Thursday, April 26, 2018

Ice on the water

And fire in the sky.

This is a small pond that I often pass by on rides to the north.
The effects of the fire in the sky should be fairly obvious.  It doesn't look much like winter out there anymore.  Even so the ice has not completely left the pond and the local recreation department seems comfortable with the idea that it is still winter.  When they closed that set of stairs they were dang serious.  Those are 2x4s NAILED to the head posts at the top the stairs.  A crowbar will be required to reopen those stairs.

Further suggesting that it is still winter is that I am still riding my winter bicycle.

Today I tried for a couple more miles.  Too windy,  really hard.

It is a process.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Camp day

Three days in a row proved to be an obstacle that I chose not to attempt.  Two days was pretty hard.

Instead we had a date at the local book store.  The local newspaper published notice of the appearance of our favorite writer within a mile of where we live.  I immediately started to re-read his most recent Davenport novel.  I have not read the most recent Flowers book yet and with the new Davenport it looks like we may be setting up for a classic reading festival with most of the readers not having read either of the two most recent Davenport and/or the most recent Flowers.  That will be three books for the rest of you while I will only have two.
Left to right, one year old Davenport, most recent Flowers, brand new Davenport.

He is an interesting guy in addition to being our favorite writer.  Every time I attend one of these I note and find interesting that the audience has many people who have often been there before but also a sprinkling of very young people who were probably not yet able to read when his first novel was published.

He talks for a few minutes but prefers to answer questions.  One of the first questions revealed that he is within a week or two of completion of the writing of the next Flowers, to be published in the fall.  He says that he writes nearly every day and thinks about the writing projects every day.  He said that his biggest problem is devising interesting villains.  He has one in mind for the next Davenport book some of the plot of which he shared with this gathering of his fans.  He has a working title, "Neon Prey".  The plot line that he does have in mind includes a starting point in Minnesota, plot development in Los Angeles with a conclusion in Las Vegas.

He told a story that I had heard before.  Before he was a novelist he was writing for the local newspaper and produced a series that won a Pulitzer prize.  The newspaper responded by giving him a raise that left him still making less than two writers on the sports desk.  He said that he didn't really resent the sports guys, they were both really good writers.  But he did note that even with the raise he wasn't going to be making enough money to pay for his two kids to go to college.  He started fishing for some non-newspaper writing projects.  He got an agent, wrote some stuff and kept working.

A member of the audience asked when he knew he had found something that he could do outside the newspaper.

His response was that it occurred when his agent asked if he could produce something more along the lines of what he had already written.  His agent informed him that if he could that he would be paid $200,000.

That was the moment.

When we got to the front of the line the book store staff took my phone and produced a quite satisfactory photo of the three of us.
I have been several times, TOPWLH not as many but she is not a new face.  We both had heart felt exclamations to the author about how much pleasure the reading of his work has provided for us and our family over the years.  Praise which he graciously accepted.  During our very brief moment with him TOPWLH volunteered to the author the name of our daughter and received in return the expected response that his daughter has the same name.  We knew that.  He autographed his newest book for our daughter.
We had a nice night out at the local bookstore.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Rubber legs

First back to back in quite a while.  It was hard.

The temperatures are returning to average but we still have this much snow under the mail box.
It was windy this morning and I hesitated but finally I was pretty determined to participate.  When I started it was cool and windy.  As often happens this time of year the warming of the atmosphere led to an increase in turbulence.  By the time I reached home it was entirely too windy to allow bicycling.

Bicycle fitness is poor, the wind was punitive, the result was legs of rubber.

Monday, April 23, 2018

At long last

At this time of year the sun is high in the sky and even a record breaking April snow fall turned out to be really no match for those powerful rays.

My bicycle has been ready for a while, today it was finally dry enough (and plenty warm) for a bicycle ride.
There is still a little snow here and there at the Fairgrounds but 63F is going to make even those traces disappear in the next day or two.

The tulips are up at the tulip guy's yard but it appears that he has something else in there too, some early bloomers until the tulips are ready.
It was a beautiful day.  My bicycle fitness level was not good but it never really is on the first ride of the year.  It was hard, very hard but it was really good to be out there.

Monday, April 16, 2018

Snow records

Done for now.

