Island Lake travelogue

OOTNDITHOD.

I got started a bit earlier today for reasons which are of complete insignificance to a bicycling blog.  I rode out towards Island Lake again.  Despite the opinion of TOPWLH I am not totally satisfied with that riding down the trail shot from yesterday.  The sunlit portion of the trail seems overexposed to me.  I have lots of retouching tools available, maybe I will try them.  But fundamentally I am a Luddite and I thought I could go out there again and work with the light conditions to achieve a better exposure.  Leaving a bit earlier was part of the plan, be there at a different time when the sun angle is slightly different.

Here is the entrance to the park.  It seems quite rural but the position where I was standing to take this photo was with my back to and within about 3 feet of one of the more heavily traveled arterial streets out in that part of the world.

Just across the street is a giant supermarket (Cub if you must know) and a strip mall.  Just off to my left is a SuperTarget.

That little wooden bridge/walkway bumps over a wetland where today there was running water heading into a drain just behind LOOK.

It is uphill for a ways and then just over the crest the trail descends back down to swamp level, standing water both left and right here.  I like the way they have left the blow down in place.

I tried from a little bit farther back for mostly the same shot as yesterday.  I am pleased but not yet satisfied.  I may have to open Picasa or something.

Today I rode all the way around into the park and took the reverse of yesterday's photo.  That's the fishing dock that I featured yesterday as seen from the other side of the lake.

Maybe just to the right of the dock you can make out the figure of a solitary individual.  That was an old guy standing down by the boat landing with a fly rod.

Fly rod on an urban lake seemed like a charming anachronism to me.  I rode back over that way and he really wasn't terribly skilled although as someone who once tried it, that is NOT easy and he was WAY better than I ever was.

The final bit of news from today is related to that street that I was so worried about when out with the GRider last weekend.

I said something would work itself out and something has.  The new pavement is already in.  Everyone loves new pavement.

There were cars driving on it, I could have ridden my bicycle on it but I decided not to.  Maybe you can see or maybe not but that pavement is the first layer of two.  Where the new pavement buts up against the old pavement there in the foreground you can perhaps see that there is still an inch or so dropoff from old to new.  Further, that pavement is SO new that it seems likely to me that it is still a tiny bit sticky.

It was such a beautiful day that the last thing I wanted to do was spend several minutes cleaning little tiny oil coated pebbles off my tires.

Then there is this little bit of interesting minutiae from what I did after the thing that induced me to ride early.

There is a dollar store at the strip mall where I had to go this afternoon.  I discovered last winter that this particular dollar store has our brand.  In addition, the nearby supermarkets either do NOT have our brand or if they do have it they only have it in small packages (3 rolls? really?) or in the "soft" variation.  At the dollar store this product is 12 rolls for $10.  Last winter I could not find a single supermarket that offered this exact product at less than $1 per roll.  As long as the dollar store has inventory they have a customer.

OOTNDITHOD.

Wildlife news

When I set out yesterday I had been promised by the local weather channel that it was a bit windy and that I should expect west winds at 10 to 20mph.  That's brisk but manageable if one keeps riding directly into the wind to a minimum.  It was only after being nearly blown off my bicycle while on the return home that I did a recheck of the weather channel.  The wind report now said gusts of 33mph.  If I had seen that before leaving the house I doubt that I would have.

Today promised light winds from the west.  I left the house expecting to ride over into the biggest city around for perhaps a visit to Lake of the Isles.

Instead I found that riding towards the west was a bit difficult.  I decided to make it instead a north south route.  There are a couple of flags in parking lots as I approach the Snelling Avenue crossing.  It felt like and the flags confirmed that the wind was indeed mostly west but also just a tiny bit north.

So naturally I rode out to Lake Vadnais.  Which is about as far from Lake of the Isles as it is possible for me to be without increasing the distance of my rides.  Which I am not yet ready to do.  Maybe sometime this summer but not yet.

I took a slightly different route out there though as I am a little put off by the make over of the intersection of Victoria and County Road E where that new apartment building is going up on the shore of Island Lake.  There is now a roadway straight through where there didn't used to be and it further it now feels like the amount of pavement safely claimable by a bicyclist has diminished.  One has to be a bit more assertive now which is always iffy for a 16 pound bicycle in the presence of multi-ton motor vehicles.

