Riding Along on My Velocipede

I had a sweet gravel ride planned for this afternoon, a 34-mile affair that would’ve probably taken a couple hours in the cool humidity. Alas, eleven minutes into the ride, I suffered a pinch flat, which – since I’m not exactly a wizard with the bike repairs – took a good bit of time to fix.

Given that delay, I figured I had to cut the ride a bit short, which I accomplished far more effectively than intended by taking a wrong turn and cutting a few miles off the route. Whoops. Still, the ride ended up being a solid 80-some minutes and 25 miles in length, and crossing parts of Rice, Dakota, and Goodhue counties. Not epic, but better than good. I came home equally sweaty, tired, and gritty, having absorbed into my kit, skin, and hair about 10% of all the gravel I rode over (plus or minus): two days of rain increases the tackiness of the roads quite a bit.

In all that time, I didn’t meet a single other rider, and only a few cars (except for brief stretches when I had to zip down this or that highway). I did see some oddities, such as this overturned sofa bed in the ditch near the Goodhue County line.
Fagen Sofa Bed

This was a far more typical scene:
Cannon Falls Cows - 1

Aren’t they pretty? I honestly don’t know how cows, or the bovine gaze, became synonymous with stupidity or indolence. I think they look placidly curious. If I could muster that combination of interest and calm, I’d be a better person.
Cannon Falls Cows - 2

Shannon, Essayist

I’m so proud of my wife! She had a fantastic time traveling to Chicago to read her essay (the finest one) in P.S. What I Didn’t Say: Unsent Letters to Our Female Friends, meeting the book’s editor and three of the other authors, hanging out with an old and dear and generous friend, and generally enjoying some time away from the household. And I daresay she looked good doing it.

Shannon Tassava Reading at the Bookcellar (Chicago)
Shannon Tassava Reading at the Bookcellar (Chicago)

(Thanks to “Ellvee” for the photo.)

Tour de Fagen

One ride, which I’m calling the Tour de Fagen (map), accounts for a good chunk of my recent cycling mileage. Covering 16 miles, mostly on hilly gravel roads, the ride starts by going straight east of our house – and I mean straight, on a road that’s as plumb as any dreamed by Thomas Jefferson – over some rolling hills and off the pavement. Now gravel but still perfectly straight, the road – 100th Street East – goes down a long, ridiculously sketchy hill (here, looking back at it, way off in the distance)
Looking West up 100th Street East, Northfield, Minnesota

over the line between Rice County line and into Goodhue County, about which I know nothing except that they are good about marking abandoned townsites, as with this sign commemorating the town of Fagen. I have no idea if Steely Dan ever plays here.
Fagen, Minnesota

There, perhaps because it’s now free of the oppressive hands of the Rice County commissioners, the road changes its name to 350th Street, passes some verdant soybean fields
Soybean Irrigation

and starts to bob and weave over some nice ridges, some of which appear (judging by waterlogged roadside signs) to be untouched by human hand.
Warsaw Township Nature Reserve

Warsaw Township Nature Reserve

The road struggles and then finally succeeds in heading south, now as 10th Avenue,
Hayfields on 365th Street, Warsaw Township

and does so pretty much all the way to Iowa.

My rides haven’t gone that far, stopping a few miles on, at the paved east-west highway, Dennison Road, where there is a pretty little farm.
Dennison Road Farm

I’d love to continue south, all the way to the little burg of Kenyon, eleven miles further south and making for a nice 38-mile round trip.

Riding Around

Riding Along

Thanks to the great weather and a relatively open schedule, I managed to do two long rides this weekend. (Long for me, that is.) Both were fantastic fun: tiring, sweaty, scenic, occasionally tough, satisfying. The new Surly bike is acquiring a nice layer of grit, but rides wonderfully, especially on gravel roads. On Saturday, I rode west and north away from town, on flat or gently rolling country roads.
Country Roads

On Sunday, I headed east and south, over some significant rolling terrain toward a notorious hill near the hamlet of Sogn. (It’s supposedly a mile long with a grade of 8% or 9%.) I’ve long wanted to try to climb the hill, but never had the bike for it.
Sogn Valley Climb

Today, I did finish the climb (that is, I rode from the first spray-painted “KoM” line at the bottom to the second one at the crest), though my runners’ legs didn’t like the new challenge. I’m sure I looked more lanterne rouge than polka dot jersey, but I enjoyed it anyhow. I also enjoyed – in a Beavis-and-Butthead way – riding through this place, which isn’t much more than an intersection and a township hall. Heh heh heh.
Wangs, Minnesota

Sinking Ships

For at least a year, this inflatable attention-getter has been moored at a car dealership in Clearwater, Minnesota, a little town along I-94 northwest of the Twin Cities.

The thing is bizarre, both in scale (huge) and in purpose. The stern of the ship reads “Titanic,” and here it is at a car dealership. Is this a joke on people who buy cars here? “We don’t sell lemons, but drive away from icebergs!” Is it a comment on the American auto industry, going to the bottom and taking a lot of people with it? Is it just a funny thing to have in the corner of your car lot? Who knows.
Car Dealer Attention-Getter.

