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.

Browns Creek Bicycle Trail

The last time I caught a trout in Browns Creek was in 2006. I fished a size 16 Pheasant Tail Bead Head into a pool for an hour, and eventually caught what Simpson's folklorists would know as General Sherman, the massive catfish Homer caught in season two while on a couple's retreat with Marge.

The lone brown trout was probably just as surprised as I was to be caught, and I released it. The railroad tracks at that time were remnants of the logging industry that built Stillwater, as is most of the town's architecture and buildings - as recently as 2003 the original buildings that once housed logging mills were still standing, in fact I believe there are still a number of them there now.

After years of contentious land speculating, a group purchased the property, tore out the wooden rail ties and the steel rail lines and voila, a perfectly smooth, gradually descending, (or ascending) bicycle and pedestrian trail was born.

Of the handful of times I have ridden on the Browns Creek Trail, I have found people to be very courteous and respectful of cyclists, and I try as a cyclist to reciprocate that convention with "on your left" or simply slowing whenever an altercation seems imminent.

Here is a Strava route, running from Saint Paul to downtown Stillwater, nearly fifty miles of exclusive bicycle trail, including the newly completed Browns Creek Trail.

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.

August update

"The limits of excess are governed by one's ability to surpass expectations."

- Me, just now.

I'm pretty sure that's plagiarism, but Google won't reveal to me the original thinker who came up with it, so I'm going to use it and hope for the best.  I've been reading, and riding, and baking bread, as usual without a lot of surprises.  There was a decent couple loaves of bread using ground steel cut oats and cranberries, there were a few decent rides on Minnesota Nice Ride bicycles and I finally read The Stand by Stephen King.

I know, I'm really undershooting this.

Thanks.

I did just get out and ride a couple of routes I had been thinking about for awhile - cycling to Marine On St. Croix and back from St. Paul was a solid seventy miles, riding out to Lake Minnetonka and back, (including a new trail bridge on the Luce Line) has been a reliable fifty miles, (even though one particular stop light reminds me of a family portrait where everybody has to stand and wait until the moment is right, and then do it over because somebody heard a mouse fart or something), I rode through West Saint Paul and got through a couple of challenging climbs without too much trouble...



...a lot of these rides are probably daily or weekly routes for some of the areas more competent cyclists, for me, between trying to stay employed and trying to keep my feet on the ground, they are something to look forward to.

The thing I do not look forward to is getting into trouble.  Be it other cyclists not appreciating my attitude, local citizens charging me with disrespectful behavior or those close to me saying I am flippant and narcissistic, I guess a lot of it seems redundant and perfunctory.  Until I get pulled over by a police officer, while riding a bike, for going through a red light.  Or pulled over by a parks and recreation officer for riding through a closed trail section.  I don't know what to say about it, other than this is not the platform for those legalities.  I would welcome open and relevant discourse from a reader who felt disconcerted after reading this, then meeting me, and finding that I am not who they thought I would be.

I get frustrated.  I get angry.  I get downright mean sometimes.  Believe it or not, I am not only my own worst critic, I am my own worst enemy.  Shaquile O'Neal says having the right attitude is the only thing an athlete can completely control, and I guess if you can shatter backboards you have a valid point.  He wasn't much for the free throws though, was he.

Here's my latest Goodreads review, on a collection of short stories by Ian McEwan.

First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Last Day of Summer is pretty magnificent.  There is a lot of Flannery O'Connor in it, but there is also a tension that is brought out throughout the narrative that seems to reside in the story itself.  Although it is a tragedy, it reads like a triumphant lesson in love.

Cocker at the Theater is the other story that really got my attention.  Very short, very funny and still a bit bawdy.  The other stories in this collection, (besides Last Day of Summer) had more than their fair share of reproductive body parts in reference and function, yet this one was the only one that caught a play within a play, and set the quality of lasciviousness as humorous and just a little bit of harmless fun.  Something to be tolerated and forgotten, rather than lauded, dramatized and sensationalized.

So, two of these stories really impressed me, and yeah, I know, it's Ian Mcewan and who the hell am I, but that's what I'm going with. 



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Kinetic Linkage

I bought a Garmin Forerunner 210 in July, and have been making a consistent effort to record and track my rides on Garmin's website, Strava and MapMyRide for the past three or four months.  I selected Friday's ride into Minneapolis, a Thirty-Three mile ride along the Greenway, Cedar Trail and River Road then back to St. Paul.  There was a decent southern wind and rollerskiers were out in abundance. 
The GarminConnect, Strava and MapMyRide blog widgets allow me to post a coded link with a map and some information about the ride, as I have done here, but I'd rather be out riding.  The blog widgets will indubitably be garbled and messy, impossible to discern from somebody else's information and basically a waste of time. 
When I purchased my Felt F75X, I also bought a pair of studded winter tires from Finland.  Bring on the cold.