I deviated over towards the west and rode instead around the other lobe of the lake, a route which leads me along this path through the woods.

It's pretty in there and like most multi-use trails it is plenty safe during the week.  I met one other old timer just at the entrance as he was walking out and then didn't see another soul along the course of the path.  That seems to me better than playing chicken with SUVs.

The path eventually leads out to a neighborhood where you ride for two blocks on the street and then you plunge back into the woods.  This is the fishing dock on the western lobe of Island Lake.  That's Island Lake School down at the far end and Island Lake park off the the left a bit.

There wasn't anyone fishing at this moment, obviously, but as I rode out towards the parking lot I met a guy carrying a rod and a tackle box.  So I met one person at the entrance and one person at the exit.  No one's feelings were bruised in either instance.

I rode on out to the usual turn around and started back through Sucker Lake.  In years past I have often photographed broken car window glass in the parking lot at the south end of that part of the park.  I haven't seen any broken glass yet this year despite the fact that I look every time.

It occurred to me that a smash and grab small time thief would be better served by moving his operations to the new top of the lake parking lot at Lake Vadnais.  It is within a half mile, is farther from the street and bonus, requires negotiating around a slight curve as one travels from the main street to the parking lot.  Any police presence would have to be actually down in the parking lot to be effective, there isn't any possible way for someone just passing by on the main street to notice anything down there.

I am still a little conflicted about the new Vadnais layout.  Totally removing cars from the lake has resulted in a loss of caution from the pedestrians along the lake.  And because it is such a nice spot and because it is such a good deal for pedestrians to be able to use this lake shore without having to worry about cars, well, maybe this place is like some of the more urban lakes where they have two paths.  Pedestrians and bicycles are NOT a good mix no matter what urban recreation planners think.

And then there is what they have done down at the bottom end of the lake.  This used to be a really nice tree shaded dirt shoreline.  There were several huge cottonwoods but they were all removed.  I suppose that this is a big improvement for the resource but it renders what was a charming spot pretty much charmless.

The wildlife news from Lake Vadnais today is mixed.  Most prominently there has recently been a very significant dragon fly hatch out there.  Those largish black dive bombers were out in great numbers today.  It actually made riding through there feel dangerous.  At first I swerved a bit and waved my arms trying to dodge the big black bombers.  Eventually I deflected five or six of them (there were A LOT) including a couple off my helmet and one off the frame of my sunglasses.  I discovered that they may LOOK big but there isn't much actual mass there and furthermore they don't have any of the heavy armor that certain other of their flying insect buddies do.  You can pretty much bounce a dragon fly and go ahead and ignore the consequences because there are likely to be none.

At least that was my conclusion today.  I am pretty sure next time I will be swerving and waving.

Then on the way past Lake Owasso Bambi's mom stopped for a photo opp.

I haven't had a photo of this particular species of vermin for quite a while as usually they are at least a little bit shy.

This one walked right towards me, took a good long look and then effortlessly bounded over that fence and away.  She wasn't the slightest bit impressed by me.

Bambi's mom is obviously plenty used to having people around as should be quite evident from the surroundings in which she has today allowed herself to be photographed.  That's very, very clearly the suburbs, not the wilderness.

Vermin.

More tree news

I got a text flash flood warning on the phone yesterday.  I guess cell phone text warnings is a public service and I am plenty OK with this unexpected to me aspect of modern technology.  The things is that the flash flood warning was for the south metro where apparently they had 4 or 5 inches of rain.  We only had a couple and only one relatively short period when I would even characterize the rain as "hard".

On the other hand, today the wind blew hard.

Gusts of 33mph.

Wind that strong changes weather conditions fairly rapidly.  It was sunny when I left the house but some fairly threatening clouds closed in quite soon thereafter.  I looped, something I wanted to do anyway because with that peevishly powerful (nice alliteration, eh?) wind out of the west I wanted to ride the steepish downhill available when I start out towards the west from where I live.  The westward loop downhill into the wind allowed me to make the turn and then to ride uphill going east at about 18mph.  Uphill at 18 is a pretty nice pace for me.  It makes me feel fast.

