Places I walk

It isn't Floridia, and it isn't bicycling, but I do get outside for about an hour just about every single day. Exercise is good. However, it is my belief that the opportunity to be outside in natural light on a daily basis is the main cause for the fact that I feel the best that I have felt in December for many years. Walking in the daylight is surprisingly good.

Here is a suburban oddity created by unplanned development. The far end of the path was developed at a different time than the near end of the path. This path is located in a place where ordinarily there would be a street. The houses over there are too close together to allow the standard width right of way and appropriate setbacks from the right of way for the houses. Instead of a street in this place we have a dedicated public path.Here is a place I have pictured before, the user created pathway from the Snelling Avenue apartments to the fast food mecca along the main highway. The path used to go straight ahead.Then there was six more inches of snow and another round of fast food joint parking lot plowing. The users of the path were not deterred and now the path veers off to the left. There is a fire hydrant down there where the path now enters the Famous Dave's lot. The fire hydrant is unlikely to get plowed in leading me to believe that this iteration of the path may well last until spring breakup.

Which if the currently occurring rain continues could come . . . ? Soon?

I suspect not.

Changing day

I read in the newspaper on Sunday that the plant where I used to work is going to have 120 retirements today. The employer has offered an incentive and it is sufficiently attractive that many are accepting the offer. The way the particular branch of the factory where I worked decided to structure the incentive you had no choice of retirement date, you could only retire TODAY.

Armed with this information I went to work yesterday. It was the next to last day when I could possibly find anything at all remotely resembling the place I used to work and it was a last chance to speak to 11 friends just before they became eligible to wear one of these.So congratulations to Memos, Paul, Phil, Dave, Rick, Jerry, John, Larry, Paul, Jean, and Bruce (and John and Lowell).

Welcome to the light side.

Sidewalk progress

Sometimes all you have to do is complain. The sidewalks that I described as unshoveled have been sorta cleared. Still, as you can see, the situation is still not perfect. This is a spot where there is an opening in the center median which lots of cars use for a U turn. At least one U turner didn't quite get it right.OK, the black piece of trash. Here is a view of that little piece of woodland from the other end of the trail, looking towards the apartment buildings. Not quite so picturesque as you may have thought, is it? It looks to me like someone tried to heave something into one of those dumpsters with an alarming lack of accuracy.Upon closer examination it is actually very dark green, about the color of Chad (one person will know what that means). It appears to me to be part of a car or truck interior, molded plastic with attached fabric that I thought might be a side sun curtain.

Actually, fairly obviously, I have no idea.Thus prompted and in the neighborhood again anyway, this time I picked it up and chucked it into the dumpster.

Human behavior

I thought this was interesting. The sidewalks around here, of which there are not many (it is the suburbs, after all) are mostly still snow covered. There is a stretch along County Road B that I count on for my daily that is still snowed under by the combination of the big storm and the plowing on the very closely adjacent street.

Deep, dirty, hard and ugly would describe that snow. Not a footprint to be seen. What walking there is along there occurs on the very busy street. I have abandoned that section of the route and found another way.

Which includes this little bit through the woods. It hasn't been shoveled but there has been a high quantity of foot traffic and the path is firmly established. Even without the benefit of modern snow removal this path is wide enough for easy walking and footing is good.Behind me as I take the photograph is a pocket of apartment buildings, six or eight in all. At the other end of that path is the Snelling Avenue Burger King parking lot. This little bit of wildlife is the width of a fast food restaurant parking lot from one of the busiest thoroughfares in the north suburbs. From the Burger King lot you can also easily access KFC, Mickey D, Arby's, a Caribou Coffee and Famous Dave's (and Erik's Bike Shop and Color Tile).

You can't walk anywhere on the sidewalk but the force of many feet walking has reestablished access to that most important of American needs, fast food.

Human behavior.

Clean up

I haven't been outside much the past couple of days due to the cold. I mall walked for exercise (ewwww!) and did just a little clean up shoveling.

Clean up shoveling will be familiar to everyone who lives in this climate. The first day of the snow emergency is dedicated to opening the snow emergency route, re-establishing contact with civilization. In my case that means getting the driveway open.

Clean up work follows. The winter is far from over and the driveway has to be brought up to regular maintenance standards (as determined by me). This involves moving the edges back where they belong and dealing with the driven on compacted snow in the tire lanes. This is necessary to assure that as more snow arrives I will be able to continue to get the driveway open as needed.

So clean up shoveling. But today I got out for a walk. I live in the suburbs where conditions are much better than in the core cities. Still, it is a mess out there.

Here is a before the stormand an after the storm look at that tree removal project shown last week.They didn't pick up any of those pieces that now appear to be missing. Not picked up, covered up.

We are anticipating some blogging from a completely different climate. I will post a link here when it this becomes available.

For real snow you need real machinery

Last night I took note of the epic snow and the predicted for today frigid temperatures and wind chill and told TOPWLH that we might not get out until it warms up a little on, oh, say Tuesday. I was online this morning after breakfast staying true to what I said last night when I started hearing the sounds of neighbors in the great chilly outdoors with machines. I soon joined them, getting started at about 8am. I have the appropriate machinery for this type of weather event and was done by about 9.

Here is out the front window before I started. Note that the neighbors across the street have snow almost up to the doorknob of their front door.Here is what our back deck looked like (and still does):Here is the star of the show: 6 horsepower, 24 inch cut, two stage, self propelled, electric start, by Craftsman, the tools people:The only hard part is that squeezing the levers to activate the auger and the drive press my mittens firmly against my hands. Without any insulating pocket of air my thumbs get cold very quickly. Today I took a short hand warming break about halfway through the project.

