The falls at nineteen degrees

I took an afternoon walk by Minnehaha Falls. As I left my car I noted the temperature was 19 degrees, a sign that winter is setting in earnestly. The water over the fall is just a dribble, a sign that we are experiencing a kind of cold weather drought. The icicles are forming and the water in the creek is firming up, but the dramatic ice dams of previous years have yet to form. The stairs down to the creek level are closed, but still passable, so I went down for the photo and for a walk along the creek.

There were very few people out today, just the guys from Prairie Restoration who are burning brush and cleaning up the areas that they are turning into areas with more native plants. I stopped and talked to a couple of the guys who were tending a fire down towards the big river. I asked if they knew the Prairie Princess, who had worked there about a year and a half ago, and they said they did. The guys, Nathan and John, wondered what PP was up to, and I explained her decision to go to grad school and her current location. I walked to the Mississippi and back without encountering any other "tourists." I guess it's too cold for December meandering. The sun is low in the sky and there wasn't a lot of sun in the creek valley to photograph. We are only two weeks from the winter solstice.

The leaves are gone and the form of the hill can be seen from the bottom. This is the way I chose to go back up to the top of the hill.

The sign at the top of the steps indicates premature closing of the stairs.

Winter is here.

Icicles on the Falls

The snow is over for a while and the cities are pretty well dug out from under the snow blanket. It was clear and reasonably pleasant (in the 20's) in these parts, so I went to Minnehaha Falls to see how the winter is going over there. The paths to the falls are plowed, but there were very few folks there to take in the view. It's pretty dramatic to see all those icicles hanging from where the falls should be. I've taken pictures of the falls in nearly every month of the year for this blog, and it is still an attraction - a place to walk and see some nature.



And tonight I went to tennis at Wooddale. It was a very entertaining evening. We, the hardcore girls (HG) and Jerry, managed most of two sets - 7-6, 5-5 - before we were forced to give up the court. Lots of good long points and running around retrieving lobs and angle shots. Good exercise and time well spent. Then I went to Yang's for mildly spicy singapore rice noodles to bring home. I shared the tasty meal with PP and UK. It was a pretty good day.

The Falls from Creek Level

The state is going below freeeeezing and staying there for the rest of the week. The weather guy says it's a cold snap, but it's really just an average December. I had to go to the bank and do some errands, so I extended my trip to take in Minnehaha Falls. This time I went down the long staircase to creek level to get another angle for the photo. The last time I was there the lower level was shut down for "alterations." There is some water going over the falls, but in a couple of weeks it will solidify and ice will prevail. There were very few people at the park today. It was about 31 degrees and cooling.

I did see a couple of bikers out in the afternoon. They were likely commuters, rather than pleasure riders, and they were dressed for the chill.



The mask exhibit below stands a few tens of feet from Minnehaha Falls. It's been there quite a while, but is not so noticeable when the trees have leaves. I think it was placed there by a native American group, but I'm clueless about the reason for its placement. It's an interesting object in an interesting spot.



It was a day off from tennis. I played with the GTA yesterday at Fred Wells Tennis Center. We've been extending our tennis week to a third day because the weather denies us some of our other activities. I'm playing pretty well and using my ten year old, duct taped racket. I may have to spring for new equipment for the cold season, just to keep pace.

UH is still in the wilds of Arizona. He called from the Grand Canyon and said he was getting some great photos. I guess it's high enough ground there to keep the temperature comparable to the North Star state. I look forward to the photo unveiling.

Dragon Boat Races

Unky Herb was part of the dragon boat races at Lake Phalen today and so PP and I went over to see how he would do. It was part of Asian American Day celebration and festival. He was part of a 20 person team (the Flying Dragons) that paddled and otherwise inspired paddling in a contest that included about 20 teams from various organizations and companies in the Twin Cities. UH has practiced some over the last few weeks and today was the test. The first shot is the finish of their second heat of the day. UH is in the green boat in the foreground, paddling as fast and powerfully as he can. They were touched out by about a second in the race. But the day was pretty successful. They finished fourth and received a trophy and medals went to all the members. Plus they had a bunch of good Asian eats all day from the Flying Dragons support team.



This is UH's team, or at least the male members of the squad. The women were in a later photo which I missed out on. But these guys were an important part of the race engine and appear to be having a good time. And they were. PP and I were there for moral support, but also were able to track down some Mung egg rolls, Nepalese momo, Thai veggie pad thai and California roll sushi. Good eats all around.