Apostrophe Catastrophes

Since I’m too car-shocked (like shell-shocked, only caused by car travel with children) to blog anything substantial, I’ll follow up last night’s post on Fargo-Moorhead signage atrocities with this photo of the sign at the restaurant where we had a very nice extended-family dinner on Sunday.

To answer the sign’s question, what would be good for me would be better punctuation! But I’ll make do with Julia’s inadvertently apt misspeaking: as she tries to understand the differences between commas and apostrophes, she frequently asks if a particular mark is a “high prepostrophe” or a “low prepostrophe.” This sign is definitely a high prepostrophe.

Fryn' Pan

Fargo-Moorhead Signs’

Fargo-Moorhead has some great crazy signs. Here is some evidence (with more to come later). The theme is “Ways to Misuse Apostrophes or Marks That Look Like Them.”

The marquee for a strip mall on the commercial drag out by Fargo’s big mall.
Fargo Promenade

(Sorry for the bad shot – I took it while the car was stopped at the next light.)

The sign for a copying/printing shop near my in-laws’ place. Would you get your company’s stationery made here?
Kopy Kat, Moorhead

(Again, apology for the bad shot, which I took through the windshield during a rainstorm.)

Made It

Happily, the trip up to Moorhead was nowhere near the low bar set on some previous trips. It wasn’t pleasant, exactly, but – even while continuing their streak of not napping on car trips – the girls did better this time than they’ve ever done before. We went 55 minutes before someone (Vivi, this time) asked if we were at Nonna and Bopppa’s house yet, and it was really only in the last hour (after three stops) that the girls started improvising on the theme of “I want to get out of the car!”

All in all, I give the trip up north a B-, in other words: a solid pass, but lots of improvement is siill possible. Now that we’re here, though, we can get down to the business of some vacation-esque activities like playgrounds and parks and of course celebrating Genevieve’s third birthday on Saturday!

Vacation Eve

It’s only a long weekend, really, and neither the traveling nor the bedtimes will be easy, but I’m still looking forward to our “vacation” in Moorhead, Minnesota, from Thursday through Monday. It’ll be nice to think about proposals like, “Hey, girls, let’s see if your cousins want to go to the park!” rather than the other kind, of which there have been roughly eleventy billion since my last break from work – at Christmas.

And the girls – except at bedtime – absolutely love being up there. Nonna! Boppa! Nonna and Boppa’s dog! Cousins – including two “big girls”! Novel foods! Nonna’s collection of books and videos! The excellent Moorhead library! New playgrounds!

In short, this time is much more for them than for me or for Shannon – which is one of the reasons that I insist on using the word “vacation” to describe a period of time that will be decidedly unrestful and anti-relaxing. Julia and Genevieve deserve now to look forward to and later to look back on a time that we called “vacation” – even if their Mama and Daddy will be much more tired at the end of it than they are at the beginning. The girls deserve this not only because they’re kids and they ought to have a tradition of actual summer vacations, but also because in just a few weeks, their lives as they know them will be permanently altered when Vivi goes to preschool and Julia (*gulp*) goes to kindergarten.

So: let the vacation begin!

Tom Lewis, The Hudson: A History

The Hudson: A History The Hudson: A History by Tom Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up a week ago, just after seeing a northerly section of the Hudson – near Saratoga Springs and the Saratoga battlefield in upstate New York – and hoping that the book would offer a decent history of the river. Lewis certainly fulfills that hope, writing a wonderful overview of the discovery and settlement of the river, which was unusually important in early American history (from about 1600 to 1850), and not only because it was the waterway which New York City could use as its highway into the continent. Among other topics, Lewis discusses Henry Hudson, the river’s European discoverer; early Dutch settlers up and down the river; the coming of British dominance and then Britain’s loss of the river to the new United States; and the centrality of the river in 19th c. American visual and literary art. A concluding few sections treat, somewhat less satisfyingly, 20th century topics such as environmentalists’ battle against Con Ed’s plan to destroy Storm King Mountain for a hydroelectric project. (I expected more on the environmental history of the river, but there is relatively little such content.)

All in all, this is a wonderful, fluently written, and satisfying look at the history of the river. My only regret is that I didn’t read this before my trip, or I’d have known to have seen the river further south, along the great fjord that begins south of Albany. A cruise up the Hudson from New York to Albany sounds like a future dream vacation.

The book is full of excellent, illustrative anecdotes, but this is my favorite one:

On a cool and brilliant June day in 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England arrived at Hyde Park for a weekend visit. Roosevelt and the king drank cocktails in the library, spent an afternoon chatting on the lawn overlooking the Hudson, and the following morning attended services in St. James’ Episcopal Church. Afterward Roosevelt escorted the royal couple up to Top Cottage, a new fieldstone structure he had designed. There everyone feasted on American luncheon favorites, Virginia ham, turkey, and hot dogs. It was said that George –for by this time the presidnt had abolished formalities between them completely–ate two. Later, Anglophile criitcs said that hot dogs were not the dish to serve a king and queen, and certainly no one should address the royal couple the way the president had. But Roosevelt brushed the criticism aside. After all, he said, his family had lived in New York for centuries longer than the royal family had lived in England. In the Hudson Valley, where his great-grandfather had settled until [sic:] 1813, he counted himself (through his wife) a descendant of Robert Livingson. Compared with the Roosevelts, the Windsors were mere arrivistes.

