Today was a little cold according to the standards for riding that I have stated here recently. Then there is the fact that I have declared the season most likely over. But what the heck, it was 9 degrees above average for this date, I have the gear. Plus I checked the BikeLog and I had 494 miles for this month. It seems very unlikely that I will get anywhere near 500 miles in November ever again. Bicycling ensued.
I didn't want to get too far from home in case the cold wimped me out so I did a prolonged series of loops in and around the Fairgrounds. This is another one of those views that is mostly obscured during the foliage season. I like the tower outlined against the grey sky even as sunshine hits the front of the building.I found this one at Northrup Street and Folwell Avenue in the part of Falcon Heights sometimes referred to as University Grove. I haven't seen this particular expression before.In addition to being able to subtract my mileage (but from what he wonders) I was rewarded for being out by coming across this deal. I had never seen one of these in person before and frankly, I wasn't even sure what it was at first.The key for me in making the identification was that this thing has a Minnesota boat license number on its front end (Do you call it a "bow" when it is a hovercraft?).
It was a pretty good ride. My toes were not completely comfortable by the time I got home but it wasn't an extremely big deal. The fronts of my thighs weren't completely happy on the into the wind segments. It was mostly OK and the new record for miles ridden in November is 520.
Today was a good reminder that there are conditions in which I will not ride. Despite my earlier proclamations that it is not cold that ends the season for me, the truth is that cold is an issue. Today was pretty cold.
But I have the gear. Here's what I looked like today as I left the garage (TOPWLH was required to make an appearance out of doors in her occasional role as photographic assistant). When I am actually riding I can pull the balaclava up a bit more and even cover that tiny bit of bridge of the nose visible in this photo. I can ride covered up completely.Note the Windstopper shoe covers. Today felt like the last ride and although I do not want the season to end I guess I am finally somewhat resigned. Today came too close to freezing the water in my water bottles.
If it was last ride at least I made a point to go and check what the long shadows would look like where the cows are resting.As usual, they look very stately and very sedate in repose.
I got all the way into Saint Paul and rode up onto the Marshall Avenue bridge. I didn't go all the way across (there's Minneapolis over there, don't you know?). This picture is looking upstream towards the University and downtown Minneapolis.Based on that photo I am going to declare the fall leaf colors to be past peak.
But today I rode past 4,000 miles on this bike, this year. It is a nice milestone but it wasn't as important to me as the other recent accomplishments. This isn't the first time I have had that many miles on a single bicycle in a year, in fact it isn't even the first time I have done it on this bicycle (I have four such years all together, so far). This is the second time I have done it on the LOOK. As I stated above, it feels quite a bit like the end of the season here. If it is the end the final accounting would show LOOK odometer 18,156, automobile odometer 17,834.
It is my belief that the End of Season Addendum to the Loony Bicyclist Code requires that every loony cyclist make a vain attempt to hold on to the season as it begins inexorably to slip away by riding at least one time in really sub-marginal conditions. Today I fulfilled the requirement.
After a morning filled with frequent checks of my favorite radar weather site and frequent trips to the front window to check whether or not the driveway and cul-de-sac seemed dry, I finally convinced myself that there was a window of a couple of hours when it wasn't going to rain and that the pavement was actually sort of mostly dry. Off I went.
It was cold. I rode through the Fairgrounds at one point and the always optimistic west end of the Grandstand reported 41. Both Mikey J and the weather bug on my blog report 38 which seems to me to be probably more accurate. It was also dark, the forecast for today is rain turning to snow. Anyone looking at the sky would agree with that assessment. Only an obsessed bicyclist studying the radar weather would reach any other conclusion.
So how was it? As I have said with some regularity, it isn't cold that keeps me from riding. I have the gear. What ends the season for me is when pavement conditions become unrideable. Today was only cold. I have the gear. Admittedly today I rolled out nearly every last item of gear, the only exception being I have winter shoes which I did not wear today. The winter shoes have Speedplay Frog cleats, the LOOK features Speedplay X-series pedals. To wear the winter shoes I need to either change the pedals or change to one of the bicycles with Frog pedals. So no winter shoes but every last other single item went on my body today. I was warm, I was dry, I was completely comfortable.
