Fresh legs

Three straight days of heavy rain has one positive effect for a dedicated bicyclist. Today my legs were fresh, I felt strong, I felt fast.

I had heard that the Minneapolis Police had established an "exclusion zone" preventing non-residents from entering the area of yesterday's local big storm. Our local big storm was mild compared to Joplin but it was sufficiently severe to be considered during the event yesterday as the worst tornado we have had since 1981. So it was a big storm.

I was wondering how the exclusion zone might apply to a bicyclist so I thought I might ride over that way just to see. However, just as I left the house the still somewhat unsettled atmosphere blew a great big black cloud over the middle of the sky. I knew that the probability of rain was on the low end of the spectrum but great big black clouds always scare me into staying relatively close to home. My life experiences riding in the rain have left me with a lasting feeling that riding in the rain is unpleasant. If caught in the rain I want to be close enough to home to limit the unpleasantness as much as possible.

I can ride a lot of places that I don't get to very often and still stay close to home. Here is the deal, I slip a cheap digital camera into my jersey pocket and go for a bicycle ride. I take photos of things that interest me and then I come back here and try to weave a narrative around the photos.

Sometimes there is no narrative, the photos are really pretty much random.

I have discussed this site before. That is the former location of a Mounds View school district building in northern Roseville. Considerable site pollution was discovered when the building was demolished and clean up has been going on ever since.The last time I saw technicians on site they were checking up on the monitoring wells. This truck indicated that it was from a well company so I thought that might be what was going on again. I had a chat with the technician (really, very boring was how he described today's tasks) and he informed me that monitoring of the wells, some of which are visible in the background, has already established that the ground water is within acceptable limits. What he was checking for was soil gas migration. The water is within acceptable limits but far from actually clean. Now his company is doing testing to try to determine if gases within the soil are migrating off site. The concern is that if the gases do migrate that they could accumulate in the nearby basements at toxic levels.

So that doesn't sound very clean to me.

It's about five miles from home.

I don't recall ever approaching County Cycles from this exact angle before.I had to ride through the parking lot of city hall and across a sidewalk to change from one parking lot to the other to get to that spot. It was enough of a deviation from normal route selections that I say with great confidence that I really have not been to that spot on my bicycle before. The day was starting to turn nice but business at the bike shop looks slow.

Winter is finally over in the Cub parking lot. There is not a bit of snow remaining from that formerly giant snow pile.There is, however, a fairly stunning debris field.

Today's behavior note: Curious, the farther I got from home today, and therefore the less likely it was that I had ever previously encountered the people I met while riding today, the more likely it was that they would return my greeting with a nod a mile or a wave. I have no explanation even though I was again dressed in what I have conceded is outlandish garb.

Outlandish I concede. Here is what alien looks like.It was a pretty nice day at the Fairgrounds by the time I got there. The big black cloud had gone away, the sun was making intermittent appearances. All in all, another nice day.

EG: 71 CB: 68 AOWG: 77