Football?

There aren't enough 70 degree days just past the middle of September to justify watching football.  I wonder how it came out.

Seeing Minnehaha Falls dry yesterday made me wonder about the state of the other local waterfall.  I rode over to the Stone Arch Bridge to get a look at Saint Anthony.

There is more water there than at Minnehaha to be sure but even so the flow is hugely diminished from the last time I was there.  Minnehaha can be partly explained by the likelihood that the dam where the Creek leaves Lake Minnetonka may well have been closed to raise water levels on the lake to minimize winter erosion problems.  Although there is a dam only a few miles upstream from Saint Anthony, this is Mississippi after all so that is probably not the reason for low water here.  It looks dry, I guess it is dry.

This was set up at the Dinkytown end of the Stone Arch.  It certainly caught my attention.

What's going on there is a food truck has pulled up and set out some tables.  I don't know if that is a successful business model or not but I wish them all the best.

My life experience has been that conversation is almost always free.

So I rode back through campus, cutting over to the River Road on Oak Street and then across the Franklin Avenue Bridge.  I took the first left turn off the bridge which is actually pretty OK from a bicycling standpoint as there is a left turn lane, a stop light and a green arrow.

This put me on 31st Avenue South, I rode one block and then cut over to 30th Avenue South.  31st is narrow, has quite a bit of traffic and absolutely awful pavement.  30th is also the way I access the Greenway.  That wasn't my intention today but I wanted to follow 30th out and see how far it went.

Well, it gets squeezed by Minnehaha Avenue at 34th Street, ending temporarily (although it begins again on the other side of Minnehaha and Hiawatha at 38th Street).  I followed 34th Street back towards the river past Longfellow Park to where I came upon the clear star of today's ride.

At 34th Street and 39th Avenue I came upon this massive old elm tree.

In fact, there is a little pocket of them there, I was standing under another one across the intersection to take the photo.

This has to one of the last soldiers left from the army of elm trees that once marched up and down the streets of both cities.  It's been a while since I last saw one.  That house never lost its shade when most of both cities lost all of those shade trees.

It is pretty hard to ride from where I live to anywhere in Minneapolis without passing the Fairgrounds coming and going.  Here is a better view of the cow figure I posted just before the Fair began.  This time you can actually see what it looks like.

I am pretty sure that there is going to be a beef expo over there next month.

This was parked next to the big cow.

I mean, I knew (who doesn't?) about the head sculpted in butter but I didn't know she has her own float.  It seems logical, I suspect that she has a pretty busy parade schedule.

Colts 23, Vikings 20, you can find out just about anything with about three clicks on the internet.