Spotty and Bear

Norah's mother now lives over on the other side of town but she still comes back over here to continue to patronize her long time hair professional.  She had an appointment today and since Norah already has perfect hair, or maybe just that she still has baby hair, Norah visited the salon but did not stay.  Instead she came over here to chill with her loving g-parents.

And to get a chance to meet significant characters from her mother's childhood, Spotty and Bear.

She was a very sweet baby while she was here except that of course she can be just a tiny bit insistent about getting fed pretty much as soon as she decides the time for feeding has arrived.

Which is as it should be.

Mommy finished up her business and came by to pick Norah up in way too short a time.  A good time was had by all.

Oversteer

I got a nice window this afternoon for a ride.  Temperatures were quite warm compared to what we have had recently.  The winds weren't very much at all, I actually heard a weather guy talking about an omega block.

There's probably a Wikipedia article.

The season of flowering trees is nearing an end but I had to find a place to fit this one in.  I hadn't noticed this one any year previously, I will be keeping an eye on it to see what the fruit looks like.

I got back from Norah's house in time to get a timely start and headed out to a destination that I had in mind because of this article in yesterday's daily newspaper about a high value sports car having to be removed from Lake Vadnais.

I go to Lake Vadnais a lot so this seemed like something I should check out.

It was mighty nice out there today.

The newspaper article said Rice Street which meant I had to ride to that part of the lake first.  No sign of any car having gone into the lake.

Eventually after a near circumnavigation I discovered that the journalist didn't do a good job with the facts.  The incident occurred not on Rice Street on the west side of the lake but on Vadnais Boulevard on the south side.

I didn't get any photo as good as the one in the newspaper of the car in the lake.  But I did get a photo which gives a much better explanation of how the car got into the lake than the newspaper did.

Vadnais Boulevard turns off Rice Street at the top of the hill above the south end of the lake.  It then goes right about 45 degrees and into a sweeping downhill 90 or more degree left.  Probably it seemed to the driver like a nice spot to let the pony run.

Not a very good spot of driving I should say.

He oversteered out of that sweeping downhill left, found himself going too fast and headed in the general direction of the lake.  It looks to me like he locked up the brakes with the wheels turned still towards the left and just skidded out of control straight off the road into the lake.  If he had stayed off the brakes and tried to steer that thing I suspect a car with the handling capabilities of a Porsche would have straightened itself up and the 100mph ride could have continued.

Today's bicycle blog post is mostly about a car.

Unfinished business

My brother was the genealogist for our particular branch of the family tree.  As such he not only did the paper record searches, he also attempted to document whenever possible the physical records.  By this I mean that he wanted to see the old paper writings but he also wanted to see the grave markers.  I had lots of opportunities with him both at family gatherings and at his house on various occasions to look at the stuff he had accumulated.  That stuff includes photos of every family grave that he was able to locate.

I have heard two versions of this tale, one told to me by my brother and one told to me by a cousin who told the tale to me as it had been told to him by my brother.

I am going to tell the tale as told to me by my brother.

Jim had found most of the old graves but was missing an important one.  Grossvater, our great great grandfather George Miller, was the oldest relative for whom he had photos and documents but for whom Jim was missing a photo of the grave.  Family oral history said that Grossvater was buried at the Spooner Cemetery and that the grave was not marked.  As Jim told me the story he was at the Spooner Cemetery just generally looking around trying to get his bearings possibly hoping to somehow locate the grave when he was approached by a neighbor of the cemetery.  The neighbor wanted to know if he could help, Jim told him what he was looking for.  The neighbor was not able to personally help but he did know who the person in town who most likely had the information that Jim was looking for.

Jim made the contact and soon enough the unmarked grave had been located.

I think it was the next year when Jim and I and our sister Sylvia took a field trip out there to look at all of the family places, focusing mostly on the Anderson farm and the Webster cemetery.  The Webster cemetery has most of the significant Anderson graves including Tom and Jim and Sylvia and Gene's mother Lillie and Lillie’s parents.  The cemetery is also the site of most of the significant Miller graves including Tom and Jim and Sylvia and Gene and Andy and Mark's father Thomas.  And our father Thomas’s parents and his Miller side grandparents.  Jim, Sylvia and I also made a side trip on a day of 100 degree temperatures so that Jim could show us the unmarked grave in the Spooner cemetery.

On that trip we discussed our feelings about the Spooner gravesite.  Even by then it had been 100 years since Grossvater was buried.  Whatever the most assuredly strong feelings from that earlier time that had left the grave unmarked we felt among us that after the passage of that much time that the grave should be marked.

Jim had gone to great lengths to locate the grave based on his wish to complete the historical record.