The 14.9 inches of snow since Friday is the all time record for largest single snow fall in the month of April

The total for April to date of 25.2 inches is also a new record.

And the total snowfall since January 1 of 70.3 inches is a record for snowfall to start a calendar year.  Here is a final look at the deck this morning with the skies finally having turned to blue.
Here is a look out the kitchen window at the weird snow overhang. 
That patch of snow hung on until about 4:48pm.  I was in the garage heading out to do an important errand when I heard the resounding *thump* indicating that gravity had prevailed yet again.

The important errand I was headed out for was related to the extremely important task that I had running in the background throughout all of the snow removal activities.

Taxes.  I pay on line but I file paper forms.
It was all completed today.  I just got back from dropping those two envelopes off at the local post office branch.  Mailed today will be postmarked tomorrow.

The weather forecast indicates possibility of 1 to 3 inches more of snow for Wednesday.  Based on how quickly the 15 inches we just got dumped with is receding from plowed surfaces I believe that if we somehow dodge that bit on Wednesday that bicycling may be possible by the end of the week.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Ride report

I got really close again.  As a footnote I helped out at BGR's house on Monday when they had a day care problem.  When I arrived there were no footprints on the sidewalk leading away from the house.  There were bicycle tire tracks.  Bicycling seemed theoretically possible, at least for the young and strong.

By Friday it looked really good even for me, the only problem was that it was raining and I do not ride in the rain.  A glance out our back door reveals a clear deck, a bare picnic table and grass.
The front view shows bare driveway and street, a completely bare grass field and only a relatively small pile of snowplow residue snow.
This is Saturday during pretty much full on blizzard.  The school building across the field is only vaguely apparent.
By Saturday evening this is the picnic table.
Sunday morning.
In front the municipal plow has done its work and we are marooned.
Since then the snow blower has been run and we can reach the street.  However, it is still snowing and the street that we can reach is rapidly returning to impassable.

The wind conditions are creating an overhang on the leeward side of the house.  A big chunk fell off just now leaving our deck looking like this.
It is still snowing.

I haven't seen any official totals since much earlier today but we were within a couple of inches of an all time record storm for the month of April even then.  The snow has occasionally lessened but right now it is snowing pretty hard.

No bicycling today.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Too much snow

Daily high temperatures are still about 10 degrees below average.  A significant factor in this is the still pretty significant snow cover.
The driveway and many of the streets are very near to being available for bicycling but not yet.

Sagan wins Paris-Roubaix.

As the days pass Froome and Team Sky look less and less credible.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Bicycling resumes

Almost.

Last Tuesday was quite a nice day.  It was sunny and one of the warmest days so far, above 50 if my memory serves correctly.  We had an outing, a dinner at a friend of mine's house, a friend of mine who happens to be married to TOPWLH's second cousin.  There is a fairly interesting story there.  The second cousin and TOPWLH were not aware of each other (their grandfathers were brothers) but the second cousin had done some genealogy.  She showed some of it to her new husband.  He (not she) recognized the unusual name and looking a bit closer noted that he also recognized the name of her husband (me).  So we are all cousins now.

Anyway, cousin and spouse were hosting a dinner for a college friend visiting from England (yes, that one) and a few other of his and our college friends.

We had a wonderful time reliving old times and catching up.  At least three of them asked if I had been out bicycling yet.

Well, actually no, but it felt like Wednesday was a possibility.

It was colder on Wednesday but I set out to make a ride happen.  I got my early season bicycle down out of the rafters and pumped the tires.  But then the amount of time spent collecting my early season costume from the six or seven places where parts of it spent the winter pretty much eliminated the possibility of a Wednesday ride.

But I was ready for Thursday.
Alas, Thursday was quite a bit colder than Wednesday even and definitely not the sunny and warm of Tuesday.  I hung on though, optimistic.

It snowed on Friday.

Saturday morning we awoke to a furnace on the fritz and more cold weather.

The furnace is limping along, we are okay for now.  But yesterday this April snow thing got really serious.

The rails on our deck were completely devoid of any snow cover last Tuesday.
And it is still snowing.

Certainly there will be some bicycling from my garage some time soon.  But obviously it will not be real soon.