South side of Lee Avenue

 There is a story in there somewhere and perhaps someday I will tell it but today I broke the longest streak of days with no snow on the ground and no bicycle ride in nearly twenty years.  There are a bunch of streets in the neighborhood with new pavement and though I had walked on most of them I had not ridden a bicycle on them.

I often have bragged about having ridden on every piece of pavement within 15 or so miles of where I live so the new pavement presented an issue which required some action.

It went okay.

I wanted to get inside the Fairgrounds before Fair preparations lead to access being cut off.  I was surprised to find the benches are already out.

That is on Lee Avenue, the south side.  Lee Avenue is the street where they display the antique tractors during the Fair, the street between Giggles on the east (Cooper Street) and Sweet Martha's and the Home Depot on the east (Underwood Street).  That's the Sky Glider overhead and the building which during the Fair features the new tradition of women discarding their underwear on the roof.  The bench is under a tree so it will feature shade but it will also feature fairly constant exhaust from antique internal combustion engines.

We still expect that there will be a Fair this year but the news about Delta keeps getting worse and it won't be the Fair until they actually open the gates and let people in.  I read in the paper today that Minnesota had 700 new cases on the last day of July compared to 80 on the last day of June.  CDC guidelines call for indoor masking again but no one is doing it in the indoor spaces where I have ventured.

It was a nice day to be on my bike and I had not forgotten how.