Ride into St. Paul

Last week, I took a ride down into St. Paul.  It's the winter of no snow.  I have this nice fat tire bicycle [see an earlier post], but at the moment I'm riding my road bike for the most part.

I've been bundled up: shorts, felt pants, long sleeve shirt, jersey, hoodie, winter vest, gloves, hat, balaclava.  Mr. Layers.  But I've actually stripped off the gloves, hat, and hoodie most rides once I get going.

Despite the warmth, it's obvious it's still winter here in Minnesota down by the river bluffs near the Confluence.

Beautiful frozen falls.  Although I can't help but think Tall Brad is conserving water by peeing over the cliff all winter [he lives up there somewhere].

I didn't get around to the Bicycling, Books, and Brew [coffee] part of my rides for this one.  I just packed it in at the island at the end before turning around.  Still, a nice day to just hang out and cool off for a while at the end.

Here's a nice video of the frozen falls so you can listen to what it was long along the bluffs.  Beautiful day all around.

Eryn's Jacket

For my mother.  LissyJo modeling Eryn's new jacket.  The fight between her and my niece over handmedowns that started with the Minnesota Roller Girls t-shirt is apparently going to ramp up considerably for a few years.

The Ball is Down!

The ball that was up is now down!  No one seems to have noticed yet, however.  Perhaps the young punks can't see over the snow banks to the center of the yard.

I Suspect

I suspect most people who live in warmer areas would find it incredibly strange to see me taking the dog for a longer walk in my ski jacket, gloves, and cargo shorts.  It's actually a nice cool down if I'm still generating heat from exercising on the bike trainer.

Cold Ball/s

I took this picture back at the end of November where there were several kids standing in my front yard cranking sticks and balls skyward.  At one point, they almost managed to get a second basketball stuck in the tree.  If you walk outside now, almost a month later, you can still see it wedged up there.



Here's why a simple ladder won't do the trick.  Someone has either a really good, or a really bad, jump shot.

Giant F-ing Snowstorm

That snowstorm sucked.  My official tally was six shovelings of from 1-6" each time.  According to the weather news, we got somewhere around 15-16".  I know it was bad because my back still hurts, and I had the urge this morning to take a tape measure to the driveway to see if I could figure out how many pounds of snow I'd actually lifted.  Then I thought, "I'd just have to take into account the differing densities of fresh snow versus snow plow toss up, and the varying lifting power between the original one foot lift and end state five foot+ lift.   Supposedly, 15 minutes of lifting snow is moderate physical activity.  Might as well have been rowing for hours.

But it made for some good pictures and video.

Mandatory picture of the bird bath showing approximately how much snow we got.  We actually got more than this - it piled up too high for the bird bath to be accurate.


Eryn at the front door coming out to help me shovel.


Writing her name in the snow.  Later, the dog would help her.


The dog likes to pretend she's a mole or a groundhog.


She loves the snow.  Loves it.  Even if it's 17 below (like it was today), she's happy bounding around the snow banks until she's covered head to foot.


Told you Luna wanted to help with the writing.  She's really taken to Eryn lately.  They're good friends most of the time.


Luna as a snowplow.  That's not our cat behind her, just a cat sculpture in the "garden".


Ice dams on the roof and the joys of a lot of wind coupled with a lot of snow.


Eryn and Luna in the front yard.


A view from the fourth floor.  We drove over to the corporate kids' holiday party, despite the snow.  It was earlier in the day, so the Ford Fiesta was capable of the drive.  If it had been later, we'd have been in a bit of trouble.  Apparently enough people skipped that they were handing out the kids' gifts today at work.

Dear Logan

Dear Logan, I'm pretty sure this was the dad, as he had the biggest snowballs. Which I'm kicking.

First Snow

Here's me, oh so pretty after the first shoveling of the snow today. Who needs one of those fancy spiky haircuts so it looks like I'm not balding - I can achieve the same thing just standing around outside. I think I look a little like my nephew Artie in this pic.

We were going to use the snowblower to get rid of the snow this year. We got rid of the huge one that doesn't fit in any of the cars, so I can't ever get it repaired, and were going to buy a new one, but my father in law upgraded and gave us his used one. It seems to have some issues. I nearly wore my arm off getting it to start (which makes it a non-entity for the purposes of Pooteewheet getting it started), and once it did start it was stop and go a dozen times. But the real issue was that most of the time it only threw snow about 12". That's fine on the edges of the driveway, but if I have to move snow outward 12" at a time from the center, it will literally take me hours to finish the driveway. I'm not sure if I need to take it in, or worry about a new machine again that has an electric start for my wife. Here's the use snowblower, with it's erectile dysfunction. Note that it doesn't matter how slow I go, or how small the slice of snow I blew, the usual behavior was what you see when it's sort of dribbling snow. A few times it was worse, looking sort of like a bubbling fountain, and for a few seconds (in this video), it seems to work like a snowblower should.