Jamaican-German improves to 2-0 lifetime against one of the greatest of all time

With a victory in their only previous meeting and with nothing at all to lose some tall skinny guy born in Germany to Jamaican parents went all in, full effort smashing every ball and then coming to the net to seek a follow up put away.

The last German to play like this was Boris.

Very entertaining tennis.  2-0 may be the best record for ANY player against the king of clay.  Also, great, great hair.  It is going to be replayed at 8pm CDT on Tennis Channel.  If you have Tennis Channel and have not seen this you should watch.

Hooray, hooray, the first of . . .

Ooops, missed it yet again.

Yesterday was only about 60 at noon.  I ride at 60 in April and even in May but definitely not on the first of July.  I hung around the house for a while but by the time the temperature improved to 70 (which it most assuredly did) the moment was gone and I rode not.

Today was 74 at noon, I can do that.

We finally got a south wind and I headed down into the big city.  And then across the bridge into the even bigger city.  I guess officially the drought is over.  I know the northern lakes are still at a very high level but this seems like an awful lot of water over the Falls for almost the 4th of July.

It was very pretty over there today but that park is an absolute hazard for a guy on a bicycle.  Today's biggest problem was the pedi-bikes, the four people carts with pedals.  They DO belong on the bicycle path, I do not dispute that.  But so very many of them have one adult pedalling and one adult not pedalling very much and a couple of kids pedalling not at all.  As a result they cannot make much in the way of headway up even the slightest of slopes.  The result is that this leaves the family pretty cluelessly blocking the path.

The second problem is that there are actually two paths inside the park and most of the pedestrians prefer the path next to the edge of the park.  You know, the one that is actually the designated bicycle path.

So, both in and out of the park, be careful are the watch words over there.

I got away from the park without committing any arrestable offenses.  On the way away from the park I came upon this.

You don't see that much anymore.  I took a pretty close look and I am reasonably sure that that is an elm tree.  It has some sort of advanced problem which will lead to its removal at some date coming up fairly soon.  We used to see that a lot, although my recollection is at the height of the elm removal process they got just a red stripe around the trunk.  And then within a couple of weeks they would be gone.

I will say, however, that in looking at the tree although it is definitely diseased it doesn't appear to me to be Dutch Elm disease.  With Dutch Elm the tree dies from the crown down.  With this one some of the worst looking parts of the tree were down towards the bottom.

And then there is this which if wind conditions lead towards my getting over there more often as the season goes along could develop into a theme.

I have previously featured 46th and 46th.

Fairly obviously this is 45th and 45th.

Not every number is going to be represented at an intersection but there are LOTS more intersections available to continue this theme.

This one is a very pretty spot in south MPLS.