November update, I went to New York

"Teach a man to fish and he eventually breaks his fishing pole."

- Winston Churchill

Okay you don't need to google that, I'm pretty sure Winston Churchill never said it. I did however, break both of my fly rods this year. One broke mid-cast and the other broke during a messy release. Fortuitously both were under warranty and were able to be replaced, though I missed a couple months of fishing at the end of the summer.

During late June I participated in an informal fishing contest sponsored by a local fly fishing shop. Given ten days, participants caught as many different species within the area as possible. I was pretty far out of the winnings, but had fun and got a lot of fishing in.

The relative importance of participating was maintaining my schedule and routine during the competition, as if every day is an opportunity to wake up at 4 AM, drive to Wisconsin, fly fish for 12 hours, drive home, ride my bicycle to the YMCA, swim a half mile, catch the paper, do the puzzles, make dinner, have a beer, wash the dishes, do the next day's New York Times Crossword puzzle, fall asleep, wake up and go to work the next day without pretense.

I'm not "saying" that's how it went, because it wasn't, it was only one of ten days.

The whole thing smacked of effort, as they say.

So around about mid-summer, I bought a round trip ticket to New York. I've been happily employed as a retail associate for almost a year now, and a vacation seemed warranted. Luckily I was able to get the time away from work and I started planning my visit for late October.

I flew to Newark airport on a Monday, and walked, and walked and walked. I walked across the Brooklyn bridge, I walked through Soho, Chelsea, Chinatown and the World Trade Center Memorial. I found the Fearless Girl statue, facing down the New York Stock Exchange; I walked past the Flatiron building, wrapped in scaffolding 22 stories high. I took some pictures, had a couple slices of pizza and got home in time to meet my hosts before they started their Tuesday morning.

Tuesday I went to New Haven, Connecticut and saw the Peabody Museum. On Wednesday I went to the Meat Packing District, visited the Whitney Museum, purchased a three day Citi Bike membership, found the 14th Street YMCA, swam and had more pizza. 

Thursday I started early, riding a Citi Bike past the UN Building, through Central Park and stopping at the Guggenheim museum. I've never seen anything like Central Park, or the constant throngs of people in and around the city. The Manhattan Riverfront Greenway was safer than riding in the street, and every view of the Hudson and East rivers was worth the effort.

With half the day remaining I made it to the American Museum of Natural History and The Metropolitan Museum of Art before they closed - eventually riding my way back to the Chelsea YMCA to swim again before having a late night Chinatown dinner and beer with my host.

These two museums, the Natural History Museum and The Met - are grandiose in scale. I only had enough time to see one specific room of The Met, and happily viewed paintings of the Abstract Expressionist style before going to the roof and watching the sun set over Central Park. 

Friday morning I saw the sunrise and got on the New Jersey transit to Newark before 8 AM.

While I was there my streak of New York Times crossword puzzles went past five hundred days. As I sat in the courtyard of the Natural History Museum and finished the Thursday puzzle without googling the answers or querying a blog for hints, I thanked whoever I could for the opportunity to be there, accomplishing something I had struggled with for so long.

So there it is, a couple of big events in the past four or five months. I think I skipped a few things, but most of it is in there somewhere.

Thanks for reading.

Manhattan, NY, 10-23-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan, New York, 10-23-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney

Minneapolis, MN, 9-22-2019, photo by Michael McKinney

Peabody Museum, New Haven, CT, 10-22-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan, New York, 10-25-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan ,New York. 10-24-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Saint Croix River, MN. 8-1-2019, photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan, NY, 10-23-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan ,NY, 10-22-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan, NY, 10-24-2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

Minneapolis, MN, 8-23-2019, photo by Michael McKinney.

Manhattan, NY, 10-21-2019. 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.

Early December

The weather has abruptly dropped off the shelf, as many local weather forecasters had been expecting. After a very warm November and unprecedented wildfires and hurricanes in the national forecast, some Minnesotans may have begun to expect a similar calamity in their weather system. Obviously not, as lakes and creeks have begun freezing and the daily temperatures resume their typical below freezing averages.

Three category four hurricanes in a row through Central America and wildfires throughout the western United States have made the anticipation of weather less a premonition of happiness than a prayer for strangers caught out.

Summer in Minnesota was enjoyable, I again volunteered for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency as a Volunteer Stream Monitor along Minnehaha Creek, a 22 mile stream through Western Minneapolis flowing out of Lake Minnetonka. Since a 2014 flooding, changes in the stream and surrounding bodies of water have mandated changes in the way it is managed, and following along as a volunteer has been a gradual evolvement from passing spectator to willing participant.

My responsibilities as a Citizen Stream Monitor are fairly simplistic, and often the process of getting to my water collection site is more complicated than the process of measuring the turbidity or generating quantitative judgements of the recreational or aesthetic potential. I hope to resume my volunteering when the snow and ice melt next year, but for now it is back to planning for winter bicycle riding (studded tires and bring a bus pass just in case) and volunteering with the City of Lakes Loppet Foundation during their Loppet Festival in Minneapolis, which this year coincides with the Super Bowl.

Stay Warm!

Minnehaha Creek Northern Pike, Photo by Michael McKinney

Minnesota Nice Ride late season, photo by Michael McKinney

Bread, photo by Michael McKinney

Pottery through the Saint Paul Community Education Program, photo by Michael McKinney

Me with a Largemouth Bass, anon photo

Saint Paul Mural, photo by Michael McKinney

Mountain Biking on July 4th at Wirth Park, Minneapolis, photo by Michael McKinney

Minnehaha Creek Smallmouth Bass, photo by Michael McKinney

Minnehaha Creek Largemouth Bass, photo by Michael McKinney

Memorial Day Weekend 2017

It is a really nice day outside today. Plenty of sunlight, light breeze, some chance of rain later in the day. I have been in a Minneapolis library for the last three or four hours, working on getting a handful of crossword puzzles finished as near to acceptably perfect as my ability allows. I think more than enjoying the effort it takes to answer the question I look forward to the time when I can get myself back outside again to pursue the motivations that got me started on expressing myself a little more clearly, even if it meant risking the impunity of not knowing exactly how to.

I enjoyed riding in the 2017 Fulton Fondo again this year, and thanks to the non-profit organization Nice Ride Minnesota, I have enlisted in a Community Partners program that gives me access to their many kiosks around the Twin Cities. My own bicycles are waiting at home waiting to be used, and besides a few minor mechanical issues are ready for another day.

There were a nice few weeks back in April when I got out fishing along Minnehaha Creek, between Lake Nokomis and the Mississippi River, and had some luck catching large rough fish. So far this year that has been the most noteworthy thing...besides Donald Trump getting elected president, which I am doing my best to refrain from commenting on. Minneheha Creek has been crowded a lot lately and it is a constant reminder of how lucky I am to enjoy good health to be able to simply keep walking to another fishing spot if the one I had hoped to try this afternoon has become another person's favorite fishing hole.

Carp from Lake Hiawatha, April 2017.

Fulton Fondo II completed, May 2017

Carp from Lake Hiawatha, near Minnehaha Creek, Minneapolis, April 2017