Today was pretty near peak for certain trees to be shedding the seeds that as a child we always called helicopters.  I don't know the particular species of maple that sheds these seeds but I know they are maples.

Here's a look up into one of the trees which is still holding more helicopters than most of the others.

Those things are still entertaining to watch as they spiral down from the trees.  Warning though, helicopters are sharp on the business end.  At bicycle speed it is a good idea to be wearing eye protection.  Which, of course, I was.

This is what the street looked like on hundreds of yards of today's route.

Just riding along crunching through the seeds.

When I got home as I was removing my helmet one helicopter that had lodged in one of the vents of my helmet spun out and helicoptered down to the floor.

And look at the new growth on BNT. 

TOPWLH has taken to what she refers to as gently massaging the branches.  I know, she is a looney but she is our looney and we approve of even the looniness.  She grew impatient with the rate at which the brown needles were falling off the branches and discovered that touching the dead needles makes them fall to the ground.

So would a good strong wind.  Like today.

We both find it very encouraging to note the overwhelming profusion of new growth.  We haven't had a white pine in the yard before, watching and learning is lots of fun.

TOPWLH opens, street closes

TOPWLH requested that her bicycle be prepared for Saturday as she wishes to resume riding.  I did only the minimum, pumping the tires but I suspect I should also probably lube the chain.  In any case pumping the tires was sufficient to get her onto the road today.  If the chain ends up requiring something additional there is a whole summer to get to that.  She also appears to need new bar tape.

It has gotten too hot too fast here.  Yesterday and today were sufficiently oppressive to induce consideration of air conditioning.  I actually clicked it on once this afternoon just to hear that reassuring start up but then opened the doors and windows instead.  Too hot too fast leads to turbulent weather and our share today was a 70 percent chance of rain.

It was mostly sunny, hot and muggy and noon but we started out anyway despite the 70 percent warning.  We had to, her Bianchi was ready and it wasn't actually raining.  We had progressed fewer than two miles when I pulled into the driveway of the State Fair for an examination of the sky.  A cloud had rolled across the sky and we were no longer riding in the sun.  I pointed to one cloud mass and then another and pronounced that those were both rain and they were coming our way.

We circled part way into the Fairgrounds still nominally outbound but I could feel the air changing.  We turned back for home.

We didn't go directly home as it wasn't actually raining yet.  We rode on lots of neighborhood streets within a couple of miles of home as TOPWLH got her first look of the year at a lot more of the neighborhood than you can observe while walking.

I was surprised to find that this road has now been completely de-paved.

That's our street up on the other side of the county highway/main street at the end of our block.  There has been a lot of sewer work going on over there but complete removal of the pavement caught me by surprise.  That street is now clearly closed to road bicycles although I am sure mountain bikers, comfort bikers and cycle-cross could all probably still have a go.

I ride road and I count on that street a lot for the various getting back home with the mileage I want loops.  That means that this is a problem.

Something will work itself out.

She was the first to actually feel a raindrop but that's as it should be, she was riding behind me, therefore to my west and slightly south for a weather system approaching from the southwest.  I took her word for it and immediately turned back and pretty much immediately also felt the misty beginnings.

We got in 8 miles, the last half mile or so in conditions which had proceeded beyond misty to unmistakable rain, light rain, but rain.  Even so, 8 miles is probably an OK first ride.

I sat in the house for a while with my costume still on and eventually a brightening of the sky convinced me to try again.  I got an additional 2 miles for a total of 10 before a restarting of the weather event drove me back to my garage just barely ahead of the onset of the heavy stuff.

Sometimes a short ride is the only ride you are going to get, today was one of those days.

Confluence

I recently decided somewhat late in the three year CLE cycle that I actually like having my license riding around my life in my wallet. Until now I had pretty much decided to let the license go but as time grew short I decided that I can afford the costs, I like having the license. I launched into a series of webcasts which concluded today but which have drawn me within easy range of the CLE credits I need to keep my license. One of the first webcasts that I viewed was Legal Career Makeover, the guy talked a lot about how attorneys aged 65 or even 75 had plenty of time to still contribute.  Okay, maybe, but mainly I decided I like having the license, that to me, being a licensed but retired attorney makes ME feel better than I suspect I would feel just being retired and no longer licensed.  So I have been doing webcasts.  One thing that has occurred is that a lot of these webcasts begin at noon. That means my rides have been kicking off more afternoonish than noonish. What this meant today is that I was out there in mad dogs and Englishmen territory. Today was a ride a bit too far on a day a bit too warm.

