In which I try again

The process of winding down has begun. Today I didn't wait for it to be warm enough to ride. Today I faced up to the reality of September. I layered up and went out into the coolish temperatures and rode.

The local weather channel said SE wind so I had to dodge around the Fair again. But once I got past University Avenue it seemed to me that the wind was more SW than SE. I decided to change my route from what I had been thinking and instead tried to get a bit further west. I crossed into Minneapolis (Minneapolis being west) and eventually got this picture of downtown from the south side.That's the IDS over to the left, the tall building in the center is the building which we have always referred to as Spook Central (because of its appearance when lit up at night) and of course, Metropolitan Stadium on the right.

I got a little too far from home before realizing that I had a schedule at home. I was hurrying to get home in time for the scheduled activities of the afternoon and as a result I ended up riding a lot closer to the Fair than I intended to. It worked out OK as I got a chance to visit these old friends:I love those cows, this time I particularly like the sun to shade contrast.

Minnesota can be extremely beautiful at this time of year

It's so pretty out there right now. The emerging vegetation produces several hundred shades of green. Even if green were the only color the display would be spectacular, But then there are the flowers. Here is a particularly well planned display that I have ridden past several times before finally deciding today to picture.That's on Huron Street just before I arrive at County Road C2.

The big bicycle news for today is that I achieved a hugely significant number on my odometer.I am going to say here without any source material to support what I say other than the fact that I have ridden the miles that less than one percent of the people who ever ride a bicycle at any time in their lives ever end up with a lifetime total of 15,000 miles. I have 15,000 miles on THIS bicycle. This is my fifth season on this bicycle. Can it really have been more than four years since I bought the frame, ordered the components and spent part of the winter assembling the parts into this bicycle? Clearly it is, 15,000 miles says that it is.

I love my bicycle. Two hour bicycle rides are saving my life and this bicycle makes two hour bicycle rides a breeze. About my bicycle, it is a Campagnolo equipped bicycle. Without attempting to downgrade Shimano, because I have two Shimano bicycles, people say that you ride Campagnolo because of the durability, because Campagnolo is rebuildable, and because once adjusted you don't have to readjust Campagnolo. I have 15,000 miles with only having to have replaced a front derailer cable, front brake shoes, about 3 chains and one replacement of the 17-18 cog in the rear gear cassette. This amounts to virtually no replacements at all. Rebuildable? I have no idea, nothing has worn out. Lack of need to readjust? I can vouch for that. I set it all up when I put the bicycle together and have never had to do an adjustment since.

I love my LOOK.

The ride home led to a circle through familiar territory. The sun was by now in a position that made photos into the sun unlikely. For this one I hid behind an ELM tree (one of the few survivors) to shield the camera lens from the sun and got a photo of my old friends with flowering shrubs in the deep background.Minnesota is so beautiful at this time of the year that if it was like this all of the time it would be necessary to put up a fence around the state to keep people out.

Coffee and cows

It was 59 again today but there is talk that it may be 82 tomorrow. A temperature shift of that magnitude is most often accompanied by unusual weather. The sky tonight looked pretty strange so I decided to try to get my allotted miles in while remaining relatively close to home. I guess I didn't stay all that close as I visited three other municipalities (Shoreview, Falcon Heights and Saint Paul) in addition to Roseville. But I didn't get anyplace particularly exotic. The sky was always interesting looking but the weather cooperated by also not doing anything particularly exotic.

The Roeville library is closed for a major expansion. I am guessing that stages of the construction will be featured here from time to time. This is what it looks like now with construction about to begin.Our library has a coffee shop in the building. Somewhat oddly it seems to me, the coffee shop remains open even though the library is closed. As a result you have to be really careful if you ride through the parking lot as I occasionally do. The library has no patrons but there are still a fair number of cars, coffee customers. People stopping off at 5 or 6pm for another shot of caffeine are probably not going to be the most calm and mellow people on the planet. I ride with caution.

