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Showing posts with label Minnesota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minnesota. Show all posts

Friday, December 8, 2017

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



Saturday, January 24, 2015

Hogback toast

Minneapolis, 2014. Photo by Michael McKinney

Minneapolis, 2014. Photo by Michael McKinney

Saint Paul, 2014. Photo by Michael McKinney

Minneapolis, 2014. Photo by Michael McKinney

Lake Minnetonka, 2014. Photo by Michael McKinney


The long story is pretty complicated, so I'll shorten it to 2008, when a cousin of mine in Colorado printed out a GPS map of a fifty mile bike ride from Fort Collins to Boulder. I was riding his steel frame road bike, and though I had never ridden the route, it was easily the highlight of 2008 - I didn't get lost, it was a fairly challenging ride, and I handled it. I even enjoyed it. I surprised myself, really.

A hogback in Colorado is what the Boulder locals call a hill, and in Minnesota, it's what a lot of people would look at cross eyed and say "...that's the biggest hill I've ever seen." In a state with 55 mountain peaks over 14,000 feet high, it's pretty easy to see why misinterpretations regarding elevation are bound to happen. Take a minute to google "Number of 14,000 foot peaks in Minnesota" and reward yourself with a broad understanding of regional linguistics.

Anyway, this particular bike ride had a few good hogbacks and fifty miles at elevation, so my cousin planned it for me in advance with a map from MapMyRides and BikeRouteToaster, a fairly simple mapping program. When I got back to the level headed Midwest, I spent some time learning about MapMyRide; going on a bike ride on familiar roads, getting home, walking to a library and charting out my ride, sometimes printing out the BikeRouteToaster results for elevation and sometimes saving the work on MapMyRide.

Footnote, manually mapping a fifty mile bicycle ride on a public library computer and then having the map lost after a system wide reset is a little frustrating, almost as frustrating as the same thing happening at a coffee shop where the wi-fi is free as long as your coffee is pricey enough.

One thing led to another, and in 2013 I bought a wrist top GPS - a Garmin 210 heart rate monitor and GPS computer. No more manual mapping, but lots of statistics and Stravasshole-ism, (I had no idea "King of the Mountain" was anything but a game kids play at snowpiles while waiting for the bus), but there you go. Since then, the mapping and recording of rides has been a lot simpler. Rather than spending up to an hour manually entering turns and miles on MapMyRide, I plug in the Garmin 220, (I upgraded in 2014 after some technical issues), upload the data to Strava, MapMyRide and Garmin Connects and get on my way.

That is as uncomplicated as I can make it.

Thanks for reading, and here is my favorite bike ride from 2014, a double loop through the fairly hilly region of Cherokee Park, Kaposia Park and Mendota Heights, Minnesota.