Hastings

Last weekend I rode out to Hastings on an Ingress hunt.  There was a portal at Spring Lake Park Reserve that was holding up big fields.  The ride there...not so bad.  Sort of downhill into the river valley for about 30 miles.  The ride back...different story.  I don't think it helped that I didn't eat because the breakfast joint I was targeting in Hastings opened an hour later than Google said.

Ride back: mostly uphill, 25 miles, slight wind, and a lot of road construction.  At one point I had to go under an under-construction under/overpass on Highway 52.  Going to Hastings it wasn't so bad because it was early and traffic was light.  On the way back it was around noon and the traffic was buzzing.  I was pinned against cement separators making sure I caught the eye of every motorist buzzing down the detour on/off ramp at 65 mph.  Nasty.

Those Hastings Ingressers are nuts.  The whole thing was back up within a few hours and I think they even scored some high rankings in the fielding standings thanks to rethrows.



On the way back I was running out of water, so I was excited when I found a pump.  After a huge chug of water, I realized it was slightly off tasting well water.  I thought about it for a few moments, and realized this bottle of water comes from directly between the enormous covered mountains of trash deposited by the refuse company and the cracking/processing plant on the other side.  I can't imagine, despite all their precautions, that this isn't one of the most fucked up bottles of water I could have chosen to drink, at least in my area.  I'm going to choose to believe that somehow nothing leaked into the water table.

Waterlogged

I biked up to The Hot Plate in Minneapolis this morning, close to the Minnehaha Creek trail.  After I got as far as Bloomington, I thought I'd pedal to Lake Harriet and get some extra mileage in. I didn't realize I'd be getting some very wet feet as well. Doesn't look deep, but it came up over the lower stroke of the pedal in places.  Still, it was a better experience than losing my cell phone while mountain biking at Lebannon Hills with Eryn this afternoon.  When I lost my cell, I ended up taking a second loop of the green trail to see if I could see it, and then calling a park ranger who had it (whew).  After I got wet, I ate a pumpkin buckwheat pancake with candied pecans and whipped cream.  That was pretty tasty even with wet feet.

 

Cohesion

Eryn got a few science-related items for Christmas. Not surprising, as that's what she had asked Santa for in her various letters and lap sittings. Microscope. Mythbusters science kit. National Geographic physics/biology/chemistry kit. We spent some time during her week off playing with the NatGeo kit. Eryn wanted to start with electricity, but we didn't have the required 4.5V batteries, so we started with water.

Our first experiments involved cohesion and surface tension. Here we are filling a cup above the lip. Later we floated a paper clip and a piece of yarn on the surface without them sinking, then poked them until they sank.

Then Eryn told me that she'd already done a similar experiment in kindergarden involving a penny and water. So we redid it using the pipette. Very cool. It didn't occur to me to ever try doing that. But now I feel bad because Eryn's going to a science and arts magnet school and she was learning more science in kindergarden at the private school. Damn it. Well, I guess that's why Santa bought her science stuff.

Here's a video of Eryn in her goggles playing the scientist.