I just missed with this photo. I was trying to line up the cows and the sun. As I approached the sun was still behind that cloud bank. It looked really cool about the time I stopped my bicycle but by the time I got the camera out the sun had dropped out of the clouds.I still like it, I guess, but it isn't quite right. I suspect I will try again probably a few times before the season is over.

First iteration for this year of the Auckland rule

Windy. Really windy.

The women's national championship game in Division 1 hockey was played today. Our favorite team did not participate. Our least favorite team thrashed Mercyhurst 5-0. Color us disappointed.

In other hockey news, yesterday at the Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, New York, Neumann College captured the men's Division III championship by downing Gustavus Adolphus 4-1.

This photo seems to me to pretty clearly illustrate that hockey is over in Minnesota.That's Langford Park, home annually of some of the best outdoor ice in town, currently home to some snow but home to no ice whatsoever.

Today's wind was ESE. I rode mostly south and ended up farther to the south than I had previously been this year. My turn around came near the Town and Country Club in Saint Paul. The wind was getting stronger as I rode and by this point in the ride it was so powerful that I wanted to get home without having to ride eastward back up Como along my usual route back from that area of town. Instead I went over the top of the hill in Saint Anthony Park and dropped down past Bob's house (brand new screen porch on the front) to trace a route through the farm campus on the way home.It was too windy to ride but I did anyway. With the miles accumulated today I smashed through the all time record for miles ridden in the month of February. This accomplishment is somewhat diminished, obviously, by the unfortunate fact that this is March.

After this one, only two to go.

I was just scanning through Bike pictures 2007 again. I ran across the series on pictures of water towers. I admit to having forgotten nearly all about that series. Here is a water tower on the farm campus, only a couple of blocks from my friends, the cows.I thought the University water tower and the University logo were both particularly appropriate as TOPWLH and I just returned from our other lives as season ticket holders for Gopher women's hockey.

It was an exciting game, not only for the hockey, but also for TOPWLH as she got hailed by and then engaged in conversation with the mothers of two different players both of whom are likely to be members of the next US Olympic women's hockey team. TOPWLH is incorrigibly gregarious.

I hereby for the first time in the blogging context reveal that I have yet another alter ego that most of you are not aware of. Here is what that alter ego posted about today's hockey game in yet another place on the internet where I sometimes leave my thoughts. Many of you are not going to understand the references and I am sorry if you do not. But when I write about hockey I am writing for hockey fans, all of whom DO understand all of the references. So here goes:

Minnesota 3, Harvard 1.

An excellent, high tempo game between two quality teams.

Minnesota (MLam) got a goal after 32 seconds. Other than that single play the first period was very even, ending at 1-0.

Harvard outplayed Minnesota in the second but it remained 1-0 going to the third.

Minnesota's fourth line got a lot of ice time. Harvard played its fourth line some but that line seemed to me to get a lot less time than Minnesota's fourth. By the third period Minnesota got the most of the best of the play. It was 3-0 before Harvard got the game's final goal.

Attendance was 1,226, a very nice crowd for the day after Thanksgiving.

I pronounce myself satisfied with the JLam, MLam, Marvin experiment. I have seen enough, let's move on. In this configuration Gigi does not have the puck enough. Minnesota has several wings who can perform the functions for the Lams that Gigi is performing with this line configuration. The second line tonight was Schoullis, West and Francis and I would now like to see Schoullis and Marvin switch places. I would like to see them go back to the configuration they displayed in the very first games of the season, Marvin, West, Francis, then JLam, MLam, Schoullis.

The fourth line played a lot and was actually very good. They got caught out against Harvard's top line two or three times but even that was not catastrophic. At other times they held their own and even created chances.

Grogan is very good.

Vaillancourt is every bit as good as her reputation, always one of the best players on the ice every time she was out there.

Ludwig and Perrault refereed. Those guys are NOT very good. In addition, AR Langley made a key clear of the zone for Minnesota while Harvard had a 5 on 3 power play, letting a Harvard pass hit her in the skates and redirecting the puck to center ice, thereby killing off most of the remaining time with the 2 player advantage. It was not a banner night for the team in the striped shirts.

