Herb on a Bridge

The snow came as predicted. There is a theme for today, bridges, I think. I thought about posting some more photos of the 35W bridge crumpled in the water of the Mississippi, but decided that I'd like something newer. After tennis and lunch Herb and I took a hike over to Kowalski's to buy bananas and to check out the first snow of the season. The weather creatures say that we have 4-5 inches on the ground and are likely to get a couple more before it stops falling. We stopped on the bridge on Grand Avenue that spans Ayd Mill Road - the Short Line to old timers - and Herb posed with the Summit Avenue bridge in the background. It's a photo from a bridge of another bridge. The white colored stuff in the picture is the unplowed snow that has been falling since about 9 am. St Paul is notoriously slow in getting the streets plowed, but, as they probably would tell you, they didn't put the snow there, they're just trying to help out.


On the hike to the bridge we stumbled across this robin hunched over and perched in a tree. He should have flown south several weeks ago, but here he is freezing. He may have been confused by the predicted global warming trend of the last few years, or maybe he was just careless. Survival of the fittest is a cruel master.


There was tennis at Wooddale. The geezer pool was there and we had some good tennis again. Jerry told me that he and the hardcore girls have been bumped up to the 4.0 level. They won't be going back to the nationals at mixed level 7.0 again, because their rankings now total 8.0. They must play in a tougher league. I think that it often happens that whoever advances to the nationals at any level is promoted to a higher level so that someone else will get the chance to play at the highest level. It's part of the grand plan.

The solstice approaches. Today's daylight was 9 hours and 2 minutes long. On December 3, we go under 9 hours and stay there until about January 10th.