A huge advantage (to me) of FC Nantes now playing in the top flight

I can watch the highlights.

Available from 0001 CET the Monday after the weekend games.

Great start for FC Nantes.

Signs

I have ridden past this sign nearly every time I have been here.

It has always struck me as a bit unusual but today was the first time I got around to stopping for a photo.

I should add that I ALWAYS look and I have never, NEVER seen any dogs inside that fence.

Retour vers la Ligue 1

It's hard being a fan of a relatively obscure European football club, particularly so when the club is NOT from one of the big four soccer leagues in Europe (England, Germany, Spain and Italy) and even more so when the team I have been trying to follow is not even in the top league in France.  FC Nantes has given me a break though  by winning promotion to Ligue 1 and this year's season began today.  That's what the post title refers to, the return to the top league.  It is also the slogan captured on a t-shirt gifted to me by my French speaking dafter.

According to the official website, Ligue1.com, Nantes is back with a bang.  Last year's leading scorer Filip Djordjevic scored in the 23rd minute and SC Bastia contributed an own goal in the 90th minute. FC Nantes defeated SC Bastia 2-0.

I earlier today e-mailed the t-shirt photo to the aforementioned family French speaker.  She replied by text with bonne maillot or something like that although I believe that the French word for t-shirt is "t-shirt".

It was such a nice day that I broke the usual tradition of sunset photos with mid-morning view of the same scene.

 Aftgernoon rolled around and bicycling ensued.  I was out without my customary Michigan ride leader.  This CAN work because I have nearly 3,000 Michigan miles and I can find at least the most familiar of the usual sights.

The Port Sheldon Party Store because who doesn't want to have fuel with an attitude.

 Further north to the crossing of the Pigeon River although I am fairly certain they call it Pigeon Lake at this particular point, Lake Michigan out there beyond the mouth of the river/lake.

Everyone's real favorite, the West Olive One Stop.

The WOOS has a usually pretty taciturn staff and an "interesting" product selection.

And a slightly unsavory clientele.

Nice day, nice ride, fabulous Saturday on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Travel is hard

But actually, the cab driver drove fast but not dangerously so, the plane actually departed a couple of minutes early, we had a tail wind and made up time in the air and arrived in time for dinner.  Actual travel from out front door to parked at the beach house just a skoosh more than 4 hours.

And were around for a little just after sunset sky viewing.

And reported earlier by Wireless I am now getting two bars even up here on the mountain.

Bing gets binged

Yesterday felt like rain ALL DAY, every single minute.  But it never actually did.

Today dawned feeling a little bit the same.  Further more the weather predicting internet source currently highly touted by TOPWLH put the probability of precipitation at 60 percent or so, beginning at about noon.

Bing got binged.

According to the internet weather radar source that I generally refer to, the system split in two, part going past to our north, part going past to our south.

Pretty darn nice day.

I did show some deference to Bing by riding the don't get too far from home loop at the beginning.  THAT turned out to be a complete waste.

But the not too far from home loop leads me down past the cows and into the Fairgrounds.  Today I found the gates all closed,  entrée interdite.

Eventually I came across a gate with an explanatory sign.

Entrée interdite.

I circled around over towards Lake Como and then headed back down towards the front gate of the Fairgrounds hoping to find further explanation.  On the way I passed my favorite municipal rain garden in the Como neighborhood.

Usually I have to wait until I spend part of August in Michigan to spot a cardinal flower but today I saw the year's first cardinals in Saint Paul.

Here's the front gate of the Fairgrounds.

Oh, right, that figures.

A good reason why the grounds would be closed until August 21 is that the Fair starts on August 22.

The problem for me is, I think, that I am still sort of expectantly awaiting the arrival of spring and as a result I am pretty totally unprepared for it to be nearly the end of summer.

But . . .

The big news of the day is in our back yard.

Today was only the delivery.  Actual installation will occur Thursday.  The delivery guy warned us that during installation on Thursday we should expect to be without power for most of the day, 4 to 6 hours he said.

I guess that's going to have to be OK, particularly when I consider the fact that after Thursday the power will NEVER GO OFF AGAIN.

That photo was after my ride, maybe 3:30 or so.  Pretty nice looking day for a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms would be my opinion.  Others might not agree but they would be wrong.

Big fella

I admit it isn't nearly as good a photo as you can get when a big doe sleeps in your yard but I still like this one of what I counted as a 10 point buck.  He was grazing next to the parking lot at the foot of the Sucker Lake trail, the parking lot often featured because of broken car window glass.

People who seek out antler sheds should be alert to that part of town, there are going to be some nice ones out there later this year.

I have been experimenting with settings on the pocket camera.  After the big white bird fiasco I thought perhaps the landscape setting would result in less unsatisfactory auto focus.

Nope.

Back to automatic at least for now, maybe P, maybe that red heart one which I suppose is favorite.

*sigh*  Time to read the manual again.

I think I have had fair results in the past with no flash but I quite sure that as a setting that is only on the good camera, it is an extra step on the pocket camera.

I am still quite obsessed with trees.  The images you get on yahoo images of the big pines are not usually of those trees as yard landscaping.

However, I ride a bicycle, I see lots of trees, some in plantings which only bring to mind my god what were they thinking (under power lines for example)?

Here is a pretty nice red pine at the corner of a yard.

State tree of Minnesota.

And a nice white pine about two miles from here.

State tree of Michigan.

It was another day when half the sky was socked in heavy clouds and a clearly visible half the sky was more than enough blue to make all the pants Dutchmen are ever going to need.  As luck would have it most of my ride was under the cloudy part.  It was weird though, the sun was so close to the dividing line (from my perspective) that I often rode out into the sunshine.

Nice day.

Hooray, hooray.

I use that a lot on the first of the month.

The big storm is rolling up on six weeks in our past but it is still plenty evident around here.  The trees that blew OVER have long one but there still seems to be some sort of tree service truck every couple of blocks.  They are now working on the ones like the one in our front yard that were killed by the storm but didn't have the self realization to actually fall down.  People who own the houses next to these trees are full on having them removed.  Here's a birch tree gone down about two miles from here, the men are still there with a smidgen of their truck visible frame right.

It is probably also evident from the photo that it was a gorgeous, gorgeous day, very suitable for mid June.  I rode all the way out to the northern lakes.  Thursday is a good day to go out there.

A comparison of this photo to a photo taken and posted on April 29 should reveal a couple of interesting tidbits.

Most obvious of course is the change of hue.  But equally interesting at least to me is that little trail of sticks crossing the waterway.  It is spectacularly good beaver habitat out there and it looks to me like they are back.

The new path at Vadnais resulted in the removal of several really nice old cottonwood trees down by the parking lot.  I got this photo about halfway up the lake near one of the new bench/fishing areas.

Another look at one of the trees in the neighborhood of a species that is under consideration for out front yard.  This one is a couple of blocks away.

Of course, we are also facing a could happen at any time loss of our two ash trees.  For replacement, if necessary, of those trees we are leaning towards deciduous.  I quite like the maple trees visible on either side of the conifer.  I believe they are Schwedler maples, I believe also known as Norway maples.

This is a European maple tree which comes with a little controversy.  It is considered an invasive species in some eastern states.  I dunno, we seem fine with Norway pine.

I like the leaves, it is northern European, likely to do just fine in this zone and turns probably mostly yellow trending towards reddish orange in the fall.

I was watching a soccer game after I got home from my ride and the play by play guy offered the opinion that the team behind by a goal was moving as if mired in treacle.

Didn't expect that.