Brrrr

The posted high temperature for so far today is 29. It appears that at the end of the day that bicycling will have not been possible as I do not ride when my water bottles would freeze.

Over so soon?

There were ice pellets on the deck this morning. It is wet outside and too cold to ride. It comes always as a bit of a shock but each year at this time it comes: the realization that that last ride I took may have been the last ride of the year. I expect to ride at least a few more times but . . .

So I return to Greatest Hits 2007: This is Cows, other.I am following the FC Nantes game on the live update feature at the FC Nantes website. As we all know my French is rudimentary and following the games this way is a learning experience. I do suspect that I may be learning a lot of football terms and not so much actually useful conversational French. For instance, I know that "coup franc" is a free kick.

I can translate the following: "Long centre de Paulo Cesar, mais c'est derrière le but d'Alonzo" as a long centering pass by (Toulouse player) Paulo Cesar, but it is behind the goal of (Nantes keeper) Alonzo.

Today I read this in the update notes:

"Il pleut à torrent."

I believe that today it was raining very hard at the stadium in Nantes.

Nantes scored in the 4th minute, surrendered a tying goal in the 19th but then held on for a 1-1 draw with a Toulouse team which as recently as last week had designs on seizing the top spot in the table. It is not a win but it is a "useful" result.

Arrivals

I got the newspaper off the front steps at about 6:15. It had rained overnight and the falling temperatures as dawn approached produced a change in the form of precipitation. A light snow was beginning to fall.

This is about 7am, our deck.I have been fighting a cold and I hadn't been out of the house since last Friday except for voting. Today I had to go out for a previously scheduled medical check-up with my alternative provider, the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center. It was very obvious that I had not been out when the first thing I had to do after starting my car was to switch the clock to standard time.

It was all OKey dOKey at the VA and I was on my way home by a bit after 9. The VA is a place I only get to once a year. I keep exploring alternative routes to get home, so far with pretty unremarkable results. Today I ended up, as I usually do, driving semi-aimlessly through town.

I found myself on Cleveland returning towards Roseville, instead of the expected Snelling. I was driving past the farm campus and decided to visit my friends.The gas gauge light had come on during my trip and the price of gas at the stations I was passing were too unbelievable to pass up. I stopped at the corner of Larpenteur and Snelling. I freely admit that this is a sign I never expected to see again.The snow was gone by shortly past noon.

Cows, fall

Another bike geek moment

I call this one Causenteeny.Other available bike geek for scale.

We rode a bit and discovered that the bicycle computer was STILL underreporting mileage. My solution was another classic moment of bike geekdom. I performed a repair using spare parts that I had lying around. I switched to a Sigma 800 which has always been reliable for me and once again find myself to be a very self satisfied bike geek.

Lyon has defeated Paris Saint-Germain 1-0 in extra time to claim la Coupe de France. The schedule for Ligue 1 for next year has been released and Nantes will open August 9 at Auxerre. For a bit of perspective Auxerre was 15th in Ligue 1 this year and looks to be the kind of team from which Nantes must take points to succeed in the return to the elite.

The Giro today saw its first mountaintop finish and Contador moved up to just 5 seconds off the overall lead. This smells very bad to me.

Onojo, demis trux.

I had a revelation while riding today which I am going to share. Unfortunately, I suspect that it is not going to be very profound. But here it is:

A rest day makes you really strong the following day.

In addition, today was a really nice day. It was sunny with medium winds. The temperature at the A&W was 68. I think this makes this the warmest temperature I have ridden in so far this year. The negative of course is that the average temperature for today is 70. So a really nice day but still, still sub-par.

I never noticed before but the A&W has those outdoor park and order from your car deals along the fence. I watched for a bit though, and I did not see the high school girl actually roller skating out to bring the tray of food to the car.So it is just a tiny bit inauthentic.

If you can read the sign you will learn that this establishment will soon be sponsoring old car "cruising" nights. I suppose that a retro sort of restaurant is a natural for a gathering of retro sort of cars.

