Haunting

I missed out on a ride yesterday on a completely rideable day. But the city vacuum truck crew is coming this week to collect our leaves. This made it necessary to amass the annual giant leaf pile. The task is now performed by out Team of Three (To3). The junior member, the most indispensable of the team, is only available on weekends so Saturday it was. The entire process is being photo documented by the To3JM, she is good at stuff like that. But today as I set out to ride I got a picture of the pile.Some may notice that the pile is not up to the monumental standards of some other year's piles. This year the leaves were still a little bit wet so they settled in the pile instead of fluffing up. Furthermore, when Hurricane Minnesota blew through here last week it may well have taken quite a few of our leaves and made them into someone else's leaves. We made do with what we still had.

Today's SSE wind led me down into the big city. Here is something you cannot see when the leaves are on the trees. There is a gorge leading down from Saint Thomas towards the river from near the intersection of the Cretin and River Road. There is a very small creek flowing at the bottom of the gorge which eventually goes over something called Bridal Veil Falls. This is the headwaters of the creek, a spring about 50 yards or so from the top end of the gorge.It's right in the middle of the picture where the browns of the leaves turn to a darker color. That's naturally flowing water. It isn't a culvert, it doesn't come out of a pipe, that's water rising up out of the ground. A spring is something you just don't actually come across very often in an urban environment.

I was riding up Summit hoping to reach the traditional turn point for having a SE tailwind on the way home. I had just passed the Our Lady of Peace School of Law when a person walking to her car hailed me by name. Being hailed while riding is also something that doesn't happen very often. It was a friend from work (some observers may remember that I used to have a job) so I stopped and wheeled around and went back. We were warbling fair weather as when . . . wait, never mind, we were having a pleasant conversation about this and that when another person ambling down the sidewalk turned out to be my brother, thereby completing a hat trick of unusual occurrences.

It is the last day of the month and as is the usual case, it is time to review the numbers. I often say that it is a seven month bicycle season here but the truth is that until today the highest total mileage ridden in each of the months was more than 600 for only six of those months. For a variety of reasons, but mostly October's failing light and falling temperatures, the total mileage for the month just never got up to the totals for the other months. Until today.

So today I established a new record for the month, 614 miles. The "golden year", the total for a mythical year in which the record for each month is ridden is now up to 6,335.91 miles. That's about 950 miles more than the actual most miles ever ridden in a year, 2003, the year of the second Ride Across Minnesota (the Ortonville to Red Wing trip).

So here's a new feature, a quiz.

Guess which of the following is the most haunted building in Saint Paul. Click on the link to the one you think is the actual haunted house. If you are correct you will receive confirmation. If you are not correct you will see an entertaining video of a bicycle crash.

A. Governor's MansionB. Griggs MansionC. Cathedral of Saint PaulD. State CapitolThere, that was fun, don't you think?

Don't forget, tomorrow is the first day of National Blog Every Day for a Month Month.

Growing season ends

We never did get a killing frost this year. Instead the growing season has ended on a more definitive note with temperatures last night descending into the mid-20s F. I am pretty confident that that should do it.

Today was only a little warmer than yesterday but the wind died down a bit and out I went.

Temperatures had risen only to the mid-40s by midday. Such temperatues required a few costume adjustments but I have the gear. Long sleeved base layer, heavyweight long sleeved jersey, winter gloves (well, late fall and early spring gloves, for winter I have, obviously, mittens), and balaclava.

The wind was south and I must admit that the south wind of October 29 is not that gentle southern breeze I went on about earlier in the year. At 44 even a south wind has a very distinct bite. I started with the balaclava in my pocket but my chin soon became painfully cold so I found the lee of the Fairgrounds grandstand and made the further adjustment.

EG:44 CB:44 AOWG:53.

I noted this very Minnesota signal of the oncoming winter.I have I think almost annually photographed the hockey boards at Langford Park but I am quite sure this is the first time I have seen the crew putting them up. Today's the day. Fortunately, it is still another month at least until they can flood, about six weeks until they expect to have reasonably good ice. I know, long ago I was responsible for producing one of those hockey rinks, I have done it. The school Christmas vacation is when your ice gets good, not until.