Hamline Avenue is the sturdy backbone of most of my riding. Both of my more or less regular rides, the north route and the south route, feature Hamline Avenue in an important role. It is how, in both directions, I get away from my house to interesting places to ride. Today I rode to both ends of the portion of Hamline Avenue that I ride. Hamline has another incarnation within the city of Saint Paul but the portion that runs through Roseville ends on the north at an intersection with Highway 51 in Shoreview. On the south leg Hamline leads me through Falcon Heights towards a dead end near MacMurray Field in Saint Paul. I got this picture from very near the south end. When I first became aware of this building it was a part of the Como shops and roundhouse complex of the Great Northern Railroad.It is called something else now but I am going to go ahead and let this beautiful old pile of bricks retain its dignity and just say it used to be the Como shops.
I also need to point out that this picture was taken at pretty much the nicest weather moment in the entire ride. I was about 20 miles in, congratulating myself on being out there, on being right about the weather. My riding costume in this weather features not a single square centimeter of bare flesh, I am totally covered. My usual first impression of rain is something hitting me, either in the hand or face. With no bare skin available for that water skin collision, I was able to convince myself shortly after taking the photo that even though the pavement kind of looked like it had started to rain, it really wasn't raining. Finally the round wet spots on my jacket sleeve convinced me that I should sprint for home.
But I rode and completed the full mileage. In so doing I achieved the for me huge riding milestone that I really, really didn't want to let get away. Today I rode for the 183rd time this year. When the final leaf falls off this year's calendar I will have ridden on more than one-half of the days of this year. I am cyclist, hear me roar. I admit there is one more milestone out there that I really want but today's milestone is the one I wanted the most.
After morning gloom and mist the sun for some unknown reason reasserted the dominance that the sun is always capable of. It was 51 shortly after noon, 14 degrees above the daily average high temperature. Every one of these rides is a ride that was not planned for back when a temperature of 14 degrees above the daily average high temperature would have triggered one of those old people and people with respiratory problems should stay inside alerts. It was, yet again, a spectacularly nice day out there particularly when one considers the calendar.
Noon+1:30 EG51 CBNR WG62. The message board on the cattle barn which includes the time and temperature display has been shut down, no report.
Here's some things I saw. These people in Falcon Heights have a couple of really nice Adirondack chairs but it seems to me that they are being aggressively optimistic about November to still have them out in the front yard.I do note that their neighbors in the second house down have a not quite as nice set of Adirondack chairs and share the aggressive optimism.
I didn't expect to get back over here again this year but wind conditions took me into Minneapolis where I rode to the end of the West River Road. I discovered one of the main reasons the street ends where it does, a discovery not possible during the foliage season when all of this is invisible from this side of the tracks.I still don't know exactly what they are doing over there but even without knowing I can deduce that it isn't conducive to a through street.
Where have all the hippies gone? There used to be lots of hippies in Minneapolis, even as late as 1991.This strikes me as another one of those it was cool when it happened and the sign was probably considered appropriate kind of signs, like that 1990 Earth Day sign on Nicollet Island. Eighteen and a half years later? Not so much. Where HAVE all those hippies gone? The trees seem to be flourishing.
Fox Soccer Channel is now referring to the Paris hand ball as the "Henry DOUBLE hand ball." Henry himself admits that the ball touched his hand but that his responsibility is to play on, that he is "not the ref". I saw a referee interviewed today who took the position that the referee's job would be much easier if players didn't cheat. And yes, he used the word cheat.
Today's mileage milestone is over 400 miles for the month of November. The season isn't over until it snows, a possibility now being bandied about for as early as Tuesday. No ride tomorrow, early hockey.
Today I followed protocol again, adhering to the popular aphorism that if you fall off you should get back on. Note: I decided to embed this as opposed to recent use of a link with a request to right click and open in a new tab. I do this in recognition that not everyone is going to want to listen to Chumabawamba.
I was a little unsure but with temperatures again above normal I wanted to ride. I landed heavily on my side yesterday but it isn't actually my shoulder that was injured, it is my upper chest, as if I jammed the whole thing over. I set out and discovered that I was indeed tender but that there wasn't any real pain.