The driveway before I started:One of my motivators was I could see one of our two Sunday newspapers down there in a footprint at the end of the driveway.

And after the first pass.The usual wide stuff at the foot of the driveway had instead been shoved over towards our front lawn so it was not as wide as usual. This meant that the snow was piled in front of the mailbox about six feet out into the street. Even with this distribution the the deepest section was well above the top of the snowblower.Almost done, I had to stop and gas up. In the stocking up frenzy that gripped this metro area on Friday gasoline was the only commodity I acquired. Good idea.We went to the hockey game. Along the way we got a good view of side streets off the snow emergency route in Minneapolis. It wasn't pretty.

What to do today instead of going to a hockey game.

Kudos to my dafter for her excellent report elsewhere on the internet about the huge weather event going out outdoors.

This is what I get for yawning in the face of chaos.

And special thanks to my brafter (I just made that up) who is scanning his slides and provided us with this excellent photo of TOPWLH and I with TCWUTH taken the very first day that she came home and started living with us.No mail delivery today. So much for "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night blah, blah, blah . . ."

Of course, the mere fact of physical impossibility of reaching us in one of those little mail vans probably should be noted before anyone gets very critical.

This seems like a good time to post this again.

It is not a fit night out for man nor beast.

In November of 2007 I spent some time exclaiming at some length over the once in a lifetime opportunity being experienced by an amateur side (U.S.S.A. Vertou) from the suburbs of Nantes playing in le Coupe de France against FC Nantes in the big stadium in Nantes.

The continuing mediocrity of FC Nantes means that this year they are for the third of the past four seasons stuck in Ligue 2. FC Nantes spent the 43 season before that in Ligue 1. Because Ligue 2 teams enter the draw for le Coupe two rounds earlier than Ligue 1 teams it is much, much more likely for a very low level amateur side such as the unpaid players from Vertou to match up against a professional side from Ligue 2 than to play against a Ligue 1 side.

Today in Nantes history repeated itself as a once in a lifetime opportunity occurred again only after a lapse not of a lifetime, but of a mere three years. This time quite a few fewer people think it is a big deal.

FC Nantes 2:0 U.S.S.A. Vertou.

Leaf pick up

This is what happens when you rake your leaves into the street but then winter comes before the leaf pick up crew.You won't be able to see that tomorrow or any time for the rest of the winter as we are expecting the storm of the century, this year's edition, to begin any moment.

*yawn* Still waiting.

Unfinished business

I spotted this while out walking today and it put me in mind of bicycling.As is probably the case with those involved with this tree project, just when I start to think I am on the verge of a big achievement the weather intervenes.

Those rather large logs are probably going to be there in the spring. So are my bicycles.

I understand from a couple of sources that people in northern Europe are complaining about the snow.

Well, excuse me.

Here are the takes on "winter" from two blogs I follow:

Paris Daily Photo

Nantes Daily Photo

At least the ancient jogger in Nantes is wearing my color.

Threat to mechanical advantage overcome

We had about 5 inches, maybe 6, of new snow here beginning yesterday afternoon and ending sometime overnight. It had pretty much stopped and the plow had been past by 9am this morning. Six inches of snow is a lot if you live on a cul de sac as the plow leaves all of that snow from half of the big paved area at the foot of your driveway. Actually, of course, my driveway. The pile was about two and a half feet deep and about four feet wide. This calls for machinery.

I had a can with a small amount of gas so I just needed to wrestle the machinery out from behind the car to the open door of the garage and get it going. For reasons I was not able to fully discern until I had completed that task I had a heck of a hard time. I discovered when I had the room to examine the entire situation that I had a flat tire on the snow blower. OK, it wasn't completely flat, just on that one side. This seemed for not even a second to be a problem. If there is one snow removal problem for which I am COMPLETELY prepared, it is a flat tire. I am bicyclist, hear me roar. I have a pump. In fact, I have three.

The snow blower is electric start so I string a winter weight blue extension cord from the power source at the back of the garage out to the open door to plug the blower in for starting. After getting the engine going today I retreated to the bowels of the garage and emerged with my old electric pump. I only use one or another of my pricey hand pumps on my bicycles now but when I was first starting out I used to use an electric. I still have it. The snow blower tire only requires 20 pounds of air pressure, I was done in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

I decided that snow blowing and the shovel clean up that follows was not enough for today so I still went out and took a walk early this afternoon. Here is my version of snowy woods. That's in the neighborhood, two blocks over to the south and about even on the east-west axis to where we live.It has been three weeks since the end of bicycling season so I have no new mileage to report but I am able to report that today I exceeded 50 miles walked so far this winter.

**pause**

Yes, of course I keep track. Just exactly who did you think you were dealing with here anyway?

Yesterday in France, FC Istres 2:1 FC Nantes. The string ends at ten. FC Nantes had best get another one going if they intend to contend for promotion.

Theme day

Most days I look at Paris Daily Photo. While there today I discovered that this month's daily photo blogger theme is time.

I don't have a photo but I did find this which I believe to be time related:

Looking at the boys in 1964 is seems fairly obvious that time has NOT been on their side.

Just so people won't think I have absolutely no content to offer on John Densmore's birthday (is that something drummers are more aware of than most others?) I offer this bit of news from page 10C of the Metro PRINT Edition (yes, some of us still read the news off pieces of paper) of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota's first newspaper:

Sunrise: 7:30am
Sunset: 4:33pm

Enjoy it while it lasts, more than NINE hours of day and less than FIFTEEN hours of night.

Soooooo dark.

Now I really am done.