I headed down into the city at least partly to get this photo of the Saint Anthony Park Branch Library. I have published this library before but the other time I did so there were leaves on the trees. This time there is a much better view of the library building.As previously noted, and as cited in my American Institute of Architects Guide to the Twin Cities, this is one of three classically inspired neighborhood libraries constructed in the City of Saint Paul in 1916-17. The other two, also designed by the then city architect are Riverview and Arlington. All three are among the more than 2,500 libraries nationwide financed under a program sponsored by U.S. Steel titan Andrew Carnegie, including the library that I frequented as a child, the Carnegie Public Library of Coleraine, Minnesota. These three in Saint Paul are among the last Carnegie libraries to be built, Carnegie died in 1919.

According to the guide, the building has an enormously dignified and gracious presence in the community. It evokes timeless images of classicism yet manages to be inviting at the same time. Design features include ionic pilasters, arches, a simple parapet and strict symmetry and is cited as an excellent example of how even small public buildings of this period could achieve monumental effect.

On the front lawn they have one of those plazas with bricks engraved with messages from various sponsors. I was tipped off by a person who has listened to a lot of the same music that I have listened to in my lifetime to the presence of one brick that might have some special interest for a person with my musical tastes. The tipster notes that this brick has already been published elsewhere on the internet so there is no general need to alert the media.Here's why we find that brick interesting:

The Allman Brothers Band live at Fillmore East September 23, 1970, performing "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", widely considered one of their greatest pieces (this is also considered one of their greatest performances). This is the band before the deaths of leader Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley, both in motorcycle accidents and both within the next couple of years after this performance.

On the way home I rode through the Saint Paul campus.Tonight in Dijon FC Nantes has played yet another nil nil tie. In some ways they are on a decent streak, now not having lost for 6 games. The problem, of course, is that the last 4 of those 6 are ties. FC Nantes loses ground in the table and now sits ninth.

Mileage note

No bicycling today. No bicycling yesterday. No bicycling Tuesday. Only half a ride on Monday. No bicycling Sunday.

In reverse order: Sunday rain.

Monday: Just got home in time before it rained.

Tuesday: Extremely high winds and rain.

Wednesday: Extremely high winds and rain.

Today: Still pretty windy and although I may ride in 40 degrees before the end of the year, today it was too big a change from what I have ridden in recently. I decided it was too cold

Today is October 28 and one year ago on October 28, I posted this photo collage.That was the day the mileage total on my bicycle odometer exceeded the mileage on my automobile odometer. Bicycle plus 15. I also note that it was 50 degrees inside my car that day, The car was parked in my garage but even so I think this clearly indicates that last October 28 was a warmer day than today.

Today I performed an odometer mileage update.

Automobile: 20,376. That's 2,755 miles for this year.

I have not ridden that same bicycle as much as in years past, the current total is 19,764. Car takes the lead. Or does it?

Bicycle miles: 234 on the Axis, 306 on my Michigan bicycle, 2,002 on NewLOOK and 19,764 minus 17,636 or 2,128 for FirstLOOK, that all adds up to 4,670 bicycle miles.

Bicycles rule by 1,915 miles.

Of course, I have no job.

Not my banana

I like Monday riding so much that even though conditions screamed "rain", I gave it a try anyway. I got back into the garage before I got wet but the mist had become so thick that I was 10 miles short of the distance I wanted to ride.

I saw this on the side of the road and circled back to see if it was what my first glimpse led me to believe it was.It was! It was not my banana. Cigarette butt and edge of the pavement for authenticity. It looks pretty good but I left it there.

Maybe I should have claimed it. The roadside banana looks a bit better than the one I ended up eating after I got home.H-R-Bek (not a noted consumer of fresh fruit and vegetables) for scale.

Andrew Zimmern note: It is only the peel that looks bizarre. The banana inside the peel was just absolutely fine.

Screaming for Vengeance

I can feel the end of the season coming. This is a bicycle blog but I do continue to post stuff even after bicycling has ceased for the year. I can feel that coming as I begin to feel the urge to post extraneous material.

Besides, it rained today, no bicycling.

The whole suggestion of a Green Day cover of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" got me to just some mental wandering about and I thought of my personal favorite incongruous cover of a fairly well known song.

