Minnesota River Ride

 Today I rode on my own along the Minnesota River from Bloomington Ferry Bridge to 35W.

 I love it that MORC has developed a bunch of trails in the metro area and am sad they have smoothed over some of the best obstacles on this great trail.   With the flooding that occures along here it is a trail best left to evolve organically up and around trail challenges like trees, dips in the trail and small water crossings as they appear.

 I do have to say that this is the best version of the bike ferry I have seen.  Wooden decks extend beyond each end making getting on and off easier.  It also helps when trying to transfer weight to make it float better.

 There is still a bunch of sand patches on the trail that fat bikes have no problem with riding over.  Saw four other bikes today and two were fat.

 It's funny that I took pics in this same place on the way out and back.  Something about it was pic worthy I guess.  I paid for it both times as that is all burning weed.

 I put the frame bag on again today and really love having it.  You don't notice it while riding and I could hold all the warm layers of clothing I took off mid ride with room to spare.  I also put my water bottles up on the fork today.  Worked great.  They stayed on, were easy to reach and did not seem to effect handling at all.

Claire's Birthday and a bike ride

My family, our father and his ex-wife met at Heath's to celebrate the birth of my first niece Claire on Saturday and I needed to bring some food to share.  I had bought some Australian raised camel at a Halal market in Eden Prairie a few days ago and  Heath's house is a great place to make this sort of thing.    A grill, some Ethiopian spice and homemade pico de gallo from my garden resulted in camel taco's.  These taco's and all the other food as usual were great.

Other items included some unique pig parts with one super long noodle to give Claire a better chance at a long life, spicey pork and chicken from the grill and two kinds of  tamales.  Heath got the meats and tamales from the best little Mexican store I have been to that is just down the street.  

 A bike ride with Q and Sean earlier in the day made for a big hunger.

"Take a picture of that thing."
It was a very good day.
 But really what I keep thinking about from the day was this taco.

Some fall harvests

 Maya and I got to a black and white seed sunflower before the birds this year.  The salt water soak made the white ones kind of purple. 

 After the salt water soak here they are now dry and ready to be roasted.  The question now is do I do it in the kitchen oven or in my Ron Kyle drum coffee roaster? Drum is more even but harder to tell how done they are.  I like the idea of roasting nuts in the shell in my RK drum roaster and this may be a good practice item.   I bet you just take it to a first crack sound and dump. 

 Tomato's taste great this year but I planted the plants too close and they used most of their growing energy racing each other for the sun instead of feeding me.  See the onion and little red Jalapeno?   

By far my best harvest of the year are these two nuts.  Here they are about to be sent off to the brain feed lot. 

San Fran part 3

 After meeting with Tom at Sweetmarias while driving around Oakland I found these gigantic metal people milling about.   Click the pics for a much larger version. 

 Pretty sure this one had DT's because I could not see the bugs he was trying to pick up. 

 Used Google earth on my Google phone to find the Google android software statues Google has on their campus.  Was convinced they were going to track me and bust me for being uninvited on the campus.  Google's campus is very spread out and has a lot of young smart looking employees riding from building to building on bright primary colored bikes.  

I also explored Stanford University's campus and went to a WWII propoganda poster showing. 

They had part of the Berlin wall there.  It was all I could do to keep myself from knocking that Berlin wall down.  But then I realized I could safely walk around and past it without fear of being shot dead.  I did jump on top of it to shout freedom slogans and shoot off fire works. 

This pic as they are know to do is not showing how high or pretty this view of the valley that containes San Jose and .com land.  We went to an outdoor concert up here at the very old Mounain Winery.  Best place I have been for a concert. 

I had to steal this pic from the internets.  

We went to a redwood forest. 

They are big.

I told these guys to stop. 

The one thing I could not manage to do is ride the Repack down hill just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.   The hill that the originators of mountain biking raced and developed the mountain bike on.   I was feeling like it was a bit to obscure of a goal until we entered the international airport and found this great mountain bike history Museum with a significant portion of the display dedicated to the Repack.   The blue one above is Charley Kelly's original Repack rig. 

Above are some of the first bikes from Joe Breeze.  Below in Blue are early ones from Tom Ritchey.

Multicolored Salsa. 

A 1990ish Ritchey used by Tomas Frischknecht . 

One of the earliest Specialized mountain bikes. 

And finally the latest Cannondale super V Raven.  

San Francisco part two

 

We kind of did a vacation in a vacation.  Rented a house for a few days just off the beach in Santa Cruz.  

 

Maya and her cousin Lucia came running up from the water shouting Help Help!  It wasn't until they were much closer that I realized they were saying Kelp Kelp!

 Water was cold but fun.  The beach was sandy. 

 The drive south from San Fran to Santa Cruz along highway 1was scenic as expected. 

 Fun boardwalk/beach/fair kind of thing in Santa Cruz.

Lot's of Santa Cruz bikes all over.  The shops had tons.  This Santa Cruz shop told me the area of Santa Cruz is kind of a pocket in the country still selling primarily long travel 26 inch bikes. 

This is a pic Guitar Ted put on MTBR from Euro bike?  Seems relevant to a Santa Cruz post.

Yes those are Big Fat Larry's like my Moonlander has on a full suspended Santa Cruz. 

The quality time Ella and Maya got to spend with the cousins was some of the best time of the trip. 

San Francisco part one

 

Went to San Fran to visit Kin folk.  The girls had a great time with their cousins.  The Mustang convertible wife wanted and I poo pooed turned out to be a good site seeing vehicle. 

 We saw cool stuff at the San Francisco Academy of Science. 

 We drove around the city to all the must see areas including the financial district, China town, some big market place and Lombard Street.  The girls favorite parts of San Fran were the toothless homeless guy who waved at them and feeding pigeons part of their ice cream cone. 

 I really wanted more pics of this rocket thing but the guy with the baby and his wife were the slowest pic takers I have ever seen.  I just kept waiting and waiting for him to be gone. 

One of my highlights of the trip was when I drove into Oakland to a bit of a rough area to see Sweet Maria's.  I was lucky enough to have Tom the owner present and although he was clearly very busy he took time to talk all about roasting, the business and to reminisce about some old activities on the home roasting forum from years ago.  He then went and filled a box with about 20lbs of very good coffee and gave it to me.   I like Sweet Maria's a lot.