After the races, PP wanted to go to Norway Day at Minnehaha Park to see if they had any rummagrot (or however you spell that rich Norski pudding). They were out of it. But the falls are there and I thought to have a look. The creek was basically dry, and no water was falling over the edge. It's a rare day when the creek is dry, but part of the low water effect is deliberate. They are still working on shoring up the creek bed to lessen the chance of wall collapse.


The Norway Day crowd was sparser and more subdued than the Dragon Boats, but they are more familiar ethnically and there was music and art displays from Nordic organizations in the area.

Minnehaha Falls again

The falls are roaring. The ice is almost gone and spring is threatening to return. Today's temp managed to eke into the melt zone, but just barely. I went over to see what the level of the creek is and the condition of the creek, now that they are working on stabilizing the banks of the creek. I walked the trail to the Mississippi, too. The water is very high there, too, but unlike Fargo, we aren't going to have a flood here. We have a wide river valley and some sizable hills to build houses on.



Winter is not giving up yet. The curling season is done and it's too cold to ride a bike - for me, at least. There will be more tennis tomorrow and into the weekend.

Dreaming of Summer

It's the middle of February and summer is still a long way away. My tennis activity requires a drive to an indoor tennis facility where there is no sun, no wind, and a marked lack of heat. I'm looking forward to summer and dreaming of outdoor clay courts in orange groves.

The climate in Minnesota retains a wintry look. We had some melting lately and a lot of the snow cover has scrammed, but the winter will replenish the white stuff in the next few weeks. The streets and icy sidewalks are currently pretty perilous for walking, but I had to go look at nature this afternoon. There is ice yet over Minnehaha Creek and warnings about the danger that lies there. It has a kind of bleak beauty.



The cold weather of January has curtailed some of my outdoor photo activity, but the winter has loosened up a bit. The outdoor ice rinks have mostly closed down, because the more direct sun in the latter half of February doesn't allow ice that is fit to skate on. Ice fish houses have to be off the lakes by March first in the southern half of the state, because they can fall through the ice any time after that - or freeze in place after a warmish day. Even today the creek has some open water. There is plenty of ice, but no one can say where it is safe when water is moving under it. This spot is a couple of hundred yards upstream from Minnehaha Falls.



The Prairie Princess started her new job today and seems happy to be once again gainfully employed full time. The whole economy seems sick at the moment, but I have some hope for the federal stimulus package. Spending 787 billion bucks should cause something to change.

It's Still Winter

Every year Minnehaha Falls does this. It freezes up and icicles hang from rock. This is what this year's version looked like today after several days of below zero luxury in Minnesota.


Curling last night was a good game, but we lost on the last rock delivered. I was the deliverer and nearly did enough to get a point to break a fifth end tie. Alas, we went down by a point. Our season has not been very successful, but we have hopes for the new year.

But I played a little better tennis tonight and the result was a little better, too. We managed to finish two sets and a part of a third, before we were timed off the court and I was able to go to Yang's for my Thursday night lomein dinner. I brought it home and shared it with Herb, who had not yet eaten dinner at my arrival at 9 pm. Tasty.

Virtual Rainbow

The day was pretty nice until this afternoon, when it clouded up and then about six p.m it started to rain. It rained as I drove to my USTA tennis match inside at Wooddale. There was a very beautiful double rainbow in the sky as I drove east towards Woodbury, but the camera was at home. It was the very best rainbow that I've seen in a very long time. The pictures that I have today are not rainbows, but are pictures of Minnehaha Creek, upstream of the falls. I trekked over there to see how Minnehaha Falls was doing after our rainy spell of the last few days. It was roaring and a lot of folks were there to appreciate it. I have pictures, but they are very like some that I've posted over the last months, so I'm posting these photos of less seen areas of the creek. The first is a pool upstream of the falls where a couple of ducks were hanging out on a floating log with some kind of lilies in the foreground. Quite picturesque.


Then a little further down stream, towards the falls, I encountered some crane-like bird hanging around looking for dinner. It was a pretty spot, too.


The tennis match tonight was the fourth of the season for the 8.0 Mixed Doubles team. We have been winning for the most part, but lately I have been somewhat out of the zone, so I decided to try some different prematch strategy. Usually, if I have food before the match, I don't play so well, but if I don't eat, I get tired near the end of the match. Usually for early evening matches I have a cup of tea and gut it out. Tonight, I tried a Boost Smoothie, a energy drink, about 45 minutes before the match, hoping that it would be easily digestible and not interefere with my balance and timing. As it turned out, it didn't make much difference as our opponents were off their game and Barb and I won 6-2, 6-3, but my game was on the edge of tentative and I had very little touch. I guess that the Boost wasn't the answer to my absence from the much vaunted zone. The team match score was 3-0 to us.