Most people of a certain age will recall Joan Baez's 1975 song "Diamonds and Rust". The song is about Joan receiving an out of the blue phone call and then musing about the person who has made the call. Everyone assumes that the caller is Bob Dylan and the time frame of the musing that Joan does is the time when she was already famous and Bob was just becoming famous. I see from the Wikipedia article that Joan now openly acknowledges that the song is about Bob.

Anyone pining for Joan's rendition can follow this link.

It's a folk song, a very soft semi-rocker, acoustic, very, very Joan Baez.

My favorite incongruous cover is by Judas Priest, an act from the other end of the musical performance scale. Apparently it is so widely popular with Priest fans that it is now a staple of nearly every performance by the group.

Here then, not "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" by Green Day, but a live performance at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennesee, on December 12, 1982, on their Screaming for Vengeance tour, the Judas Priest version of "Diamonds and Rust:

Correction

I had only a 40 percent chance of getting in a ride today. The street seemed damp this morning and the overcast never lifted. But a little after noon Wireless called looking for TOPWLH and seemed surprised to find me at home, wondering why I WASN'T out riding. TOPWLH had suggested earlier that it was warm enough and that it seemed possible but until Wireless spurred me to action I was actually watching Gopher Nation.

How did that come out anyway?

The overcast never lifted and I didn't get any photographs. Conditions seemed OK when I started but after a while I decided I was too far from home and wanted to get back within 5 miles of home so that I could make a dash for it if necessary. There are still lots of ways to compile mileage while maintaining proximity to home.

After a while I wanted to be within 3 miles of home, then even that seemed dangerously far away. I wanted to be on the home side of Snelling. So that's where I ended up and when the sprinkles finally arrived I was 0.2 miles from completing the full two hour ride.

Today 40 percent was enough.

As pointed out by a budding prune juice consumer, that song I was reminded of the other day really wasn't a Peter, Paul and Mary song at all although they eventually did do a recording of it. It was actually the Kingston Trio. There is an interesting side story that I did not know. The Kingston Trio (remember them? anyone under 50 remember them?) recorded the song in 1961 and believing it to be a traditional folk song, they claimed authorship. The real composers gave them notice of their error. The Trio had their name removed and credited the true composers, Pete Seeger who composed the first three verses in 1955 and had made a record including the song, and Joe Hickerson who added additional verses in 1960.

Here then, Pete Seeger, a great American hero, performing his composition in 1991 (at the age of 72):

Special thanks to Marz for pointing out the error.

September returns

With apologies to absolutely no one, what a drag having to work today must have been. After yesterday's too cold, today's temperatures went even past just right up to pleasantly overdone. I had a Guest Rider and we went out with bare legs, a last gasp appearance of shorts.

I think 68 is the official number right now which IS pretty spectacular but it was not absolutely completely perfect. The wind was a bit above ideal but we endeavored to persevere and it was a very, very nice ride. I know I thought last week might be my last trip to the falls but today was nice enough to make the ride another time.

I wore my Euskatel jersey again today and when we arrived at the Falls a nice lady walked right up to me and asked who I rode for. Surely you jest, I THOUGHT. But I was also wearing my orange helmet (Rabobank) and maybe the color coordination caused a brief moment of confusion.

But her name wasn't Shirley and she seemed disappointed when I told her it was just a jersey from a Euro team that I picked up somewhere. I am in good shape for my age, but after all, my age! I did not ever expect to be mistaken for a competitive bicycle racer but I guess it was a compliment.

The sun is now low in the sky even in early afternoon and the sun angle was completely wrong for a photo from the traditional next to falls spot at the time we were there. We hung around and observed a wedding party being photographed and then trundled down to the end of the gorge to get the alternative shot.We took the preferred route home from the Falls, the Minneapolis side and came across this display next to the back side of the soccer field at Minnehaha Academy.The extraordinary October continues, we are going to keep on trying to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

This evening in Nantes, FC Nantes has played a 1-1 draw with Chateauroux and continue to tread water in the general classification. A tie is better than a loss but if FC Nantes is to fulfill their ambitions they MUST begin to take full points in these home games.

Where have all the bikers gone?

The inspiration for today's post is a Peter, Paul and Mary song. Anyone remember them? That is, anyone under 50 remember them?

It was 49, yes that is forty-nine degrees when I headed out the door today. It warmed a bit while I was riding but I don't think it is going to make the average for the day, which unhappily has now descended to 56. So it was cold.

