Riding after lunch

It was plenty nice enough to ride yesterday, if a bit chilly, but I had a conflict with our primary winter pastime, women's hockey. In light of the fact that the weather has been almost wintry (well, wintry for, say Missouri) I had no difficulty chosing the hockey. And the hockey was good as who in Minnesota (other than the vastly outnumbered UMD fans) doesn't enjoy it when the Gophers complete a weekend sweep of the Dogs.

But today the only thing standing between me and a bicycle ride was the always extremely important football. But by noon the temperature was already in the 50s, promising to go 60s and I was completely willing to read about the football later.

So right after lunch I headed out. Here's what lunch looked like when we placed it on the table for a posed shot. The truth is that we carried the food downstairs and consumed it in front of the TV so that I did get at least a smallish dose of the extremely important football.As predicted in the comments section to the most recent previous post on this blog, the return of warm weather was accompanied by a strong south wind.

The day was nice but I haven't ridden much lately and the wind was strong. It was hard. But good. I got my average miles per day for the month of October back above 10, perhaps a 300 mile month is still in the cards. 300 would be a satisfying number as it would be plenty enough to eliminate the possibility of any measurement or statistical error and would fully certify 2009 as another year in which I rode 4,000 miles.

A south wind means a ride towards the city and of late I have fallen into the habit of taking a lap of the Fairgrounds on the outward leg of such rides. Today they had the Minnesota Beef Expo down in the barn area and a street rodders swap meet up in the opposite corner of the grounds. The swap meet brought these guys to the Fair yet again.The blue one is an Oldsmobile of indeterminate vintage (at least to me). The red deal is a Ford body with a small block Chevy V-8 engine. I believe a Chevy engine in a Ford body authenticates the credentials of the owner of that vehicle as a guy who belongs at a swap meet. Anyone willing to swap a Chevy V-8 into an antique Ford is a swapper for sure.

I rode down towards the University and eventually turned around on Nicollet Island. I came upon this example of faded past glory.In 1991 I am sure there were people who still cared deeply about Earth Day 1990. I suspect it would be pretty difficult to locate very many such people today. And yet the sign lingers on, hubris perhaps, Earth Day forever.