That sure was a pretty rainbow on the way to Woodbury.

The Ides of May

Finally. My biking season restarted. It was a nice day and the wind was very timid, plus KS was interested in looking over the native plants at Minnehaha Park. Biking was called for.

The creek is full of water and the falls are roaring. It's not Niagara Falls, but it's pretty nice.


The statue of Hiawatha and Minnehaha are on an island in the creek and easily seen through the scant "early" spring foliage.


We found the native grasses in old Longfellow Park across Hiawatha Avenue from Minnehaha Falls. The plants are beginning to grow and thrive, but there is still a lot of last year's brown in view. There may be pictures later in the season.

On the way back home we had to stop and see if Guv T. Paw was at the mansion on Summit. There was no sign of the guy, but the legislature is in session, so he may be at work balancing the budget. There is word in some quarters that John McCain may tap him for the VP slot on the Republican presidential ticket. That could leave Minnesota with its first woman Governor: Carol Malnou. Stranger things could and have happened in the North Star state.


I have attained my first biking goals of May: double figures, and beating last month's total mileage. Woowee!

Ford Bridge View

It's still wintry. Today almost climbed into melting territory, but stopped at 31 degrees. Tomorrow, maybe, a sunny 40 and the first time above freezing in much too long. Yesterday Herb took a bike ride to get a feel for what winter biking is about. It was about 20 degrees when he went out. He came back with a reddish face, but he said that the cold was bearable. I spent the day grousing about the interminable winter.

Today, I went over the Ford Bridge to Minnehaha Falls to see if it had changed. It looked a lot like my previous winter shots of it, so it you're curious, page back to some of my previous entries. Minnehaha Creek is still firmly frozen over. I trekked up to the bridge on foot to see what the river is up to. The Ford plant where they make some sort of Ford pickup truck, and which is set to close in about a year, is visible in the distance. The river has open water, but the edges retain some ice. Winter is starting to slowly give up its grip on the landscape.



I played tennis at Wooddale tonight. The cast of players changes every night as we struggle to keep the games going while Jerry recovers from his surgery and Tennis Dennis tries to recover from his shoulder and hip infirmities. I had a pretty good night. I was as close to the zone as I have been in a while and it felt pretty good. The whole group played pretty well for 90 minutes and we'll give it another run on Saturday.

I have a Super Seniors men's doubles USTA league match tomorrow night at 8 pm on the other side of Minneapolis. This is a new team for me, but I know at least three of the players pretty well. There are only two teams in this level of Super Seniors this season (the winter season) so we'll be playing the same guys about four times. The summer league of 4.0 Super Seniors gets more teams, so we'll have some varied competition then.

Thursday will be another night of mixed doubles with the hard core girls at Wooddale. Jerry is still out so we will have a sub for him, Pat G., whi is playing well, and it should be a good match. Jerry is doing well and has the stitches out from his operation. He plans to return to tennis in April.

Kagami Sensei will also return in April, or perhaps May. Her last day at work in Ogaki is March 24. She has her visa for her planned trip to India, so her plans are working out okay. She'll be home in time for garden planting.

Bone Chillin'

It just won't warm up here on the tundra. It was about ten below this morning, which was about 50 degrees colder than some places in the Yukon. Spring is coming, but is tardy. I took my camera to Minnehaha Falls and walked around looking for other adventurers. There were actually quite a few. I took a photo of the Hiawatha and Minnehaha statue from a vantage point that is not available in the summer - standing on the ice over Minnehaha Creek. The sky was very blue and very cold.



This photo is also from the park. It's of some of the dead flower stalks that are sticking up through the snow. They are part of the flower garden near where the benches are inscribed with the words to Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha." They looked coldly brave. I was less brave, spending about fifteen minutes touring the park before retreating to the warmth of my auto.



There was some chatting via internet with the young English teacher in Japan, Kagami Sensei, this morning. She is winding down her teaching responsibilities. Her last day on the job is March 24th, then she's off to an adventure in India before her long awaited return to the USA. She seems pretty organized, at least from this distance. She has had her shots and ordered up some of her tickets.

Tennis goes on as before. There was Monday night tennis ball smacking, and there will be more on Thursday.

This is January

I'm posting two photos from my trip to Minnehaha Falls yesterday. The first one is from below the falls and depicts some people walking on the ice over the creek without much fear of falling in. It was very cold but the water under the ice was running. A little dangerous perhaps, but an attractive pile of ice was sticking out from the hillside. No one got hurt.