Shortly after starting out I rode past the corn field up on the corner. The harvest is more or less complete on the corner plot (one of several on that nearly quarter section of the agricultural experimentation center). As detailed the other day, the field was combined instead of chopped this year. I don't know who else will notice but it sticks out like a sore thumb for me that combining leaves a much larger amount of what farmer types call "plant residue" in the field. It looks to me like there is too much stuff there for them to continue to do minimum tillage planting in the spring. I think they are going to have to plow.Why they left those three rows of corn in place is beyond me. In real agricultural settings you see that sometimes (and as recommended by the DNR) as cover and forage for pheasants. I have seen most of the wildlife that frequents this community and even though some neighbors down the street have chickens, I have not seen pheasants here.

Every time a new threshhold of coldness is reached another large group of bicyclists decide that the season is over and are never seen again until what they consider spring (and what for me is about two months into the new season). I thought for a while that today I might not see a single other human on a bicycle. I didn't see any at all for a long time after starting out and in fact, I saw so few that I was prepared to state that I saw no others based on the fact that it was going to be almost true anyway and why spoil a good story just for the sake of the truth? But I saw so few that a recitation of the ones I did see might prove my point better than saying that I saw none.

I was easily able to keep track. The first I saw was a little girl on a 16 inch wheel bicycle, looking like the training wheels had just come off. She wobbled the 10 or 15 feet from one driveway to a next door neighbor's driveway as I approached on a very lightly traveled residential street.

Then I saw a young woman on a comfort bike riding down her driveway as I approached. I believe she probably went onto the street although I turned left and did not actually witness any such thing.

Then I saw a mother and her tiny daughter at the end of their driveway. This little girl still had the training wheels on and may not have actually cleared the end of the driveway. Mama had ridden all the way across the street and was circling back to check on her girl. I don't think they were going to ride very far.

And that was it for the first 21 miles.

I really thought that would be it. But just after mile 21 I met my first confirmed recreational cyclist, a young man with full gear including helmet and tights, riding a white Specialized road bike. By then it was getting to be nearly 3pm and with school starting to let out I started to see some student commuters. The first had one of those plastic milk crate storage boxes lashed to a rack on her rear wheel. That plastic box screams commuter. The next one I met had those after market plastic fenders and a back pack. Two more with back packs and I was nearly home.

I stopped to get an updated photo of the construction at the new softball field.The concerns that I had before construction began that this might be only a token gesture have disappeared. This is going to be a softball field fully equal to the baseball field used by the boys on local high school team. Funny what the threat of a Title IX complaint will produce.

I headed on towards home and literally two blocks from home I saw a second and final recreational rider, out on his road bike along Fairview. So that's it. Ten, really six or seven actually, it's hard to count mama and the two little girls, and four of those I did see were commuters. Where the bikers have gone I do not know, but I do know that they have gone. Actually, I do know where they have gone. Inside.

It was cold, I have the gear. The sun was out, it was pretty. The wind was greatly diminished from yesterday's near gale, it was very manageable. Nice day, nice ride.

Punitive

It was stone grey overcast when I started today. When I finished it was clear as a bell, sunny and gorgeous. I was at about the half way mark when the change occurred.When a change that great occurs in cloud coverage it is a good bet that there has been an air mass change. When one bunch of air moves out and another bunch moves in it is normal for there to be a lot of wind. Today's wind was extreme. I found it to be probably the hardest wind to ride in since the TRAM ride to Saint Peter, if anyone remembers that. It was always warm enough and mostly pretty pleasant except for the wind. The wind . . .

But I was stopped reading this sign at the rain garden. That's the place where the cardinal flowers grow, although the growing season is over at this particular garden.A cheerful fellow in approximately my peer age group (although maybe a little not) was walking past and inquired if I was having a good ride. I replied that it was very windy, but, yes, the ride was good.

4,004

The marathon which began March 14 with 16 miles ridden on the Axis today reached its goal. With 26 miles ridden on FirstLOOK, I have now ridden 4,004 miles so far this calendar year.

A post focusing on a number is going to have to have some supporting numbers.

155th day with a ride.

9th straight year with at least 4,000 miles.

The date of achieving this goal this year is the median of the 9 years, 4 times earlier, 4 times later.

Of 4,004 miles, 2,002 ridden on NewLOOK, 1,462 on FirstLOOK, 306 on the Michigan bicycle, and 234 on the Axis.