                    Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRide
               

Footnote - this is a fantastic read.

It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels by Robert Penn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What can you say about a guy from Wales who rode around the world because an Irish woman inspired him?  foolish?  Naive?  Soft hearted sentimentalist? I am sure somebody has already had their say about Robert Penn's private devices, his proclamatory penchant for his own garage, his mountainous ascents, the people he hob knobs with, his own rough scrapes flying down nepalese gravel roads...it all sounds so free spirited and liberalizing a reader might be sidled with grief for their own lack of experience. 
As a journalist approaches a story though, Penn forgoes his own (admittedly infrequent, compared to an average Strava user's twitter feed) philandering, and adopts a humble, awed perspective, as if he were holding the museum curators hand after wandering into the lecture hall after closing time.  As a cyclist and as a journalist, he wants to know the long history of each component: the chain, the seat, the handlebars, the derailleur, the frame and does each piece of engineering the justice it deserves.  As a cyclist himself, Penn comes across as an individualist and nearly peerless - his attitude seems appropriate for the characters he encounters while building himself what amounts to a white elephant.
The vast majority of people who ride a bicycle would never have recourse to something like Penn's investment, but any of them could take it out for a spin. Perhaps that's what Penn would want to know he had expressed in his memoir - dream bike or not, if it's got two wheels, a drivetrain, a seat, handlebars and a sturdy frame, it'll roll.



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Labor day 2013

Gateway Trail Construction, Photo by Michael McKinney

Stillwater Gazebo, Photo by Michael McKinney

Historic Stillwater Lift Bridge, Photo by Michael McKinney

Kaposia Park Sculpture, Photo by Michael McKinney

I had been thinking for awhile about a decent ride out through Stillwater and Afton via the Gateway and Military Road.  On Labor Day I took the day and set out in a clockwise fashion from Saint Paul, got past some construction on the Gateway Trail system and worked my way towards Pine Point - a north wind made the day a little more tolerable but also increased the resistance and wattage required for getting home.


Although I grew up in Stillwater, I no longer live there and do not get many opportunities for cordial visits with all of my old friends at the fantastic wine bars and social clubs Stillwater is so famous for.  The Dock Cafe, The Freight House, The Madcapper, The Oasis, Marx, Tin Bins, The Daily Grind, Smalleys Caribbean BBQ and a handful of other businesses in Stillwater are familiar to me as new and old establishments.


I wasn't planning on stopping for long, and my planned route deviated slightly when I carried my bike up the 162 Main Street stairs on the South end of Main Street.  Other options for ascending Stillwater's River Valley and proceeding in a Southern direction are Third Street, Second Street, Highway 95 and Myrtle Street to Sixth Street.  For many graduates of Stillwater Senior High School, especially track athletes, cross country runners and cross country skiers, the Main Street stairs are a familiar beast of burden.


After the Stair Climb I went through the town of Bayport, neatly divided from Stillwater by a half mile of barren moonscape, dirt and rock known as the St. Croix River Bridge Project, a public works fiasco in Stillwater since time immemorial.  Since the project has been commissioned, the tentative completion date is 2014, but if you asked Stillwater townsfolk in 1992 when the new bridge was going to be completed, they would have told you 1998, at the latest.  Even though pylons are in the river, I won't believe it until I see it.


The easiest part of the ride was traveling South to Afton with the wind at my back, followed quickly by the meat of the altitude, comprised of five or six large hills before County Road 20 and the descent back to Saint Paul on Military Road.  The day was a total of 70 miles, no mechanicals, a few pictures and a newfound appreciation Stillwater's evolving infrastructure.

Thursday Westerly Ride

That's 48.48 miles for mankind, and two steps back for the Einstellung Effect.

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I appreciated the wide set of examples used to construct a solid thesis.


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Afternoon Ride

After some deliberation over where or how far, I got some air into my tires and went out in search of dry pavement.  There was plenty, PLENTY of trail without snow, ice, sand, salt, grit, water and wildlife, but there were also a few patches of ice I walked over.  A number of cyclists were also out on the trails, besides myself, and today Minneapolis and Saint Paul are saturated in sunlight and warmth for the first time in months.  I estimate many bushy tailed squirrels are chasing one another throughout all of the trail systems, urban, rural, suburban...it's just the way spring is.



After completing the ride and saving it with the Strava application, I noticed a few inconsistencies with the data recorded, (a maximum speed of 65 MPH, a KOM score for going 35 MPH), which is ridiculous.  Having the capacity to record the ride in real time leaves me free to admire the things the GPS and mapping software are able to get right - the map, the time and possibly the average speed.  Anyway, first ride of the year on the skinny tires.  Same Specialized 2005 53 CM Allez Sport I've been riding since 2006.