And along those same lines, I call this "Causenflours innaroe".The Giro d'Italia is so far refusing to become interesting. The race hasn't really begun as each stage so far has finished in a bunch sprint. Even today when the stage ended with a 3 km long climb at an average gradient of 5.9%, but with 9% at the end, even in the face of an obstacle that should have separated the field, the peloton still finished gruppo compacto. It looks as though the race will not begin until the mountain stages of the 3rd week.

Race to the Sun

The hockey news is glum, the season is over. One of the reasons why victory is so sweet is that sometimes it really hurts to lose. Trying to read the body language of the players, I think this one really hurt.

Today the sun was out and the temperature improved a few degrees over yesterday. The wind swung around to the south and at this time of year a south wind is always a relief from the biting north wind. The ride was more or less tolerable until the sun went behind a giant grey bank of clouds and the wind started to come around. I was fairly close to turning around before that happened so I beat it for home. I finished without huge discomfort and all in all I pronounce the ride a success.Here's the first look for this year at the Saint Paul Campus Cows. They look as content in the remnants of snow as they look later in the year on the lush lawn.

The Paris-Nice bicycle race finished today at the traditional finish on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Italian David Rebellin, racing for the Gerolsteiner team, maintained the time advantage gained yesterday to win the race for the first time. Gerolsteiner sounds like it should be a beer company but it is actually a German mineral water company. The team rides Specialized bicycles. On Thursday the race climbed Mont Ventoux, the Giant of Provence, albeit from the opposite side as the usual approach, reputedly a somewhat easier climb. Australian Cadel Evans won the stage at Ventoux, stamping last year's Tour de France runner-up as the early favorite for this year's Tour.

And so the season begins but the stain of last year's doping scandals lingers. The winner of last year's Paris-Nice, Alberto Contador, was not permitted to ride this year as his team, Astana, was not invited. Astana was in the middle of some of the most unsavory parts of the doping behavior last year but this year's team has a new manager and a completely new set of riders. The only things remaining from old Astana are the sponsor, the Kazakh blue uniforms, and the stench. The organizers of European races seem determined to exclude Astana. This looms as a major story for le Tour de France as Contador is also the defender in that race.

Calmer crowd

Curling yesterday, hockey tomorrow, today's ride is the last after work ride for this week, and just possibly for the year. Only a week of daylight savings remains but even with the clock change there is barely enough daylight being saved to allow for very many miles after 8 hours at the plant. All it would take is a bit of inclement weather or some emergency at work and the after work opportunity would just not present itself again. Truly the season is nearly over.

There are good things about the end of the season. The end of the season crowd is all that is riding now. Racer boy has pretty much disappeared from the streets. During the time when racer boy is out and about there is an aggressive rudeness which bubbles up all over the city. Racer boy has gone inside and the remaining riders are actually cordial to one another, greeting each other with a raised hand or a nod, civilities which completely disappear during the heat of the summer.

I don't miss racer boy.

It was 57 today, a disappointment to some as the forecast high was for something in the 60s. But the average high for this date is only 54 so it was an above average day. The wind was tolerable, the ride was nice. We have had frost but have not yet had an official temperature reading of freezing or below so it seems possible that we will get out of October without seeing our first snow flurry. Knock on wood though, a lot can happen in 6 days, including snow.

My route today was to the south and the return took me through the campus. Here are the cows in probably their last appearance for this year. I call it "Cows in Repose in Fall".Life is good.

It's starting to get dark

I had an interesting bicycle maintenance moment today. I, for the first time this year for sure, probably quite a bit longer, forgot my water bottles when I started out on my ride. I only got a couple of miles before I noticed. I turned around and came home and picked up the water.

On the way back I was hearing a vague, very faint, high frequency, intermittent squeak. This noise was completely new so my first thought was of what I had changed recently. Of course, I just had the back wheel off to repair the flat so I decided to check the quick release to make sure it was solid and also to look at the brake to make sure it wasn't rubbing.

I got off the bike at the garage door and before I had a chance to do anything else I noticed that a leaf was stuck in the rear brake. Squeak cured.