One important goal is still out there and a couple of things that would be fun. The important goal is 160 rides.

Today I discovered the corn harvest going on over at the corner. This year is interesting in that every other year in at least the time I have been taking photographs over there the main harvest process has been to chop the corn. Chopping produces silage. This year the corn is being combined. This produces corn in kernel form.

Here is a quintessential corn combining photo, the grain being off loaded from the harvester into the grain hauler.I had to ride off road onto the gravel and grass roads over there to get a decent vantage point for the photograph. A caution, there have been an extremely large number of geese over there lately. However, a stick and 25 more miles of riding remedied the mess on my tires.

And here is the other quintessential corn combining photo. Almost always you will come to a point where the bin on board the harvester is full but the hauling truck has not returned to the field. The corn is dumped on the ground and other equipment is used to get it up and into the hauler.They better get that stuff up before night fall because it won't take those geese long to find it.

I rode down into Minneapolis and ended up following the trail from the Greenway bridge down along the light rail to downtown. I had never been there before so it was all new. There are a couple of interesting vistas never previously seen by me. The trail dropped me off near the Metrodome and I found my way over to the Stone Arch Bridge to start the trek back towards home.

I have photographed the Falls a couple of times this year but this is the first time in my memory that the door to the lock was open.That's the lock on the left.

It was southwest wind and that bridge is south and west of where I live. On the way home I felt plenty strong.

Another nice day, temperatures slightly above average, a little overcast at the start but clearing to become sunny by the end of the ride.

Swans return

With apologies to all who still have jobs, Monday is the best day of the week. With double apologies, the reason is that all of you go to work. 55, sunny and light winds makes for a really, really nice day if you are dressed properly for those conditions. I was more than willing to share but the truth is there weren't very many others out there enjoying today's wonderful late October day.

Here's an illustration of why Monday works so well for me. The giant inflatable jack-o'-lantern that I featured yesterday has proprietors that work. When I rode past it today the air pump was not operating and the yard ornament was lying in an orange pile in that front yard. Next door to that event was the display that I really wanted to post yesterday. The problem was yesterday the people who own this house were home, the garage door was open and they were putzing around in the yard. I didn't feel like introducing myself and asking for permission to photograph this nice pumpkin display.So instead I went past again today and today the homeowners are at work. I just stopped at the end of the driveway and photographed at my leisure. Which is pretty much what I have plenty of, leisure. That's six pumpkins and some orange flowers. There is another small pumpkin in the yard to make seven but its placement at the end of that brick wall moved it out of the shot that I wanted.

I rode all the way out to Highway 96 today and as I started on the return trip past the series of lakes I discovered large white birds at Sucker Lake. It was new white birds, however, not the ones that hung around out there all summer. This is the fall large white birds, the swans. There were seven on Sucker Lake. I got a couple of pictures that I was pretty satisfied with but when I came to lake Vadnais I found these two posing with a gaggle of geese just off the parking lot point.All that talk about a freeze that I heard from Sven yesterday turned out to be incorrect. Instead we had a small amount of moisture on the street this morning indicating a light overnight sprinkle. The yard display flowers are still doing just fine. This one is quite near to those grasses featured a couple of days ago with GRider.It was the GRider who pointed these out to me. I still haven't found the one she described to me but I have found another one. There is a new trend in Halloween yard decorations, really, really large cobwebs. Yard size cobwebs.In France this evening FC Nantes has travelled to Boulogne and played another nil nil draw. A nil nil draw on the road is a significantly better result than the nil nil draw they played at home last Friday. In any case, FC Nantes holds its place in the table. They play again on Friday, home to fourth place Chateauroux. Meanwhile Team France has scored matching 2-0 home victories over Romania and Luxembourg in qualifying matches for Euro 2012. France holds first place in Group D after having played four of ten qualifying matches. To this point there have been no controversial hand balls in any of France's matches.

Has Brewster been fired yet?

I was watching one of the weather channels and Sven kept explaining that it was only a few degrees below average, that it feels really cold because the temperature has been so much above average for the last couple of weeks.

Oh! Well, thanks Sven, that's good information.

I had to get an early start again today. I did that yesterday because of hockey, I did it today because of the extremely important football coming up in about an hour. That makes two football references so far both of which may only be intelligible to locals.

