opportunity, not as this guy apparently hopes, at the last opportunity.

It is still really, really early for lake ice out but I though that with all of the snow gone off the ground I might find all of the ice of the lake.

My first lake photo.

Orange cones still warning of thin ice down there in right foreground.  Very thin ice, I might add.  What ice there is is only down at this, the southeast end of the lake.  Beyond that point right behind that lake front oak tree the lake is mostly ice free.

I don't know the rules but I suppose ice out means completely ice out.

Last night set a new all time record for highest overnight low temperature, I think it only got down to 52F.  Another round of lows in the 50s will eliminate ever last tiny bit of that lake ice.

A few more miles today than yesterday.

The season is definitely on.

Opening day

It was a grey and pretty windy day but the high temperature reached the average high for April 7.  I was caught a little unprepared but it only took a short time to round up all of the necessary gear and remember how to put it all on.

At first I was JRA relatively close to home to make sure but eventually I went somewhere.

This is the east gate of the Fairgrounds from inside.  I was attempting to portray the conditions of the day, very grey skies, strong wind mostly from the south and only a few stubborn piles of snow still littering the landscape.

I had a nice tour of the Fairgrounds and eventually found my way to the Cattle Barn.

Balmy, particularly for March 7.

I have been walking every day but was a little put out to learn again that walking fitness does translate very well to bicycle fitness.  Different muscles.  But I got enough miles in to be worthwhile, enough miles on the bicycle that I do not now have to also take a walk.

The season is officially underway.  Updating my bicycle log I noticed that the season is underway 8 days earlier than last year.