I wanted to ride because I am entering rare air in both number of rides and total mileage ridden. I would really like to get a few more rides in and this late in the season doesn't seem like a good time to pass on a rideable day. The weather forecast is for drizzle developing overnight which means that tomorrow is likely to be wet. As we all know, cold is one thing, cold and wet is two things. Saturday we have early hockey. That means likely two of the next three days off anyway, I decided that today I wanted to ride.
Yesterday I did not encounter another bicyclist until about mile 8. After that I saw quite a few others. Today I met my first bicyclist at about mile 17 and saw not a single additional rider, not even children riding in the driveway. My take is that yesterday people looked out the window and saw sunshine and decided that it was warm enough for a bike ride. Once they got out there they discovered that it was COLD. Those same people looked out the window today and stayed inside. It was a nearly private ride.
The sun is very low in the sky producing very unusual shadows. This is the scene in my driveway at just very shortly after noon, sun as high in the sky as it is going to get.Shadows stretching all the way across the cul de sac.
A cold, clear November day once again producing spectacular scenery. Here is a tree I have ridden past a couple of times recently but today I stopped to get the still golden tree top backed by the cerulean blue sky.That tree is about a block away from where I took the picture. I had to backtrack and ride around the block to try to get a proper identification. As usual, keeping in mind the caveat trees not my field, I am confident that it is a willow.
Nice blue sky, eh?
I rode out to Vadnais with the idea of getting a photo of my tire tracks at the scene of the accident. I got the picture but it is insufficiently dramatic so I won't post it. I did discover that those ducks are mostly still there but they have divided up into two groups, one of which was quite close to shore down by the parking area.I felt OK I guess but the absolute truth is that after I left Vadnais I again today followed the path blazed yesterday of minimum hills. My shoulder is tender.
Today's mileage milestone is that I have ridden more miles in November than I rode in October. This has never happened before. As with yesterday's record number of miles for the month, this accomplishment in and of itself is not that startling considering what I had to overcome to do it. What is a little startling is that these monthly totals are being achieved on the 17th and 18th of the month.
This evening in Paris Ireland defeated France 1-0 in World Cup Qualifying. The result meant that each team won one of the two head to head games, each scored one goal, and each scored an away from home goal. As a result the game went to overtime at Stade de France. In what the BBC characterized as an absolute robbery, France scored the decisive goal off a pass following a clear hand ball. The game is over, there is no appeal, France advances to the World Cup.
I was watching the game on a "tubes" stream. Webstreaming is a little hit and miss. I had the video all right but the audio was in Japanese. I watched the video and when things looked darkest for France the camera kept finding the sitting together heroes of France's 1998 World Cup championship, Zinedine Zidane and Fabien Barthez.
The Pioneer Press weather page reports that the average high temperature for today is now only 39. I really don't think I will be riding in the 30s so I am going to need above average temperatures.
Today I got it. It was about 42 when I started and with the sun fully out there was a promise of some additional warming while I was out. It is worth noting that these clear, crisp November days make up what they lack in warmth with spectacular beauty. Today was a day when it was well worth being outside on a bicycle.
I rode out to the north again. The archery deer hunt is going on at the lakes out there but I knew that one can ride on the paved road through Vadnais. I went all the way to Highway 96, the usual north limit of that ride, then bypassed the closed off Sucker Lake by finding a way through some previously unridden in neighborhoods on residential streets and dived down the road to Lake Vadnais. Just inside the gate I exchanged brief pleasantries with three camouflage wearing hunting types who were perched on the open tailgate of a facing the wrong direction pickup truck, presumably taking a break from the strenuous task of waiting for Bambi.
Once I got down to the lake I discovered that there was some sort of major duck convention going on at the north end of the lake.They are congregated near where the creek from Sucker enters the lake, but other than that I have no explanation for why they are all gathered there.
I suspect everyone saw this one coming from a mile away (including me). Freed from the shackles of daily labor and further assisted by spectacular November weather I today rode the miles necessary to establish a new personal record for most miles ridden in the month of November during the modern era. Pushed aside at last is the 2002 total (one of the two years when I rode all the way through the winter). I say modern era because I have owned a bicycle continuously since 1972 but only started riding a lot (and keeping track of the mileage) after we became empty nesters when Wireless went off to college. I say modern era fully aware that there isn't any need to do so as I never, ever, rode that many miles on the bicycle I owned prior to the modern era.