And this is one of the kayakers in the Mississippi at the end on Minnehaha Creek. He, too, is engaged in a perilous activity. The temperature was in the single digits, so if he capsized, he would have been in hypothermia almost immediately. Minnesota seems to encourage this sort of individual to defy death.



It was another cold day today, starting below zero and reminding us all that this is a cold state.

Curling, another ice related activity, is on the agenda again tonight. Our three game streak is on the line.

New Year in Waiting

It's a new year and a theme day. I picked out a couple of shots that I like, but I am unable to say that they are the best of the lot. The first is a still life and the second a photo with people peopling the image. The tiger lily shot continues the tiger theme from the last few days, but in addition, the flower is locally grown and shows good texture.


The photo below is a shot of some familiar faces having a good time on a downtown street. Exuberance is good for everyone.


Kagami Sensei was on the internet when I got to the iBook this morning. We talked for a while about her New Year's activities, and ours. Her blog today contains much of the interesting bits. It was very nice to have a conversation with her on this first holiday of 2008.

It was a cold, cold day. Herb and I decided to get some sun and exercise. We dressed warmly and drove to the Falls. A bank thermometer on Snelling Avenue announced a temperature of 2. I see by Carl P's blog that he was there today, too. I guess we missed him. I have a couple of photos that are nearly identical to ones newly posted on his blog. The icy falls are quite dramatic. The stairs to the lower levels were ice covered and closed, but we skied down on our boots for a better and different look at the creek. We took some pictures there, then Herb and I took a walk to the nexus of the creek and the big river. The creek was iced over in spots, but the flowing water kept the stream from disappearing completely. In fact, a duck was swimming around in a pool of open water, feeding off God knows what. It was an interesting walk, cold and slippery, but not without company. There were other walkers and some cross country skiers. At the river we tarried a bit to watch some guys in kayaks paddling up the river towards the Ford Bridge. I consider them foolhardy to be on the river at that temperature, but also very hardcore. We walked back along the creek, but bypassed the treacherous stairs for a stroll up the meadow and the smaller hill up to Minnehaha Avenue. In all we were outside about an hour and suffered no frostbite. It is unnecessary to declare it the coldest day of the year.

We rewarded ourselves with lunch and a movie at Rosedale, "The Golden Compass." It was a good start to a leap year.

Minnehaha Creek In Early Winter

This may be turning into a hiking blog some of the time, although I will still report tennis activity as it occurs. In the interests of outdoor activity and getting that life fulfilling full spectrum light to my retinas, I decided to visit the oft-visited Minnehaha Falls. Today's temperature ranged between 8 and 18 degrees, so it was a coldish trek. There has been no real snowfall yet, although that is expected to change over the weekend. The cold has performed some feats of decoration on bodies of water, and the falls are quite attractive, festooned with icicles formed as the water's mist goes over the precipice. It's a much slower flow than the summer flow and the falls a much different place.


I decided to follow Minnehaha Creek until it merges with the mighty Mississippi. I hadn't made the hike since sometime back in the sixties, but it seemed like an attractive way to spend an hour or so. The paved sidewalk ends before the creek-river merge, but the path is well worn and I knew I could find my way back. The trip was a lonely one. I saw only one other human along the way, another older guy taking a hike. The photo below is the spot where the creek flows into the river - not as dramatic as the falls, but an interesting place some distance down river from the Ford Bridge and down the hill from the Veteran's Home.



Tonight was another mixed doubles match. The hardcore girls were there and the tennis competitive. Jerry and Becky were a little off their usual game and so Barb and I won, but the tennis was pretty good. I heard some more stories about tha nationals. They started out nervous and lost the first set 6-2, mostly because they were overhitting, trying to overpower the other team. Bur soon they realized that they weren't playing super teams and settled down to win the next set and the tiebreaker and the rest of their matches in the tournament. They did well, the hardcore girl and the guy with an artificial hip.

Only 23 more days to the solstice. There were 9 hours and 5 minutes of day today, from sunrise to sunset.

Autumn Trek Photos

The Blogger facility is working a little better today,so I'm uploading the photos that I wanted to use yesterday. Blogger failed me once today, but my repeated upload attempts eventually succeeded.

Yestreday's bike trek began in my own backyard. My sweet little maple tree is beginning to drop all her leaves. They changed color and then the winds came and this is what remained yesterday.


My journey took me to the River Road across the Ford Parkway bridge, and by Minnehaha Falls. It rained for about 18 of the last 21 days, so this is quite high water in the Creek that flows over the precipice. It's a fierce waterfall this month compared with the July barely adequate flow. And the leaves have decided to redecorate.


