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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Minnesota River Bottoms

                    Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRide
               

Windy day yesterday for bike riding, the mud along the Minnesota River corridor is still very fresh, deep and akin to quick set cement.  I hit one nasty patch that stopped my wheels and required about fifty feet of pushing the bike, pulling mud out of the brake calipers, pushing the bike, pulling mud out of the brake calipers, and so on and so forth. 

Otherwise, a pretty decent ride.

               

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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Rhubarb

I am not a huge fan of debate.  Discussions pertaining to issues that do not affect me, or have some far reaching epistemological, rhetorical, esoteric purpose behind them seems redundant.  Not having an interest in argument does not provide a warranty against disagreements, and I often find myself being drawn into a discussion on one side or another, which brings me back to debate.  When to debate, when not to debate, how to debate, how to speak clearly, how to support your stand...all things I do not understand well enough to not feel a difference of opinion is anything more than a personal accord on my person.

John Mcenroe has always been a standard bearer for my understanding of how adults resolve disagreements.  "You've got to be kidding me!" seems a fairly reliable way of informing another person that he or she is wrong.  Obviously pejorative terminology is peppered in depending on the importance of the objection.

To deal with this obviously far reaching and naive view of the world, I sometimes think about British Parliament, and have taken the advice of a friend who likened the murmuring of dissent behind every statement made by Tony Blair as "rhubarb...rhubarb...rhubarb..." more likely parliament is uttering "...rubbish, rubbish, rubbish..." but often times it can be helpful to at least paint the Greek Chorus a Lighter Shade of Pale.

Last week's Tri-Loppet went very well, I placed in the top twenty and had a good day.  I rented an Hourcar to transport a rental kayak from Midwest Mountaineering.  Both Hourcar and Midwest were faultless in their customer service - demonstrating capability and patience with my questions and concerns.  My first transition was pretty rough and I almost incurred a scene from the 3 Stooges by turning to look behind me while carrying a kayak and hitting at least one or two spectators with the bow...nevertheless, nowhere in the planning process or during the event was my thinking concerned with rhubarb, tennis or John Mcenroe.

I brought up rhubarb as a means to an end though, and while surely there is some greater purpose involved, as far as my agenda is concerned, rhubarb is in season and my last two batches of bread have incorporated walnuts, rhubarb and honey.

2nd leg of the 2013 Tri-Loppet, photo property of Skinnyski.com

Rhubarb walnut bread, photo by Michael McKinney

Wilderness Systems Eclipse, Hourcar.  Photo by Michael McKinney

2nd Transition area, Tri-Loppet.  Photo by Michael McKinney

Queueing for the start, 2013 Tri-Loppet.  Photo by Michael McKinney.

Rhubarb walnut bread.  Photo by Michael McKinney.

2013 Red Ride

The Commuters, Photo by Michael McKinney

At this point, I half expect somebody to pull up on a Surly Cross Check and tell me I'm riding on two different sized wheels.  I can almost hear the way he or she would express disdain for my naive attempt at riding in the city, not really getting anywhere that doesn't have coffee for less than three dollars a cup:  "Dude, I know you blog and shit.  But, you're riding a 27 inch front wheel with a 26 inch rear, you just gave me the finger and there's a really bad smell in your draft.  Nice try."

That is of course, without addressing the copious issues I have with Sudoku and the New York Times Crossword.

That being said, it was providential to be included as a guest on the 2013 Saint John's University Almuni Cycling Club's Red Ride in and around Stearns County, Minnesota.  To get there, I could have used the route I rode in 2011, from the Basilica in Minneapolis to the Marcel Breuer bell tower, roughly 100 miles later.  Being fortunate to have the option, I chose rather to invest in new components, the skill of a Freewheel mechanic to fine tune them and public transportation to Saint Johns - though I missed an additional few hundred miles of cycling, I think the investment was wise.

The ride left St. John's on Saturday morning, June 22nd, and was a fast and enjoyable tour - many skilled riders were participating and I felt at ease in the group.  One outstanding difference between riding a bicycle in the city and riding through farming communities is the lack of distractions.  A rider in the city might have to stop and start many times between here and there, for stop signs, red lights, walkers, dog walkers, very young children weaving on small bicycles as their parents watch nervously, runners, possums...you can imagine.

Once a group is settled in and a pace is set, given the capacity for the road one is riding on, the distractions become fewer and the objective becomes less about avoiding collisions and more about spinning the turbines, tuning into the other riders and maintaining a cadence commensurate with the group.  Getting to Saturday morning took a lot more than I can dictate, but a train ride, a bus ride and a big hoagie at Bo Diddley's was a perfect start.

I returned home on Saturday night and got back to riding in and through Minneapolis and St. Paul, stopping at the Minneapolis Farmers Market and collecting water as a volunteer with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for the Minnehaha Watershed District, reading and occasionally investigating the many gastronomic treasures of the area.  I am happy to report a new bicycle has been purchased, though it took months of lay away.

I rode my Felt F75X for the first time last night and after bunny hopping a couple of curbs and scorching some dirt trails, I nailed an exposed man hole cover and double pinched.  I walked the remaining mile home, hoping it wasn't inoperable.

Here are some photos of the June 22nd weekend.

Finishing the 2013 Red Ride, Courtesy of the Saint John's University Alumni Association.

Minneapolis Farmer's Market Vegetables, Photo by Michael McKinney

Lake Sagatagan, Photo by Michael McKinney

Felt F75x, Photo by Michael McKinney