I decided to try to photograph a barn but they are fairly rare in a large city. I got a picture of this one on the fair grounds.It doesn't look much like a barn, it definitely doesn't have the classic shape. But it does have a sign that says "Barn" so I think it is a barn. And that stuff on the sidewalk in the foreground of the photo had the definite odor of a substance commonly found in a barn. Yup, barn.

I found this thing that has the correct shape. And if you can read the sign above the door, it says "Cattle barn". But I am not sure it is a barn. If you read the sign next to the building you will discover that it seems to be identified as the "Dairy cattle teaching center."Actually, I am fairly certain that it is a barn.

As is probably fairly obvious, it is starting to be dark pretty early.

Nantes tied Dijon 0-0. They return to even on points with LeHavre, first place on goal differential.

Cow fixation

What can I say? I don't live in New York. We have cows here.I was nearing the end of the ride and already had a picture when I came upon this giant Holstein near Lake Como. You don't see cows this big all that often.

The other interesting bit concerns the wheelie king from last week. I rode past his house today and he was just turning off the car after getting home. I was wrong when I described him as not old enough to drive. Today he was driving. He is still the wheelie king though.

FC Nantes returned to Ligue 2 action with yet another Monday night game, this time against Sedan. The rest of the league games last Friday had once again had the effect of moving Nantes out of the top spot in the table, this time to fourth. The most significant of the Friday games was Le Havre winning 3-2 at Dijon. Le Havre was second and Dijon third entering that game.

In front of a middling crowd of just over 18,000 tonight in Nantes the Canaries scored early on what the commentators described as their first serious entry into Sedan territory. Attacker Mamadou Bagayoko created the chance and was fouled in the area giving Nantes a penalty kick. Thomas Dossevi converted the penalty for a 1-0 lead in the 5th minute. Sedan equalized in the 18th minute when Nantes returned the favor with a foul in the penalty area. Apparently everyone in the stadium conceded it was a foul except the linesman who raised his flag indicating offside. The referee conferred with the fourth official and overruled the linesman, instead pointing to the spot. The score at the half was 1-1. Harlington Shereni put Nantes back on top in the 55th minute. What commentators called a beautiful collective effort was initiated on the left by Mamadou Bagayoko. The pass was first to team captain Frederic Da Rocha and then to Shereni who produced the winning goal. Shereni has newly been named Ligue 2 player of the month for August.

Nantes returns to the top of the table. The Canaries are next in action next Monday against FC Libourne-Saint-Seurin at its 8,000 seat ground in Libourne. Libourne is currently 19th in the table.

Barn denizens

The front came through here overnight. It rained all night and a bit more this morning. This moved the hot weather out and when the front had passed what we got was partly cloudy, breezy and about 75, in other words, an excellent early fall day. I rode my bicycle.

All this talk about barns certainly should raise this group back into the limelight, or maybe the sunlight.Peaceful looking, I should say.

Still not scan enabled.

I must admit that there have been a few times in the last couple of weeks when this whole fitting a bicycle ride into the daily schedule has seemed way too much like work. The incessant wind, the uncertain temperatures, sometimes it just isn't that much fun.

But a day like today gives a person an opportunity to revisit all of the sensations that are the reasons why I like riding. It was coolish, only a bit over 70, but there was not a single cloud of any kind visible anywhere in the sky. There was a light breeze but plenty tolerable. The weather enforced days off made me rested and strong. All in all, it was a perfect day for a ride.

Lake Vadnais is the final basin for the Saint Paul City Water Department. Although located in Vadnais Heights, the lake provides the water supply for Saint Paul. Saint Paul also sells water to many northern suburbs, including incidentally, Vadnais Heights.This is the pump house and the waterworks boathouse located on the south shore of the Lake.

It was a great ride and I stopped at a favorite spot on the way home. They looked so . . . I don't know, contented or something, that I just couldn't resist taking their picture again.The campus cows return.

I got the scanner unpacked but have not installed the software yet so scanning looks like a weekend project. My blogging siblings have set the bar pretty high, I hope I have something to offer when I finally get scan-enabled.