This weekend probably was a good weekend for riding. I don't really know; I was in Wisconsin. I went to help one set of my parents pack up their house as they finalize their move to the north woods.
Things I learned:
- The Chicken Palace is a good Mexican restaurant (I assumed it would be Chinese, since many palace restaurants in strip malls tend to serve Chinese food).
- My parents have been holding my college food service tray which doubled as a sled for going down the hill by the athletic fields my freshman year.
- One household can acquire a significant amount of paint, sealant, stain, and the like over nearly three decades.
- Crawlspaces can be not creepy and, if I'd lived in that house as a young child, I would have made the crawlspace my fort.
- The Wisconsin DOT employs someone without the best spelling skills. ("Leave yourself room to break." Oh, don't worry about that.)
- Bones and Elementary are decent enough network TV shows. The Love Boat hasn't aged well. (Their cable has been disconnected.)
- I should give my other parents, who live out in the country, ice skates for Christmas so that they can get to their mailbox across the glare ice that is their road.
- And this isn't something I learned, but I was reminded of it: While Minnesota is (without a doubt) the better place to live of the two states, Wisconsin is prettier on the whole.
The driving was easy, which is good, but I daydreamed the whole way about how nice those roads would be on my road bike, rather than in my car, and started thinking about some longer rides I'd like to do in 2017.
I pulled into town in advance of the forecasted freezing rain, unloaded the dog and car, grabbed my helmet, and tooled around the snow-packed streets and paths in my part of town, hitting the places where I like to stop in the summer, to compare the views. I am proud of myself for not overthinking the ride and what to wear, and just getting out there before dusk.
I rode to the falls, but didn't take photos there. It was packed. The ice was a cool color and there were neat little spots where water was spraying out of the frozen falls, but apparently not hitting all the people breaking the park rules and crawling down on the ice.
I then rode up River Road for a little bit, and turned around to see what I could see by the Lock & Dam at Ford Dam. The observation deck is closed for the winter, which is too bad. The ice piles up in a cool way by the dam. I stuck my bike by this wall when I wandered around and then noticed that it was under a nice array of icicles coming off some rocks at Minnehaha Park.
I rode to the Fort to see how the Mississippi looks right now. I take a lot of pictures from this spot each year, but mostly during the summer and fall. Downtown is off in the distance. A short distance from here, I saw some really fluffy, large deer. They were just a few feet away from me and looked super soft.
Moving around helped get rid of some of whatever I've got going on, and is a good way to head into a week of work. MS150-wise, I need to start mapping out team rides for the spring, which is a good diversion, and also need to plan the trivia event. There's no shortage of things to keep me out of trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment