October 2018

With summer passing into a very abbreviated autumn, the bike riding has gotten chillier and more infrequent. Although I make use of NiceRide bicycles as much as I can, sometimes it is tough to beat the warmth and free time riding the bus or train provides. It is probably indicative of having grown up in a town without public transit that I am just learning how vital it can be to know the efficiency and usefulness a reliable public transportation system engenders to those who choose to, or can afford to use it. Sitting on the bus gives me a few extra minutes to look at the paper, or scan my email, or catch the latest news - those meaningful distractions that make up a working day for most people which I am not privy to when I am riding a bicycle.

So I should tell stories about losing my keys on the bus, or how sometimes the other bus riders are rude, or how sometimes the bus or train feels like a little microcosm, how the bus is packed with school kids sometimes, drunks other times ... maybe something about the homeless people trying to live on the trains, or the business people trying to save gas money with their daily multi-modal commute. As far as I can tell, the larger an urban area is, and the more people it caters to, the closer it becomes to an ecological presence of its own volition, nearly alive in the cement and steel that guides sentience through it.

Since my foot injury in 2015, I have gotten a NiceRide membership and accrued over 1,000 station to station commutes. I can't really vouch for how far each one was or how fast; I can add in the 190 I made in 2013 and the 145 I made in 2012, but an exact number doesn't exist. The better discussion is probably focused more on my health and my overall well being, the money and carbon saved from utilizing that resource, and the congeniality of a non-profit organization who made an effort to accommodate my needs. For which I am thankful. Thanks NiceRide, you rock.

After moving to Minneapolis from Saint Paul I have slowly adjusted to my new kitchen, which is smaller and has its own idiosyncrasies. There have been a few decent bicycle rides since May, and time for fishing as well as continuing to volunteer while hoping for a reasonable outcome to my ongoing employment crisis.

I did lose my keys on the bus once, last year. They fell out of my bag on a Tuesday morning, and I didn't notice until 9:45 pm the same night. That was a long day.

The next day I took flowers to the lost and found window at Metro Transit, to thank the driver or rider who found them and turned them in, rather than making my life worse. It took some phone calls and the landlords were not enthusiastic about my emergency maintenance call, but once the keys were found, buying flowers was the least I could do.

Lake Harriet, Photo by Michael McKinney.

Mde Maka Ska, photo by Michael McKinney

Cedar Lake, photo by Michael McKinney

Minneapolis Greenway, photo by Michael McKinney

Late May, 2018

One of the most common questions people ask me when I first meet them, is: "What do you do?"

It would be nice to say it is strictly a Minnesota thing, but I really have not seen that much of Minnesota. I have lived in Stillwater, Saint Paul and Minneapolis all of my life. Maybe people in Embarrass don't ask that question because they are all freezing cold year round...I mean I know a little geography but if you sent me to Windom I would spend all of my time trying to find the Wind Farms, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to do brief employment surveys of my peers.

So, what do I do?

Since injuring my foot in 2015 I have tried to maintain a fairly compulsory rehabilitation schedule. There was a full time job, after college, which never paid much...there were a couple of full time jobs, actually. I delivered newspapers for a year. I worked in retail and the service industry. I worked for a small outdoor industry retailer specializing in rock climbing, cross country skiing and sea kayaking...it sounds too good to be true; what I have learned since 2010 tells me some of it was. I worked in arboriculture and bakeries as well, to limited success.

I sold my car in 2009, have moved five or six times, depending on your opinion of temporary housing, and have struggled to find full time employment that matched anything as reliable and equitable as something that now seems fictional. There is irony in there somewhere but I never put it together well enough to explain it.

Since moving to Saint Paul in 2010, I have volunteered at a number of different agencies that pertain to either my educational or professional experiences. I read as much as time allows, ride a bicycle and bake bread when doing so does not seem like more trouble than it is worth. Sometimes, I have to re-prioritze things in a way that values self-preservation over dedication.

In February and March of 2014 there was still so much snow on the roads I decided to ride less, because fighting traffic became too difficult. What happens is the more snow is plowed to the side of the road, the further out cars parking on the side of the road have to be - rather than being parked next to a curb, cars are parked three to four feet off the curb (on both sides of the street) because a big snow pile is there instead - so cars are pinched into both lanes and bicycles are less welcome.

Anyway, that was my experience. Die hard cyclists would provide much counter point here and I did see people riding that spring, as I walked onto the bus, stepping over snow piles four feet from the curb.

So what do I "do" though? 

Mostly I volunteer, and I try to remember that being employed again relies heavily on an equanimity sufficient enough to utilize whatever social and professional skills I have learned in a productive manner. Volunteering is often a great opportunity to test that sense of place without feeling like a failure will cost me my livelihood. And so it goes.

