Dig in and growl.

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

Photo by Michael McKinney

"...and every time you drive that ski forward in the track, you launch yourself out onto it, gliding until you compress your weight down on that kick zone, push that ski flat and kick out onto the next ski, driving that one parallel and gliding until you compress and kick that ski...like tiger claws, gripping into the snow and pulling you down the track...just think of tigers claws...gripping...kicking..."
- Jake Moody

Imagine a math teacher, standing in front of a ski team, raking his fingers through the air, climbing an invisible ladder to describe the physical act of compressing a Petex ski on snow and ice, utilizing a special soft wax for grip, and creating forward propulsion out of that glide, compression and kick - if you do it wrong, you slip, fall down and no matter how many times you re-wax those plastic bases, your ski will always be too slippery to gain any traction. 

I think about that speech every year when the snow and ice become omnipresent - a person can not get through their day without at least once slowing their gait, gingerly weighting their steps and re-balancing their progression on a sidewalk, a driveway or a parking lot.  On a bicycle, it is dangerous to whisk over those patches on road tires.  I've used cyclocross tires the past couple of years, riding occasionally through the winter, but always dreading the next patch of hard packed snow and ice, or just glare ice, waiting for my knobby tires.

Suomi Tyres are made in Finland, and I bought a pair with my Felt F75X, back in January of this year.  They work.  They work so well I'd like to gush about them.  Done...they're just that effective.

I completed another pottery course, and held my first official showing, with fantastic sales to friends and family - for Thanksgiving, I made some bread and tried making Belgian brownies, which had a lot of flour and were too long in the oven...they wound up closer to a bitter truffle than a scrumptious brownie,  Oh well. 

I am currently reading A Civil Action, about a TCE water contamination case in Woburn, MA, made into a movie starring John Travolta.  Lots of legal proceedings, broke lawyers driving Porsches with multiple credit card debts, bankruptcies and Leukemia. 

I did capture a few decent pictures the past week, and posted them on a couple social media feeds.  I hope not having them "daisy chained" is less frustrating for anybody interested in reading this blog and seeing the photos as dealing with another hacked account would be for me. 

Tight lines, Rubber side down, Ciao, Take care, Peace love and happiness, happy holidays.

(Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.)

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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Goodreads Review of Let The Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ambitious and brave, McCann links the Vietnam "Police Action" and the Afghanistan "Conflict" though a well known series of juxtaposed and disparate images: Philip Petit walking between the Twin Towers serves as a seam in the narrative, joining the central characters together, despite the inevitable destruction of those same buildings.  The role of prostitution and priesthood seems disparate and parallel, while the vague reasons behind the Vietnam Conflict seem contradictory as compared to the immediate and unilateral response to the actions of September 11th.


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A sourdough variation

Rye flour and water starter, photo by Michael McKinney

 I have been following the Thom Leonard sourdough recipe from Artisan Baking Across America.  The recipe begins with a simple rye flour, mixed into a levain, and builds off of three or four subsequent mixtures of General Purpose flour and Bread Flour.  The recipe is notable in its lack of yeast, which I added, as well as raisins and walnuts.

Sourdough Levain, Photo by Michael McKinney

Risen Sourdough Raisin Walnut dough.  Photo by Michael McKinney

 

Finished bread.  Photo by Michael McKinney

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.

A 1958 Plymouth Fury by any other name.

Christine by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Remove all evidence of mysteria, (yep, I just made that word up, it means 'mysterious hysteria'), from a typical Stephen King novel and you're left with simple avarice, greed, obsession and average citizens caught up in extemporaneous circumstances - more often than not by their own failings.  King's sense of humor comes through in his characters, but also a certain disregard for most people and their interests.
The mysteria in question, Christine's demonic possession, is caused by Ronald's murderous spirit, formed by his own dented and scarred childhood.  Unable to repair himself, his life as a mechanic revolved around an oily thumb and a gift for keeping old cars and trucks "motorvating".  Pretty standard fare for a King novel, and I saw a very concise review stating any King novel can be summed up as an inanimate object, (car, toy, hotel), a lingering evil possessing a morally susceptible person, (Jack Torrance, Arnie Cunningham) and then everything gets put through the meat tenderizer until one or two characters are left standing.
So, remove all of the mysteria, forget about the demons, the possession, the impossible and impractical, and the reader is left with a handful of murders, a drug dealer, Arnie somehow caught up in all of it and Dennis, wanting to save his childhood friend.  There is no mystery more significant than watching somebody you have known all of your life make wrong decision after wrong decision and gradually implode.  Stephen King would like to fantasize about it, as a lot of people with escapist fetishes would, but reality is more terrifying than this book.


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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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