We all just felt that the next person attempting to complete that historical journey should not have to complete that one particular hoop by the happenstance of  bumping into a neighbor of the cemetery.  We wanted to do something if we could to make it easier.

We all felt that we should mark the grave and it became a recurrent theme discussed particularly between me and my brother on numerous occasions.

It came up all the time, we both felt it was something we should do.  It was just something we never actually got around to doing.  It was unfinished business.

Last summer he went out one day to play tennis and never came home.

Sylvia and I talked about this only a little bit before we both knew that this was a bit of unfinished business that we could finish.  We marked the grave.

Our brother Mark was out to the Spooner cemetery recently and provided this photo.

This next bit is quoted from Jim’s write up of his genealogy research:

"George Miller was born in France (probably the Alsace region) in February 1823.  He came to America on the ship Parachute, leaving Havre, France, and arriving in New York on May 18, 1828.  He was five.  The ship's passenger list shows a family group that included Jean Miller 35 (farmer), Jacon Miller 40, Marie Elis Miller 18, Marie Roni Miller 11, and George Miller 5."

I have a copy of that passenger list.  We are going with 1823 as year of birth.

We do not know his actual date of death but we do know from the cemetery records that he was buried in 1911.

105 years later and this business is finished.

Video number 2

There was a sweet moment and I took a video.  I intended to take that video.  Then I was sorta randomly pushing buttons on my new camera and I got video number 2.

I will be providing video number 1 to the primary client and perhaps even doing some editing.  For now we are just going to have to live with yet another example of accidental video being some of my best work.

Can Norah come out to play?

It was very warm here today but more on that later.

Wind conditions dictated a ride over towards the Falls.  I did that but bypassed what was probably an over congested struggle at the wall at the top of the Falls and instead rode a bit further along to Norah's house.

I rang the bell and asked if Norah could come out to play and indeed she could. Her Mommy came out with her.  We stayed in the shade.

Norah took a look around and said, "Nice bike, Grandpa."  Honest.  I definitely heard her say that.  She did not comment on the tires so I will do that:  On FirstLOOK I palp tires in a green colorway.

All three of the individuals in the photo would have been underdressed even as little as a week ago.  Today?

I passed this as I neared home.

At this point I have no idea if that number is anything like official.  At this point I do know that that is an impressive number for May 6.

Bare legs

I left the house this morning to visit Norah's house.  When I returned this is what I found in the cul-de-sac.

Well, I guess we will see.  There was also a guy with a concrete saw cutting out portions of the street edging that are cracked.  We got a letter from the city saying that the contractor is required to provide "driveway access" by 7pm every day.  The upside as I see it is they repave the street this year it will probably be several years until the next time the street gets chip and seal.

It looks in that photo like a pretty nice day and in fact it was.  Temperatures approached 70, I think.  It was about 62 when I headed out for a ride and I saw a couple of thermometers with readings of 66.

Winds were much calmed from recent days and again from the north.

I rode past several of the flowering trees that I have pictured in the past.  These two are along a long uphill on the transition from Hamline Avenue over to Lexington.

Here are the four flowing crabs standing in a yard corner at the top of that hill.

This is a new angle for these three, usually I have tried to show the white flowers in the center with red flowers on either side.  Today's sun angle convinced me to try a photo from this side.

I decided not to do the full Vadnais loop.  Winds were light.  I broke off the north bound leg and then continued on south past home to loop back home through the Fairgrounds.

64 at the Cattle Barn at 3:44.

Plenty nice.  I rode in shorts.

Hooray, hooray

The first of May.

I have teased this post opening many times in the past but May Day this year also featured a bicycle ride.  Which means I get to use the ditty without having to add qualifiers.

Hooray, hooray.
The first of May.
Outdoor *activiites*
Start today.

Outdoor activities that kicked off today included bicycle rides made during the month of May 2016.

By the way, in case anyone cares I hate the new keyboard that came with my new desktop.  The angle is wrong, there aren't any warning lights for capslock or numlock, etc., etc.

Never mind.

I rode out to Vadnais again but today took the reverse route.  It was a very nice ride.

Reverse Vadnais calls for a trip in the Sucker Lake part of the park up to Highway 96.  This is the creek leading into Sucker from the North Oaks lakes, viewed from the Highway 96 bridge.

The water level at all of the lakes out there seemed to me to be very high.  I was cutting through the Snail Lake swamp area when I came upon this.

I almost ignored it.  But I have been in that area on that trail plenty of times when there was more water than trail.

I took a detour and eventually rejoined the trail at the Grass Lake tunnel.  The water was very high there, I had thought I might get a light at the end of the tunnel shot.

Instead I got a there is no bicycle traffic through that tunnel shot.

It was a pretty nice day for May 1 (Hooray, hooray).  It was a good day to be riding my bicycle.