Anyway, I did participate in another #30DaysofBiking this April, and while I missed out on the handful of group rides occurring around the Twin Cities, I did manage to ride all thirty days, despite a massive blizzard, cold temperatures and a worn drivetrain that eventually will cost me some sad amount of money to replace. With a move to Minneapolis on March 30th of this year, I was hard pressed to get my rear in gear, but managed over 500 miles and a good day at the Fulton Fondo in May.

So for now that is what I have been doing.

My bicycle is at a shop, and I have been happily enjoying Minnesota NiceRide as a reliable adjunct to my commute. It would be nice to get back to feeling like the bicycle was something more essential in my day to day routine, but time will tell.

The fishing has been getting better, so that makes me happy.

Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

Dropping Cletus off in Minneapolis for repairs, Photo by Michael McKinney

Not even a bad pothole on Summit Avenue, Saint Paul. Photo by Michael McKinney

Sunset on Lake Harriet, Minneapolis, Photo by Michael McKinney

A snowy Organic Molecule on the U of M campus, Photo by Michael McKinney

Cletus surveying the Mde Maka Ska sunset, Photo by Michael McKinney

Minnesota #NiceRide in a blizzard, Greenway Bike Trail, Minneapolis. Photo by Michael McKinney

The day after, still on a NiceRide, Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

An urban fox patrolling near Lake Harriet, Photo by Michael McKinney

Day 30 of #30daysofbiking, Photo by Michael McKinney

At the start of the 2018 Fulton Fondo, Photo by Michael McKinney

Definitely a new Personal Best...I released it quickly, Photo by anon

The new DIY bike storage space, Minneapolis, Photo by Michael McKinney

My incredulity after finishing the Fulton Fondo without dropping my rear cassette, Photo by Michael McKinney

Late February

I had the good fortune to be accepted into a study abroad program in college. It was more than twenty years ago, and through some miracle I found myself in Ireland, England, Scotland and then turned loose upon the European continent for six weeks. Having had the opportunity to see Germany and Ireland, Scotland and France, I now wonder more at the capacity to diminish travel accessories than the panacea of architecture, art and culinary experiences I missed out on.

I brought a portable CD player that only worked on level ground, needed two AA batteries for three hours of music and a carrying case with 40 compact discs, and if traveling with a few books was not enough, I bought more books from a Parisian bookstore called Gibert Jeune and carried them home to gather dust on a bookshelf for twenty years. Last summer I finally got around to reading one of them, and let me tell you Leo Tolstoy had it right, "We can know only that we know nothing..." but you can skip everything but the last fifty pages and it still makes sense.

I don't do a lot of fishing in the winter, and while I initially made efforts to ride my bicycle as frequently as possible, my winter cycling is woefully thin compared to many, many regular cyclists commuting throughout the winter in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. What I have noticed from previous mileage is the tendency for roadways to become narrower as the snow accumulates along the peripheries. Bicycle trails are well maintained however, so negotiating debris fields along certain stretches of roadway between moving traffic and parked cars seems unnecessary by comparison.

Last year's total mileage was about a third of where I was four years ago, I appreciate the fancy Velo Viewer infograph telling me I climbed Mount Everest once, but it is not as comforting as not having foot pain. As such I spend more time riding Metro Transit buses and trains, watching the consistent diaspora of bicycle styles between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. On the same day a casual observer will see skinny-tired steel frame single speed fixies with leather strapped pedals being ridden through the same snow, slush and ice as a person on a carbon fat bike with monolithic tires set to 9 psi. The benefit of there being ample snow means the cross country ski trails are more usable, where it is more likely to see a fat biker negotiating single track mountain bike trails than a rebuilt single speed.

Speaking of ample snow, it just snowed again and it sounds like it will snow some more before March. By April it might still be around, but hopefully the transition between road tires and studded tires will not include too many instances of the former on ice or the latter on asphalt. 

Early season skiing on man-made snow, Minneapolis . Photo by Michael McKinney

Finding the bike lane, Minneapolis. Photo by Michael McKinney

Art Shanty Projects on Lake Harriet, Minneapolis. Photo by Michael McKinney

2017 Velo Viewer Infograph, Michael McKinney

December Sunset, Saint Paul. Photo by Michael McKinney

Skiers racing along Nicollet Mall, February 2018. Photo by Michael McKinney

After finishing War and Peace around Mid-Summer, the remainder of my Goodreads Reading Challenge was mostly non-fiction books, with a couple of Tom Clancy and John Grisham books in there too.

 

Michael's 2017-reading-challenge book montage

Michael's favorite books »

Tight lines.