A bicycle race was cancelled yesterday in Minnesota

As reported yesterday in VeloNews:

'After the Minnesota state patrol received reports of nearby tornadoes from the national weather service, stage 3 of the Nature Valley Grand Prix was brought to a halt 14 miles in. After a quick debate, chief commissaire Bonnie Walker made the call to cancel the stage just outside Cannon Falls, Minnesota."

This indicates to ME that I wasn't making up yesterday's powerful winds. It was a very serious storm in parts of Minnesota with authorities now pointing to a death toll of 3. The city of Wadena and areas near Kiester suffered major damage.

The winds were so strong that I may have injured myself. Today I have a twinge in my left calf, a completely new bicycling experience.

Today I came across another example not very far from home of someone with too much spare time. This is a backyard roller coaster in Saint Anthony Park.There are electrical cords on the ground indicating that this thing may be, in fact, a working scale model. It appears to be completely constructed from pieces from a children's toy building set. I am no longer in that stage of life so I cannot identify the brand of the toys.

Today I reaped, pretty much for the first time, a benefit from my attempts to follow FC Nantes in the French Ligue 2. It is a very tiny benefit but it is at least something. At the World Cup Algeria brought on a late substitute in the game against England, Djamal Abdoun. I thought he looked familiar and indeed, he is. In addition to the Algerian national team Abdoun is one the best players currently on the FC Nantes squad. As I say, not much, but at least something. He didn't do much but at one point he did have his shorts tugged on in the England penalty area. In what I think is an interesting detail, the FC Nantes website gives Abdoun's nationality as French.

Algeria 0:0 England, Slovenia now threatens to win the Group. No one, and I mean no one outside of Slovenia, expected that.

Here is today's photo, Eglise Saint Roch.This was our "local" stone church, only a short block or so from our apartment. The first stone of this church was laid by Louis XIV in 1653. The Marquis_de_Sade was married there on May 17, 1763.

At the time of the French Revolution, the centrally located church was the scene of many events including many shootings. There are still visible bullet holes on the facade.

That church was on our way to the boulangerie. There was very often a guy with a dog on the steps. He had a couple of small containers into which each morning he would be encouraging passersby to deposit coins. Most afternoons the same containers would have some dry dog food. I personally thought it was good multiple use of resources.