Another thing I have taken to saying during the modern era is that I fall off my bicycle about once a year. Actually I am pretty sure I hadn't fallen off for over two years, I think the last time was on Spyglass in Michigan. It had been a long, long time since I fell off this bicycle. I am sure you have all noted the use of the past tense.
I had an event last week where I should have fallen off but didn't and today the bicycling gods got even. I pulled off the pavement at Vadnais to the road shoulder to frame today's photo. The ground felt and looked firm so when I turned to go back on the road I just gave a big push on the pedal and aimed myself towards the only a few feet away piece of tarmac. The ground wasn't firm, my front wheel went sideways instead of forward, shifting my balance to the side of the bike where I was clipped in. Down goes Gino.
I followed protocol. First I laid there for a while, taking inventory. Once down there just isn't any reason to pop right back up. I hit pretty hard, my shoulder hurt and I felt slightly breathless. Inventory went OK though so I proceeded to step 2: Get the bicycle off me with that awkward no leverage side lift to get the frame far enough off the ground to allow me to unclip from the pedal. Step 3, stand up and take inventory again. My shoulder hurts. Eventually I was plenty OK to start brushing myself off and gradually I started feeling better, maybe even well enough to ride. Actually at 12 miles from home I wasn't going to have a choice about whether I felt well enough to ride. But I decided that I did feel OK so I started for home.
Roseville is hilly, one of the reasons I really like riding here. I usually enjoy the hills and parts of all of my regular rides are in those rides for the opportunity provided to tackle one hill or another. As soon as I started riding away from Lake Vadnais today I started planning my route home to avoid the hills to the maximum extent possible.
But a 12 mile ride is plenty of time to work out the kinks. I wouldn't say that I am completely pain free here, after all, I fell off my bike. But everything seems to be working, no sharp or shooting pains. I think I lived through another one and can begin again to say, now more accurately than before, that I fall off my bicycle about once a year.
Probably no one will believe this, but this is not a deliberate attempt to steal an idea. Really. I was on my way out of the garage for today's ride and stopped for this photo before I even got on the bicycle.This is interesting to me because that is a perspective we never get on the religious symbol at the top of the pyramid shaped church nearby. Something about the late in the season low sun angle and brighter than expected sun light caused the sunlight to reflect directly back to me and made the cross stand out in a way I have never seen before.
It was warm enough, five or so degrees above the average high, as already noted, the sun was out, breezes were fairly light and from the NE. I headed north.
That archery deer hunt is going on at the usual turnaround for the north ride so I improvised. I rode on the multi-use path leading from Highway 96 south into the wetland park area between Snail and Grass Lakes. I personally think it is more a part of Snail than Grass, but I don't actually know, maybe it has its own identity. If I were still employed I could check the Protected Waters Inventory. I do know that this swamp is part of Snail Lake Regional Park. I don't ride paths very often because of the extremely dangerous conditions one usually finds there (pedestrians and roller bladers). Today the walking the dog and jogging traffic was pretty low and reasonably attentive. Here is a view from one of the benches along the east side of the swamp looking across at a two bench viewing area on the northwest side. It looks like pretty good deer habitat to me but apparently the area is too small to support a hunt. I know it is large enough to support a deer population, I have seen them there at least a few times.Shortly after resuming riding I met a truck coming the other way on the path. Yup, the pedestrians were totally reasonable but there was a county worker out doing something or another which involved driving his pickup around the swamp on the six foot wide path. Actually, it wasn't too bad, he was alert to the presence of others and moved as far to the side as a pickup can move on a six foot path to let me pass.
I rode down through Grass Lake on the dirt path through that part of the park, making one of my very, very rare forays off the pavement on my road bike. Up to this point in the ride I had not yet seen another bicyclist (Monday is my new favorite day). The first one I saw was a road bike coming towards me just having come off the dirt portion of Grass Lake. OK then, thus reassured I continued on.
