Bicycling reminder

I was out for a walk today.  Shortly after finishing block 17 of 24 I met another walker, a person unfamiliar to me.  She had a large black dog on a leash which meant mostly I was keeping an eye on the dog and not really interacting with the other human being.

She was Minnesota Nice though and offered a cheery "Hello" distracting me from the dog. "Hello", I responded.

"Not riding your bike today?", she continued.

I was within a half mile or so of home. I have taken about 1,500 bicycle rides over the past several years each ride beginning in my garage so it is no surprise that my neighbors have noticed. I didn't know her, she knew me.

It was a reminder that this is a bicycle blog.

My most recent bicycling activity was preliminary work on BikeLog13, the Quattro file I maintain for recording ride mileage and comments. Mostly the preliminary work is to save a copy of BikeLog12 as BikeLog13, then update the desktop shortcut, make sure the cumulative totals are correct for going forward, change all of the 2012s to 2013s, stuff like that. I noticed in BikeLog12 that last year's first ride was made on March 11, the second consecutive day of last March when the high temperature for the day was 66F. Both of those readings were record highs for those dates but still . . .

That's only three weeks away.

And here's what a successful weekend looks like

5-0 on Friday night, 6-2 this afternoon. The photo is from Friday night when the team clinched the regular season championship. That puny little trophy in front of the jubilant team is the physical reward for compiling the best record in the league this season. We all know that the real rewards are internal and personal to the players who participated in this achievement.

The other deal is that I have discovered very clear evidence of recent alien activity in the neighborhood. And that seems like sorts big news to me.

There are definitely bright white, oh, I don't know, modules? out there on the flat space. If you don't find this worrisome then maybe you should rethink your whole belief system about the space time continuum and the theory of relativity. It looks pretty sketchy to me.

I had to do a little bit of hunting around but the tin foil hats have been located and it looks to me like we are out of danger. Unless of course the aliens have already taken over our bodies and the entity making this post is Qw*xo)#j from the Andromeda galaxy.

Who really knows?

At long last, who really knows?

What it looks like when your favorite team gets three-quarters of the front page of the local newspaper's sports section

The attention is well deserved and it truly is about time.

The answer to the question posed in the headline is, of course, that it is too early to tell for sure. They have to play the rest of the games before any answer is possible. As some who know me will know it is my position that if you want to go undefeated you have to win ALL of your games.

Here's a link to the actual story from the newspaper's website. There is a nice video included on the website.

For good measure, here is a link to the team's captains appearance on local TV this morning. The video in the background while Bethany and Megan are talking includes highlights from last year's national championship game including the game (and championship) winning goal on a penalty shot by Emily West preceded by just a glimpse of the final and clinching goal by Sarah Erickson.

And a link to a recent article on Minnesota Public Radio.

Anyone who hasn't seen them play yet, shame on you.

The game tonight is against UMD at 6:07, probably too late for that (although you can catch it streamed live on the interweb). No one has an excuse for missing tomorrow's game at 2:30. At the very least you can catch it on cable on the BigTen Network.

Best ever?

Wouldn't that be fun?

Never cared even the slightest little bit about Carrie Underwood before

But if the Wilson sisters are willing to share a stage and one of their greatest hits with her it must be OK.

Ann is really good though, don't you agree? The skinny blonde girl is good, very good, but she just can't quite hit the same notes in quite the same way that Ann is hitting them.

One morning one of us, having no black, used blue instead, and Impressionism was born.

Along with a bunch of detective novels I have been reading "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" by David McCullough.

A couple of years ago I had an opportunity to spend as much time as I wanted standing without the interference of a crowd about a foot and a half in front of the painting "Jeunes filles au Piano" (Girls at the Piano) by Pierre Auguste Renoir during an exhibition of that famous work at "Paris au temps des Impressionistes, Les Chefs-d'oeuvre du musée d’Orsay à l'Hôtel de Ville", Paris in the time of the Impressionists, Masterpieces from the Orsay Museum at City Hall, in Paris.

In the McCullough book Renoir is quoted as explaining, "One morning one of us, having no black, used blue instead, and Impressionism was born."

No temperature at all

Monday's high temperature of -2F marked the first time in just over four years that the high temperature of the day was below zero. No particular problem for me though, a person coming off the flu doesn't really spend any time outdoors anyway. It has been around 70 pretty much all the time where I have been spending my time. But just for fun today I caught a glimpse of the indoor outdoor thermometer.

As you can plainly see, there is no outdoor temperature at all.

No last name necessary

Too many batting records to fit on his Hall of Fame plaque.

TWO statues in his honor outside his team's home stadium in Saint Louis. The original statue carries this inscription: "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

A major league career spanning 22 years and including 24 All Star games. Yup, 24 in 22 years.

3,630 hits, of which 1,815 came in games at home, 1,815 in games on the road.

Dodgers pitching great Preacher Roe on how he pitched to Stan the Man: "I throw him four wide ones and then I try to pick him off first base."

Died Saturday, at home, of natural causes at age 92.

Rest in peace.