Microblog

In glorious fall weather, cycled across the Gateway Trail Iron Bridge, one of the few remaining wrought iron bridges in Minnesota. Built in 1873, this is its third location. A sign warns the maximum load is 250 bicycles (presumably with riders).

On my cycle ride, stopped at Sheridan Memorial Park which has a plaque for each of our wars. I appreciate how the plaques don’t whitewash or romanticize war. Minnesota’s US-Dakota War of 1862 is a case in point. Click through for more…

On our Sunday morning walk: this maple delivers every year. The steeple belongs to Our Lady of Lourdes church. The church dates back to the 1850’s, the steeple is a later addition (1880’s).

Later this month we’ll be heading to the North Shore of Lake Superior to hike a few sections of the Superior Hiking Trail. Assembled a compendium of every North Shore hiking trip since 2013. Click through for the link.

After working through Reasoning through Language Arts exercises with women from Somalia and Iraq, walked to Seward Co-op for a spicy Ethiopian lunch. Cooled off with a slice of Mexican tres leches cake. Back home, made a cup of English tea, a blend from India, Ceylon and Kenya.

We spend the majority of our grocery dollars here at Wedge Co-op. Their bulk section is wonderful: today I bought about an ounce of black peppercorns and just enough peanut butter cups to chop into a fro-yo treat I’m making for Sausage Saturday.

Chatted with a guy who was testing a delivery robot. He works for a local company that plans to take on the likes of DoorDash and Uber Eats. They’re evaluating different designs: the turning radius of this one is too wide. As we parted, I wished an optimal design in his future.

On a cycle ride up one side of the Mississippi to I694, then down the other side: a new riverside park, Graco Park, was taking shape. By many metrics, Minneapolis has one of the best park systems in the nation, helped by property tax levies ($79 million in 2023). We call it our country club.

Autumnal ride home after getting a ’flu shot in one arm, and a Covid booster in the other.

Mailed two identically marked ballots for the midterms. One was mine.

Our Sausage Saturday always includes a movie with ice cream in the intermission. Tonight: homemade vanilla bean ice cream, nicely paired with a thoughtful gift from a friend who spotted my Cult Cookies post last week.

Spent way too much time adjusting my Website’s home page. It can be challenging to get pages to display adequately for different screen sizes: I favor Responsive Design where the system figures this out for me. Sometimes, I tweak for certain screen sizes, falling down the Adaptive Design rabbit hole.

Watched regional jets take off from runway 12L while, simultaneously, mainline jets used runway 12R on the other side of the terminal. My annual ride to MSP.

Hiking doesn’t need to have purpose apart from the obvious act of putting one foot in front of the other while staying upright. Sometimes, though, I like to have a theme underpinning a hike. For example, here’s themes I’ve taken up for each of Japan’s main islands. Kyushu: Matsuo Bashō, 17th Century Traveler and Poet.… Continue reading A Hiking Theme for Each of Japan’s Main Islands

Our cycle route to Hastings included Spring Lake Regional Park. As expected, the trees were starting to turn, but a surprise was the amount and variety of prairie flowers. My friend’s wife met us in Hastings so we could drive back to a light rail station.

I’ve lived longer than the allotted three score and ten, but don’t recall ever cooking with a vanilla bean. Today, I threw caution to the wind and used one in an ice cream base. It was spendy, so expectations are high.