Here's a third, they should fire Maturi too.

With an early start it was still cool and it was the coldest temperatures I have ridden in since spring, only in the low 50s. But the sun was out, winds were light from the south and all in all, it was very pleasant. It reminded me of why October is my favorite month.

I may have posted this particular yard display last year but if I did it still seems worthy of a replay.You can see from the photo that it was sunny at this point. I was pretty unprepared for what happened about an hour and a half into the ride. I HAD noticed that it didn't look as nice to the west over Minneapolis as it looked where I was but I wasn't tracking what was going on over there. Suddenly what seemed without warning, boom, overcast. The wind shifted around to the north and this wind a little bite to it. I went from a really pretty October day to one that looked and felt like November.

Sven in his discussion of lower temperatures also pointed out that there is a strong possibility of frost for tonight and that delicate plants should be covered if you want to try to prolong their lives. With that in mind I got what may be the last photo of the flowering plants in the often featured yard near home.Some of them are orange, a couple seem pretty much purple (another football reference), a smattering of white, a nice selection of pink, and off to the left there some yellow with reddish orange centers. I am able to identify none of the above but I suspect, based on the yard, that they are more likely native than exotic. The photo also demonstrates that the sun is no longer out.

I think they should hire the University of South Dakota football coach.

Early start

We had hockey this afternoon so if we were going to ride we had to get out the door early. We started at 11am, which at this time of year is too early in the day for the sun to have warmed the air very much.

But it wasn't too bad, 58 or so when we started and warming thoughout. The problem today was, again, strong wind.

But we did ride. I was leading a sneak around to avoid an early face down of the north wind. We ended up passing through the Farm campus and got a good look at the cows in fall.But eventually we got headed into the wind and it WAS strong. We rode out to the Shoreview water tower but it was HARD. Along the way we passed this display which seems to me to be all three food groups.You got your reddish oak, your turning to orange maple, and your green spruce. The only thing missing is chocolate.

There are a couple of places along the route where people have planted exotic grasses. This is the time of year when that investment pays off with spectacular displays.GRider for scale.

I was checking my bike log for something or another and noticed a couple of reasons why last October I rode so few miles. It snowed on October 10, again on October 12, and yet again on October 15. None of those snows stayed more than a few hours and permanent snow cover did not come until December 1.

Orange biker strikes again

The average high temperature for this date has reached another milestone, it is now only 59. And October has arrived. I think that today we have reached the average and may even struggle a degree or two above it but it has been a day long struggle. Today I rode out into temperatures in the 50s. It's OK, I have the gear. I was not really the orange biker today, the cool day brought out long sleeved jersey, light jacket and tights.

Even worse is the daylight situation. We now have only 11 hours between sunrise at 7:28am and sunset at 6:28pm. I miss the light more than I miss the heat. I have the gear but I have no way to compensate for too much night.

Too much night. It is depressing.

I rode off into light and variable winds which seemed to me to be mostly south and east and headed down into the big city.

I found flowers again, this time in front of the University President's residence, outside the white picket fence along the River Road. I don't know what they are. Maybe someone else does.I rode on intending to view the river confluence to observe what it looked like now with the flood receded. However the closer I got to the Ford Parkway bridge to Minneapolis the more I considered that this might well be my last opportunity of the season to visit the Falls.Isnt' that sad? Already thinking about lasts of the year.

There is still a lot of water coming over the edge and the Falls looks interesting viewed through the now bare trees.

I have decided to address the tepid response to the world premier of my first ever shot with a cheap point and shoot camera video. Of comments noted to this point, three comments by two separate commenters do not even address this momentous event, choosing instead to focus on the horticultural content of the post. Of the two who have commented, one, the Guest Rider gives a vigorous thumbs up, pronouncing herself to be amused (I assume that's what is indicated by "laugh out loud"). The other who comments on the video, the Master Gardener, gives an equally strong statement, a firm thumbs down, averring that her lifespan has been irrevocably and regrettably diminished by the act of watching the video.

Well!

Well, OK then.

In hopes of redemption I present the video of the year as shot by Wireless and posted on her blog but never previously featured on my blog. Here, from Paris, I present the bells of Notre Dame.

I hope everyone feels better now.

She is better at that than I am. She even posted hers to YouTube.