Very pervasive and very persistent pavement issues on Roselawn have influenced me to alter my path away from home.  I now loop all the way over to Larpenteur and cut back through something called Maple Knoll Drive before locating my preferred crossing of the very daunting Snelling Avenue at Garden. This loop increases the getting away from home distance by almost a mile.

As a result when today I rode to what in most years past has been one of my very common destinations I discovered that if I rode all the way to my desired turn around that I was going to have too many miles.  Riding along, hot day, making decisions, I ended up riding all the way there anyway.  The deciding factor?  There is a public source of water (aka water fountain) at the confluence of the two big rivers.

And I needed that water.  The distance was the same but I had to hydrate at a 3 bottle rate (did I mention it was hot?).  Because I only carry 2 bottles there clearly would have been a problem without that public source of water.  We mostly all have experienced a little dehydration disorientation at some point and I for one prefer not to do that anymore if I can possibly avoid it.

As reported previously that may not be the technical confluence. That is the Mississippi in the foreground, Pike Island center and the backwater separating Pike Island from the mainland leading back towards the top right between the land masses. The usual spot for recognition of the confluence is at the foot of Pike Island, another mile and a half or so downstream. But that backwater is a merger of waters from the Minnesota and the Mississippi, maybe not the recognized confluence but clearly the first mixture of waters. Considering the fact that I had already ridden too far and it was too hot, I am calling that good.

Here's an artsy shot straight down the side of the gorge from the overlook.

Me neither, I have no idea what any of that stuff is. Except artsy.  Mostly the trees are taller than you might expect just standing there on the overlook.  That foliage right next to you looking much like the shrub in your yard is probably the top of a tree about 50 feet tall.

One of the things about adding loops near the beginning of the ride is that it is fairly easy to knock one of those loops off on the return.  The wind was SSE anyway so I cut off the ride on the return along Como towards the east and my preferred route along Hamline Avenue and cut through the Fairgrounds instead.

See, a little too late in the day and a little too warm.  That's also a previously seldom seen here view of the Cattle Barn made possible by a later in the day sun angle.

We just watched episode 11 of season 6 of The Sopranos, the episode when Mama Soprano takes a vacation with her friend Ro (Tony is too busy with family matters to accompany her) to Paris. We love Paris.

Nice

Very nice actually.

Now that we have a few days of 80 today's just a tiny bit more than 80 didn't seem so hot.  The humidity was diminished today which always helps but it was sunny, mild, pretty easy winds, a very nice day for a bicycle ride.

Thursday early afternoon is a pretty good window for visiting the Falls.  There were only a couple of hundred people in the park instead of the weekend couple of thousand.  My photography today was accomplished standing next to a family of four who were conversing in not English.  They may in fact have some fluency in the local tongue (certainly better than my French I suspect) but they were carrying on in their native language.  It made me feel kind of international, a feeling I like.

With fewer people in the park I had plenty of time to concentrate on settings and composition.

So that one's a bit better, two waterfalls in less than a week.

Missed something

Well, it appears to be pretty much late June or early July out there now.  We skipped right past May again this year and it now develops that we also skipped past the peak of the flowering tree season.

Today I headed out hoping to document two of my favorite flowering shrub locations, the four pink blossom crab apples in a square in a yard at the top of the hill (regular fellow riders and perhaps even the very occasional will recognize this spot), and the red white red threesome with the utility pole in the midst a little bit further along.  I was a little disappointed to find that both of those locations are quite severely past prime.  I suspect that the big rainstorm of the night before last knocked those petals off the blooms.

There are still quite a few trees left that are at peak or perhaps even just nearing peak.

One of the things I dearly love about the flowering trees is the opportunity which usually presents itself to ride under one of those trees while the petals are abandoning ship in profusion, riding through a petal "blizzard".

I fear I may have missed that this year.

But it was very pretty out there today, a tiny bit too warm, a nice day for a bicycle ride.