When I rode past County Cycles yesterday I noticed that they were closed. I assumed this was because they have begun winter business hours. As I rode past today I pulled into the parking lot to see if I could confirm this.Winter business hours, closed on Sunday, out riding when it isn't too cold. Nice new America's bike in the window, they sell a lot of Treks.
If the bike shop says winter hours, I guess it is winter hours. The season must be very near to being over.
But I got in a ride again today. The first picture with this post was taken before I got on my bicycle before leaving the garage. These two were taken after I got off my bicycle before putting the bicycle back into the garage.
I have tried to get this picture a few times and on the 18th time that this display appeared on my odometer I have finally been successful.There is a slight discrepancy between the two odometer displays. I didn't ride another inch, just clicked the cyclocomputer over to the next display.Prepare for the possibility of a deluge. If conditions allow more riding, the likely result is more mileage posts, lots more mileage posts.
The detour is over at Dead Man's Curve. It seems apparent to me that the bridge work was done by the railroad and that there will now need to be street work done by the city. The pavement underneath the bridge is completely unchanged although the center line has been restriped. More evident from the restriping than it was from the previous configuration is that this bit of business calls for a double turn underneath a double overpass. Dead Man's Curve.I mostly rode around the neighborhood looking for piles of leaves more impressive than ours intending to photograph the really big piles. Eventually I settled for a photograph of the most impressive pile.That's us folks. Thanks again to Wireless for her invaluable assistance in the process.
I am back on my own computer. The whole restore process went quite a bit better than I expected. It turns out that the software installation on the hard drive of this computer includes a partitioned recovery section. I had the disc to start the process but quickly learned that I didn't even need the disc, that I could have started recovery from the start menu with an F11. The recovery was remarkably fast, Windows reloaded in about 15 minutes, including that it reloaded not just the original installation Windows XP, it reloaded the Service Pack 2 that I had previously installed. The 61 Gateway installed applications took a bit longer to install but I am pretty much done. I saved my pictures and my music to the new external hard drive and saved my Firefox bookmarks to a flash drive. They have all been recovered and I am like totally up and running, including my bookmarks. Of the things I was worried about, I have some Windows Updates installing right now but McAfee reinstalled without any difficulty and is back up to full capacity already. I do have to install some other software, I need Corel before my BikeLog will be fully operational. I also need my scanner software and I will need to download Picasa and Google Earth again.
I also need to wait a bit while the Windows Updates install before I can add the photos for today, but other than that . . .
Today's ride took me to 4,390 miles for the year. Divide that by 365 and I have ridden 12 miles for each and every day of the year. It has been a while since I reached this milestone. I may comment more when I get my BikeLog up to full operational status.
Three more days of pretty persistent rain means that at least one record was set here. It hasn't been officially confirmed yet but based on what the weather channel was reporting on the first of the most recent three day monsoon this October set an all time record for most rain in October since they began keeping track. The bicycling went less well.
The storm finally moved off to the northeast and behind it came just what one should expect at this time of year, clear and COLD. As morning would up I still wasn't sure what my exercise intentions were but I was encouraged by the fact that it looked pretty nice on our deck.We have lots of leaves and until November 10 before they have to be rounded up in front of the house for municipal leaf pick up. It looked nice out there but it was 39 when I headed out the door.
It is interesting every year how the person acclimated to riding in 80 degree temperatures gradually adapts to the cold. At first 55 seems too cold, but eventually the layers start to be added and 55 isn't so bad. The same thing happens at 50 and at 45 and finally at 40. Today I had to keep the balaclava pulled up whenever I was headed into the strong west wind (and most of the time when I was headed north) but it was OK, I was comfortable. I added my windstopper shoe covers over my feet to the costume today, I am nearly out of things to add. When I passed a time and temperature sign on the way home it displayed a 41, practically balmy.
The sun stayed out for about the first 15 miles and it was pretty enough while the sun shone. Here is a corner of Island Lake Park, a tiny bit of the lake is visible left foreground.That radio tower looks like it is rooted in the park but actually it is at least a half mile beyond, over in the Grass Lake park part of these interconnected wetlands.