Tonight in Nantes FC Nantes played a nil nil draw with Ligue 2 co-leader Tours FC. With 10 games now having been played the season is one-fourth complete. With today's result FC Nantes falls to seventh in the table, passed by LeMans. They play again Monday.

EG:59 CB:56 AOWG:68

Other news from the Fairgrounds, currently underway is the Star of North antique show, running Friday through Sunday at the Education building.

Orange biker

I broke a basic rule today. It is perhaps THE most basic rule. I always start the ride into the wind, preferring to do the hardest work while I am fresh and preferring to ride the homeward leg in a direction where I feel really strong.

Today the wind was WSW when I left my house but two forecasters predicted a 5pm wind direction of NNW. I took a chance that they were right and that the wind shift would occur while I was out there.

I started out feeling really strong but after less than four miles I was suddenly confronted with a quite strong head wind. For the rest of the ride both north and west were directions which were a bit difficult. Lucky for me after about nine more miles I turned and thereafter rode mostly south.

We have had frost here but not a killing frost. As a result the decorative plantings in the yards of very many people are still flourishing. I didn't get an orange tree today but I did get these really swell orange flowers.Those flowers are next to the homeowner's garage. As I was lining up the shot the garage door began to rise and soon the old couple backed their car out. We ended up having a quite pleasant exchange. They were mostly happy to have such clear evidence of someone else enjoying the visual benefits of their growing season long labor.

I enjoyed that so much that I stopped at another yard in Shoreview.This one also has a second flower bed there across the driveway. I noticed as I started to ride away that the second one has a couple of rose bushes.

Very pretty.

I also inadvertently learned something today. I know this isn't hard but I hadn't done it before. Sometimes my camera settings get jostled while the camera rides in my jersey pocket. Today I didn't notice what the camera was set on until it failed to execute a shutter click when I pressed the shutter release button. I turned the camera up to get a look at what the problem might be. It should be obvious what setting I had.

I hope you all enjoy viewing that as much as I enjoyed taking it.

The timing of my rides recently is such that as I near home I often pass through an intersection being patrolled by the Brimhall School Patrol. Recently they have taken to calling out to me. A couple of weeks ago when I was wearing my Paris souvenir jersey they called out to "Uncle Sam" but I replied to them as I went past "France". One of the kids called out that explained why the jersey said "Paris" on it. Today I was wearing my Euskaltel jersey.

"Hey, what's up orange biker?"

Return of gear

Today was yet another above average day. It was sunny and bright with temperatures above average for this date. However, the cooler air that arrived yesterday meant temperatures only 5 degrees above average in place of the recent run of 15 to 20 degrees above average. It was still very nice.

The morning newspaper reports that the average high for the date has now descended to 60. That means that for most of the day it is expectable that the temperatures be in the 50s. Today when I set out to ride it was 61 and I completed my ride in the low mid-60s (that's code for 63 or 64).

Cooler temperatures means that the near summer costume I have been donning the past several days had to give way to something more suitable for, oh say, late September. This means base layer, arm warmers and my lightest weight jacket. I have the gear, I had no issues, I was totally comfortable.

I rode north but changed the route a bit. Instead of turning and going down the hill along the south side of Snail Lake I continued along Victoria intending to navigate along the west and eventually the north side of the lake. I have done that a couple of times before, usually in the opposite direction, but it is pretty unfamiliar turf.

LOOK what we found:I think that one gets special mention because of the orange bush standing nearby.

But the major discovery is that there is a major apple orchard out there. I did not know that.Nineteen varieties grown and sold on site. I looked it up on Google maps and got the photo view and it is definitely major. So that's something new learned today.

I made it all the way to Highway 96, the usual limit of northern rides and then turned back through Snail Lake Park. I came upon this double reminder notice.That is a reminder that fall is waning and it is a reminder that urban deer are vermin.

I headed off road for the second time this year on my road bike and took the dirt road through Grass Lake. I thought this oak tree was pretty.It hasn't rained much this fall so the road was hard and dry and presented no problems.

It was a gorgeous looking day highlighted by the return of gear.

