ELGIN Pelican Series P

Perhaps also known as old number 132.Yesterday's photo was of a state highway department sweeper working on Snelling Avenue (which is a state highway, Highway 51). Today's photo is much, much more significant. This is a city street department sweeper. It wasn't actually sweeping at the moment I photographed it but it had recently completed work on Roselawn Avenue. This is huge. The city has started sweeping and Roselawn is a street that I ride on with great regularity.

Progress. Perhaps soon I will be able to ride without dodging a couple of inch deep winter road debris along the sides of the streets.

My rides to this point have been mostly in circles, shake down cruises well within a very short, by bicycle standards, distance from my house. Today I felt confident enough in the day and my fitness to actually go somewhere.

The wind was from the NNW which led me to ride most of one of my regular summer time routes. Along the way I came across a goose in open water on Island Lake.It's good to find open water but it is also deplorable. I looked through the picture folder on my hard drive that I have cleverly labeled "Bicycle 10" and found that on March 24 of last year I rode to Lake Vadnais and photographed that spot with quite a bit more open water than Island Lake exhibits this year. In fact, March 24 was my second visit of the spring to Vadnais.

But we all know why that is.

For the curious, I noted ice out on Lake Josephine last year on March 28.

Today I didn't actually get to Lake Vadnais, I don't feel that strong yet and further I am pretty sure that the road through the woods on the north side of the lake is still going to be ice covered and pretty much impassable.

But I did get to the south side of the lake. I took this photo from the freeway overpass on Rice Street, the southwest corner of the lake.That is kind of an interesting spot. It is the location of camera 711 which provides live traffic information on the highway department website. I was disappointed to learn that the camera application is Java which means that I cannot link directly to it. But if you go to the DOT website and click on camera 711 (located on the northeastern part of the display, on 694, the first camera left of 35E, just above and to the right of the highway 36 indicator) you can get a real time view of traffic on the freeway.

Milestone reached today: 4,000 miles on that bicycle.

Lesson relearned today: When you do the same job of work on back to back days, particularly when you do this early in the season, the second day is much harder.

But I was out, it was a wonderful day, a wonderful day for bicycling, another great day to be alive in Minnesota.