November tenth bike ride

I got out for three hours on a nice Saturday afternoon, seeking out some elevation in South Saint Paul, West Saint Paul and the Mendota Heighs area.  Kaposia Park hill was definitely the highlight of the ride - today I spent some time getting my front wheel in true, as the friction of having it rubbing on the front brake for three hours detracted from the overall enjoyment of the day. I also listened to some music along the way, here's a playlist -

Porcelain - Moby
My Mind is Rambling - The Black Keys
12 Etudes - Christopher Parkening
Windfall - Son Volt
House Mop - Medeski Martin and Wood
Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
Bus to Beelzebub - Soul Coughing
Once I had a Woman - Jimi Hendrix
Hear my Train a Coming - Jimi Hendrix
Stop - Jane's Addiction
We're So - Medeski Martin and Wood
Let's Go Crazy - Prince
Shake Your Money Maker - Paul Butterfield
Drown - Son Volt
Statesboro Blues - The Allman Brothers
The Wind Cries Mary - Jimi Hendrix
Synchronicity - The Police
Black Limousine - The Rolling Stones
Outta Mind (Outta Sight) - Wilco
The Lover - Medeski Martin and Wood
Sometimes Truth is Stranger than Fiction - Bad Religion
Walking a Cow - Firehose
Wait Until Tomorrow - Jimi Hendrix
Whatever Happened to Gus - Medeski Martin and Wood

Photo by Michael McKinney

Voulare - The Gypsy Kings
Cult of Personality - Living Colour
I Can't Stand up For Falling Down - Elvis Costello
Estudio Brilliante - Christopher Parkening
I Guess I Planted - Billy Bragg and Wilco
True Dreams of Witchita - Soul Coughing
Flying Saucer - The Wedding Present
Sunspots - Bob Mould
Recuerdos De La Alhambia - The Gypsy Kings
Belleville - Borelli Legrene
All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
No Use in Crying - The Rolling Stones
Moral Kiosk - REM
Nocturne - Medeski Martin and Wood
Prodigal Son - the Rolling Stones
Waiting on a Friend - the Rolling Stones
Let me Take You Home Tonight - Boston
Rock Music - The Pixies
Tree House - Buffalo Tom
St. Charles Shuffle - Peter Lang
Bombs Away - The Police
Catfish Blues - Jimi Hendrix

Friday Bicycle ride, with Strava

The ninety degree temperatures finally let up a little, and the front tire on my 2005 Specialized Allez Sport held 105 PSI long enough to get out and ride.  Naturally, the tire let out a very long, tired, sigh this morning, and the work continues...

Saint Patrick's day 2012

3-4-2012, Greenway moon at Sunset, Photo by Michael McKinney

2-24-2012, Greenway pianist, Photo by Michael McKinney

3-5-212, Minneapolis skyline, photo by Michael McKinney

3-12-2012, frosty leaf on the sidewalk, photo by Michael McKinney

3-17-2012, Gateway Trail, photo by Michael McKinney

I included some photos from the past couple of weeks - today I used the Strava app with my iphone to record a ride into Stillwater via the Gateway Trail.  Also, I've been having this teeth rattling vibration shock through my bicycle when riding it over certain speeds, it was jokingly referred to as the governor today, and maybe that's not far off.  I think it has to be the hubs in my Mavic Wheelset, but to this point they've been solid wheels.  Anyway, I queried online about it last year, and here's what the Craigslist community had to offer, as far as advice.

vibration < mlmck > 06/12 13:25:08

Hi- I usually get my work done at a shop, so this one has me stumped- I've consulted a couple people and am thinking I'll just take it to a shop eventually. Here it is- my bike is vibrating. And squeaking as it vibrates. It's usually when I am not pedaling, and holding the pedals in place as I go around a curve or (rest). I think it is a pressure related vibration, but where? Pressure on the bottom bracket? Pressure on the Rear hub? And is the vibration being caused by a bearing, a broken axle? It isn't consistent, but it happens more and more frequently. Any suggestions?

Parkinson's < the_grinchy_grinch > 06/12 14:32:15

Sorry...
But if it vibrates when you are coasting you can eliminate the bottom bracket at least.

My bet is that it is the freewheel OR freehub.
If it is not in perfect alignment, it can cause pretty violent vibrations.

Stand next to the bike, and turn the cranks backwards. Note if you see the rear cogs wobble up and down/ side to side.

my 2 possible sources < Jamis-KsyriumSL > 06/12 19:38:32

Its happened to me too.. but vibration was felt at 40 MPH or higher

1) loose headset (easy to fix)

2) sand in the rear hub - disassemble, clean, and lub

blew out your rear races < big_53 > 06/12 20:05:17

hold your bike wiggle the rear wheel. does it move back a forth a little bit?