Limit approaches

The deal with settling on photographing orange leaves as a theme is a self limiting proposition. Obviously the process that produces the orange leaves is very shortly going to produce bare branches. Temperatures today started the slide back towards normal. The morning forecast called for a 20 percent chance of rain. However, by noon the leading edge of the clouds thought to be the source of that rain had broken apart and never arrived here. The air mass that the clouds were leading did arrive. It was 71 when I set out and in a new development, the air got cooler while I was out.

With the end on my mind I set out today still determined to think orange. I had a specific spot in Shoreview in mind, a spot which I hoped would still display orange. I got my photo out there but have not used it for reasons soon to be revealed.

Instead I got this, what your yard looks like if you have several mature oak trees.I am going to go with red for that color, not orange. It is a pretty nice spot. When I took the photo I was standing under another set of mature oaks which decorate the yard across the street.

But not to despair, even as many of the orange are leaving there are still a few in the process of arriving.That's in northwest Roseville only a couple of blocks from this outrageously elaborate yard display.I was all the way back within the city limits of Saint Paul when I came upon a mountain ash. I was seeking this photo in Shoreview but that tree out there was way, way past peak including having already dropped most of its fruit. Here we are near Como Park, orange fruit.But just to prove how close we are to the end here is Albert Street looking north from Frankson in Saint Paul.Mostly bare, but one block over is Sheldon, the street lined with oaks. Sheldon hasn't even started to change color.It was very windy today, almost too windy. It was hard and because the air cooled during the ride. It was cold on the into the wind legs. I ended up being just slightly under dressed. I hate that.

EG:68 CB:65! AOWG:75? Weather channel said 71 when I left, 68 when I got home.

Floating holiday

Another OOTNDITHOD. 1936 must have been something because the last couple of days here have NOT set records for high temperature. 1936 continues to rule but it was 79 today and that's enough for me.

The wind couldn't really decide what direction it was blowing from as I started out which meant that I couldn't figure out what direction to ride. I ended up just sort of riding around. But that was OK, it was a beautiful day and that bicycle ride was the most important thing on my schedule.

I ended up down in the city again although in a completely different part of the city than I have been in recently. Although it felt like summer there are plenty of reminders that October is already flying by, like this front yard in the Como neighborhood.There is already a lot of that going on. I suppose that decorating for Halloween actually makes more sense than decorating for Christmas. You get better weather both for putting stuff up and for taking it back down.

Just a couple of blocks away from those ghouls I came across this beauty. I hope we can all agree that the color is orange.I have ridden and reported several times on Calvary cemetery, the early settlement Catholic cemetery. Today I found myself in the neighborhood of the early settlement Protestant cemetery, Oakland. Calvary is located on a hill in the north end from which you can easily see the Cathedral. Oakland is located on a hill in the north end right behind the Capitol.

This guy didn't die that long ago but I thought the spot was pretty picturesque.The Ordways don't have the large monument that most rich people have. However, they do have their own hedge.Calvary has the graves of the first Catholic bishops and archbishops and a field of graves of nuns and priests. Oakland has a monument to fire fighters.I thought that group of stones in the background might be fire fighters but it actually turns out to be Civil War veterans. That would be Civil War veterans as opposed to casualties of the Civil War. As Minnesota school children used to learn in their Minnesota history class (I wonder if they still teach that in school here) very many of Minnesota's casualties from the Civil War are buried at Gettysburg where on the second day of the battle the 1st Minnesota Volunteers suffered extremely heavy losses while holding the center of the line on Cemetery Ridge to help repulse Pickett's Charge.

I was in the neighborhood so I rode down to the government. This orange tree is in the shade so it may not show its color as well as some others but on the other hand being somewhat sheltered by that building it may be holding its leaves longer than some others.I took out my phone and called upstairs to see if anyone wanted to come out and play but couldn't get in contact with the likely truants. They were all away from their desks. However, Debbie did come over to the window and wave and I did run into Jon in the parking lot. It felt almost like going to work. Lucky for me today is the day I always take my floating holiday so I was able to ride my bicycle instead.

Bike Snob NYC manages to pull off on bicycle photography all the time so when I saw a salmon approaching today I went for my camera and tried to get a photo.She was not only salmoning, she had headphones. She seemed chagrined that I refused to yield the side of the road that she wanted to ride on. My position on salmon is that I am the one obeying the law, if one of us is going to have to swing out closer to traffic, it is going to be you. I absolutely hugged the edge of the pavement on the right and she finally figured it out and swung out to face traffic.