Heat Wave

Today was the warmest day of the new year thus far. It reached 39.3 degrees at my favorite Grand Avenue weather station. The sun was shining and the NFL playoff games weren't very captivating, so I took my old bones for a walk around the neighborhood to see if I could find anything pretty to photograph. It was a fairly long walk and the sights were mostly puddles, kids making snowmen, and brownish melting snow, but the area around Linwood Park had some representative sights - trees without leaves (or fruit, especially oranges) and blue, blue sky. For today, a nice sight.



Part of the walk took me past the snowed in tennis courts on St. Clair to these steps climbing back up to Linwood and Osceola Streets. These are the testers of the walk, sort of like Benhill Avenue when I'm biking. The challenge is to walk to the top non-stop and not have to stop to catch my breath or let my heart rate return to the yellow zone. Today, I passed. The view from the top is better. Then I walked home past the senator's house on Osceola. He didn't seem to be home today. Probably off saving the world.



There was geezer tennis yesterday, but there is not much to report that is not repetitive. We played two sets with varied partners, 7-5, 6-4. After we played we sat around and tried to decide if we are better than we were a year ago. All of us are a year older, but we have been playing pretty regularly. Tennis Dennis thought that he has gone down hill because of his hip problems, but the rest of us thought we were at least as good as last year. It's a hard thing to prove, and it doesn't really matter. Two of the geezers are ex-hockey players and one, Bill, remembers playing at the U of Mn with a couple of guys from my old high school, GHS. He remembered John Lothrup and Ryan Tellor, guys that I played some baseball with in my youth on the Iron Range. Small world stories always intrigue me. It doesn't alway take six degrees of separation to get to people form one's youth.

Herb is back from his weekend trip to Chicago. On the way back, he stopped to visit his college chum, Liz, who is the mother of triplets, less than a year old. It meant a stop in Kenosha, but to Herb, not much out of his way.