Fantastic.

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Tour de Paris

A 1978 short film by New Wave director Claude Lelouch may be the most thrilling single piece of driving ever filmed. The director, who had no permits to film or to stop traffic, hooked a camera to the front bumper of a Mercedes-Benz (in the only bit of film trickery, the sound of the motor was played by a five-speed Ferrari) and filmed the entire movie in a single cinema-verité take: He drove through the streets of Paris at five in the morning, through red lights, around the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Élysées, against one-way traffic, over sidewalks, at speeds up to 140 miles per hour. The film ends after nine terrifying minutes when the driver parks the car in Montmartre and a blonde comes up the stairs toward Sacre Coeur. (It was a date.) After the first showing, the director was arrested for endangering public safety. (From Slate)

Consider taking some Dramamine or at least buckling your seatbelt, then watch the video of “C’était un rendezvous”:

Claude Lelouch’s Rendezvous… from Dat on Vimeo.

Saratoga

I skipped tonight’s conference-organized social activities (a chi-chi dinner and the New York City Ballet) in favor of a little drive down to the Saratoga battle site, which is just a few miles southeast of town. (My friend Rob recommended this outing, but I initially thought I wouldn’t have enough time. I was as wrong about that as Burgoyne was wrong about Clinton’s reinforcements in 1777.)

On the way out of town, I picked up a sandwich at a streetcorner deli in one of Saratoga Springs’ quiet residential neighborhoods. As I stood here, waiting for my cappicola hero, I realized that I had absentmindedly started watching the horserace feed on the TV. And that I was driving a car with New Jersey plates. Suddenly I was a character in the lamest Sopranos episode, the one about the grantwriter who orders a cappicola hero and watches a horserace on TV. Nothing else happens.

Soon enough, I was in Schuylerville, a little burg on the Hudson, due east of Saratoga Springs. There, I found the amazing Saratoga Monument, which commemorates the spot where British General John Burgoyne surrendered his army to the colonials in October 1777, ending Britain’s effort to split the rebellion into northern and southern halves.
Saratoga Monument

The monument looks a lot like the Washington Monument, which was put up around the same time, and has four niches for statues of the heroes of the Battle of Saratoga: General Horatio Gates, General Philip Schuyler, Colonel Daniel Morgan, and General Benedict Arnold. Through Arnold was arguably the most important American commander at the battle, his niche is empty, owing to his treason in 1780.
The Benedict Arnold Niche

Arnold’s niche faces south, toward the battlefield itself. Though I missed the cutoff time for the driving tour of the battlefield, I did spend a few minutes at the entrance to the park from the present-day highway. When Burgoyne came south from Canada to capture Albany, he tried to squeeze through this very gap between the Hudson on the east and the rougher, hilly terrain on the west – hills occupied by an American force that included artillery which commanded the river and the floodplain.

Burgoyne didn’t make it, being halted in September by American troops. He encamped here and waited weeks for reinforcements that he hoped had been sent up the river from New York by British Governor Sir Henry Clinton. Those troops never came, and Burgoyne’s men – mostly British troops, but also many Germans, some Indians, and quite a few women and children – ran out of supplies in the meantime. Finally, he ordered them to try to find the American lines and precipitate a battle that would allow him to move south again. But Burgoyne’s troops were now outnumbered by the Americans, who routed them on October 7. Retreating, Burgoyne led his men north, but bad weather and weakness slowed them, and they made it only as far as present-day Schuylerville, where American forces surrounded him and where he surrendered. The destruction of Britain’s main army in the north emboldened the Continental Army and induced Louis XVI to ally France with the American rebels, making the war into a global conflict and dramatically improving the military and political strength of the rebels.

Skidmored

Today was the full-on conference day, from the breakfast chit-chat at 7:30 a.m. through the cocktail hour and dinner, ending at 9 p.m. In between, we had four good sessions (and a lunch!). Throughout, I caught up with some colleagues I’ve met before – including a hilarious staffer from Barnard who is, and knows she is, basically a character in a Woody Allen movie. I also sampled some Saratoga Springs water, which was delicious and subtle, much lighter than San Pellegrino, and had a nice run through Skidmore’s “Northwoods” nature preserve. Now it’s time for bed.

Tomorrow we have fewer conference activities, so I think I might take advantage of our open time to head over to the Hudson River and see the historical monuments in Schuylerville, the town where, in 1777, British general John Burgoyne surrendered his army, breaking the king’s hold on the northern colonies and inducing the French to join the American colonies’ cause. Seems like a decent place to spend a few hours.