It has rained so much that Snail Lake is filling back up. The lake has no streams running into it and is fed only by run off from its watershed. It had fallen to very low levels earlier this year.It still isn't quite high enough to actually launch a boat from this ramp but you could now at least wade out into the lake from the edge of the concrete, a significant improvement.
I completed the full ride, all the way out to the Rainbow in Shoreview on Highway 96 and Hodgson Road and back through Sucker Lake and Lake Vadnais. I think those must be oak trees on the eastern short of Vadnais, those are the only numerous tree around here still having enough foliage left to produce a display of color.It was a no other adult recreational bicyclist ride, something of a surprise to me. It is the last day of daylight time, a day when the obsessed (such as myself) need to ride, one of the very last days when there will be daylight available to ride in for those who are employed. I saw three other people on bicycles but they were all children riding on the sidewalk. I saw not a single other adult.
By the time I arrived home the clouds had closed back in and a heavy overcast currently reigns. It looks and feels like November out there and by golly, I guess it almost is.
I set no mileage records this month even though, as suggested by GRider, the likelihood that I might is greatly enhanced by the fact that I keep track of lots of things. I did avoid riding the fewest miles ever in October but none of those other Octobers were Octobers with the most rain ever for the month of October.
I rode my bicycle today, it was cold, it was good.
It was swell while it lasted but not unexpectedly in this year of no October the perfect light disappeared yesterday with the sun and did not reappear today. Instead a heavy overcast descended, much remindful, yet again, of November.
But it was 48 and I ride at 48. I rode over to Dead Man's Curve to get a photo from the north side to complement yesterday's south side image.Fairly obviously, the beautiful sky blue is gone. It may not be obvious to those unfamiliar with the spot but it is obvious to me that the new configuration, while still double curved, will be considerably less on each of the two curves. In addition, the bank on the left of this photo has been considerably cut back. This will enormously improve visibility particularly when approaching from the far side. This will be good for automobile traffic, what the effect on bicycling will be remains to be seen. While the pavement will be wider, visibility will be improved and the curves will be diminished, all of those things mean that the cars will be going faster. This is not necessarily a good thing for me when I am on my primary means of transportation.
And this picture should prove what my primary means of transportation is. Thanks to GFR for directing me to the software to make the photo collage. It was still a bit of hassle as I tried to learn how to make the software do what I wanted but eventually I got at least what I needed (recommended action is right click, open in a new tab). The collage displays my bicycle odometer and my automobile odometer at the conclusion of today's ride.LOOK takes the lead.
Since June 15 I have added 1,062 miles to the total on my automobile odometer. In the same period I have added 2,296 miles to my bicycle odometer.
LOOK takes the lead.
I have ridden several times this year when conditions were a little questionable and have not been punished for doing so. I haven't been caught in the rain for a couple of years. Today I was about 8 miles from home when I finally had to admit to myself that the heavy overcast and high humidity had morphed into mist.
So I had to ride home with the streets turning wet. I was still lucky though, my punishment for riding in questionable conditions ended up being a small punishment. It never really rained. To be perfectly honest though, at a couple of points in the dash for home it was really pretty heavy mist. The streets were damp but without enough water to be thrown up by the tires. So the bicycle stayed pretty dry. The real issue was that the mist was intense enough to begin to create vision issues on my eye protection. Heavy mist indeed.
As I neared home I rode out from under the worst of the misting allowing my anxiety level to diminish and allowing me to complete the full two hour ride before entering the garage. From here in the warm and dry I pronounce the whole experience to have been like totally completely acceptable.
All images and all content not otherwise subject to copyright are copyright 2007 and each following year up to and including 2024 by Gzmoohoo and may not be reproduced or republished by any means without written authorization.
Besides, taking stuff without permission is bad karma.
I found this one at Northrup Street and Folwell Avenue in the part of Falcon Heights sometimes referred to as University Grove. I haven't seen this particular expression before.
In addition to being able to subtract my mileage (but from what he wonders) I was rewarded for being out by coming across this deal. I had never seen one of these in person before and frankly, I wasn't even sure what it was at first.
The key for me in making the identification was that this thing has a Minnesota boat license number on its front end (Do you call it a "bow" when it is a hovercraft?).
