First day of the Fair

I did ride yesterday and for I think the second time ever on a day when I rode I did not post. It was way overcast which meant that I never really had good lighting conditions for a photo and it was way overcast threatening rain which meant that I stayed pretty close to home meaning I didn't ride anywhere new and interesting AND it was way overcast and I found I didn't have much of anything to add to whatever content already existed on the internet.

Today, however, new day, new deal.

I got out for a late morning ride, hitting this spot at about 10:45am. This is the view north along Snelling from approximately Garden.From Garden it is still a half mile until the first opportunity to turn into the Fairgrounds. The traffic is at a crawl, mostly at a dead stop, both lanes full all the way back past Roselawn to at least the HarMar light. That means both lanes backed up full for a mile or more.

The interesting thing to me is that if you asked the people in the cars they would respond nearly unanimously that they left early to get to the Fair before the crowds. As a point of information, the Fairgrounds are open from 6am daily with nearly ever building and exposition available by 9am. It would be my position that arriving at 11am is not exactly leaving early.

I went the other direction.

I turn around at Lake Vadnais a lot. It is the right distance away from home to make the ride distance that I want and it is always pretty. The route varies at least a bit each time I do it, but the truth is that I turn around at Lake Vadnais a lot.

Whose woods these are I think I know.I have passed that sign many, many times and may even have posted it before. Today seemed like a good time to post it again. Vadnais is really pretty and one of the main reasons it is so pretty is that the lake is surrounded by a nearly 100 year old stand of mostly red pine. All hail John H. Allison.

But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

These are, of course, lines from Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. They seemed somehow appropriate today when I rode down to the lake. Vadnais was really pretty again today but today the lake lived up to the reputation of the dog days of August. Today the lake ambience was dominated by the late summer algae bloom. The lake smelled bad. Summer's almost gone, soon we will be watching

. . . the woods fill up with snow.

I wasn't going to photograph the lake to punish it for smelling so bad but on weekdays the wildlife is considerably less spooked than it is on weekends. The egret refused to acknowledge my presence and instead posed for a photo down in the corner of the lake.Last night I went out into the field next to my house and watched as three separate little kids football teams practiced and two of the three held a brief scrimmage against each other. Long ago I myself, with the assistance of most importantly Nagel, but also the Mayor, Yanker, Mr. Wold, and my brother Jim, coached little kids football. I used to say that my favorite opponent was any team coached by a father. Give Nagel and I a team coached by a father for an opponent and we were pretty uniformly successful. The father coaches usually only see their own son, they don't see the football TEAM and the way that the TEAM is playing. I watched practice last night, and Nagel, if you're listening, we could do it again. One team was lined up in a double wing T running plays against a 4-4. The only thing any of the three fathers standing behind the offensive team as coaches ever, EVER commented on after any of the plays was the play of the backs. Meanwhile no effort was made on any of the plays to create a scheme by which an advantage would be gained on the LINE, no effort was made to exploit any advantage they may have had up front. All any of the fathers could see was whether or not the back went wide enough on the attempted sweep. Further more, for crying out loud, they had their biggest kids lined up at GUARD.

Here's what I would do, sorry if this seems like Finnish. I would go to an unbalanced line, two backs behind the QB with a strong side wingback. I would double team the defensive tackle on the strong side with my strong side tackle (who by the way would be MY biggest kid), and the strong side end, quarterback turn and hand off to the weak side halfback, have the wingback kick out the widest defender (might be an end, might be a linebacker, might be a cornerback depending on how the defense is lined up) and have the strong side halfback and the quarterback lead into the hole looking for the player assigned by the defense the other team is playing to defend that gap, most likely a linebacker but maybe an end. That gives us five blockers for the three defensive players we are likely to encounter and if we get those three people blocked we put our halfback, presumably one of our two best athletes, into a one on one with the defensive safety, almost never one of the other team's best athletes. As a coaching decision I am willing to accept that the success or failure of our team's offense will hinge on the outcome of encounters between these two athletes. I expect that our team will win those encounters often enough to make our offense a success. Then if we can just stop the other team with some regularity we will win the games most of the time.

What I propose is what is known in the game as running off tackle. When Nagel and I coached we didn't have lots of fancy plays but I guarantee that if we had the personnel to be able to do anything at all the thing that we could do was run off tackle to our strong side. We always tried to have a strong side. I believe it was stated by Woodrow Hayes or maybe it was Paul Bryant but in either case the statement is enthusiastically endorsed by both Nagel and myself: If you don't have a strong side you probably don't have a side. We always endeavored to have a strong side.

A team that can run off tackle is a team that is usually very difficult to beat. I know, Nagel knows, we have been there, done that. It looks like it would be easy to do again. Apparently some things never change.