This is the photo of the spot where the trek odometer reached 400 miles for the year. A puny total for some, but not insignificant for most Social Security recipients. The bridge behind the bike goes to Pike Island in the lowland below Fort Snelling. It is one of the few places in the Twin Cities that you will find a sign forbidding bicycle travel. (There is another one very near Minnehaha Park in the Longfellow Gardens area). It was a busy place when I rode there yesterday, today it was likely deserted.


I found my broom and sliding shoes for curling and went to the club on Selby for the open house today. The place was populated with new curlers, but the event was not very well organized. I watched for a while, then came home to watch the Vikings lose another game, this one to the Dallas 'Boys. I think I'll be able to remember the curling delivery for the first night on the ice this Wednesday.

Squirrels Are Vermin

On my last trip to Park o'Minnehaha, I came upon a dead tree trunk standing in the park. It has a tiny door built into the trunk at about eye level, and hinged, decorated and supplied with a tiny handle. See photo. I'm suspicious that it was put there by Carl P., but who knows. As curious as I was, I opened the door slowly and the fake squirrel tail slowly sailed out. You can see it in the photo. A practical joke trap! If I had opened it rapidly as many would, I would have been startled by the "squirrel" on a spring jumping out at me. What is this doing in a public park in Minneapolis?


A beautiful day again, nearly 70 and sunny most of the day. No tennis.

Longfellow's Flower

It was a nice day - coolish in the morning with a clear blue sky. I walked around the grounds at Minnehaha Park and revisited Minnehaha Falls to see if the volume of water was up from July. There was a nice strong stream of water flowing in Minnehaha Creek and over the falls. I didn't include a photo, because the falls has been shown several times before in this space. Besides, I shot this lively blue flower at Longfellow Gardens, just across Hiawatha Avenue from the park. The bees and butterflies evaded this shutterbug, but the flower is pretty. For the benefit of KS, there is also a significant prairie restoration project in progress there by the creek.


There is also a nice statue of Hiawatha and his princess, Minnehaha, at the park. It's a little off the beaten track, but stands very near the creek. It was erected in 1911, so has stood there 96 years.


So much for Minnehaha Falls. I also checked out the hiking trail around Lake Como to see how the cleanup of the multitude of downed trees was going. I would call the progress exceedingly slow, but work men with a truck and hoist were there and they were removing dried up branches and leaves from ex-oaks and ex-ashes. The guy operating the hoist was working and the other five guys were watching. They'll be done with the cleanup by snow fly, I expect.

Tennis tonight at Marie Park. I played in the lower range of acceptable and my team lost both sets. It was a beautiful night, however, and it was enjoyable just to be out in the weather. The other guys appreciated the wins and didn't indulge in cheap taunting. Not a bad outing, all in all.

The U.S. Open continues. I watched a couple of sets of Nadal winning his opening match against an Aussie qualifier who was ranked about 125 in the world. Nadal is number two. Nadal also seems to be having knee problems. He probably plays too much tennis, and from today's action I'm pretty sure that he won't make it to the finals this year. That's just a guess, of course.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

It was Friday the 13th today. I had a ride over to Minnehaha Falls and along the river to Lake Street, down the River Road to Summit and home. It was just over 13 miles. I do not suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia (the fear of Friday the thirteenth), but I am a little nervous.

I took this photo of Minnehaha Falls. The water level is down some since Mr. Moohoo's photo earlier in the year - a testiment to the rampant dryness in this mosquito district. The "Laughing Waters" Falls was only giggling.



I succumbed to some word searches after learning the long word in the title. Here's some more useful (not really) things I learned.

The fear of Friday the 13th stems from two separate fears -- the fear of the number 13 and the fear of Fridays. Both fears have deep roots in Western culture, most notably in Christian theology. Thirteen is significant to Christians because it is the number of people who were present at the Last Supper (Jesus and his 12 apostles). Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th member of the party to arrive. Christians have traditionally been wary of Fridays because Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Additionally, some theologians hold that Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit on a Friday, and that the Great Flood began on a Friday. In the past, many Christians would never begin any new project or trip on a Friday, fearing they would be doomed from the start.

The word "paraskevidekatriaphobia" was devised by Dr. Donald Dossey who told his patients that "when you learn to pronounce it, you're cured!"

The word "friggatriskaidekaphobia" also means a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. Friday is Frigga's Day. Frigga (Frigg) was an ancient Scandinavian fertility and love goddess, equivalent to the Roman Venus who had been worshipped on the sixth day of the week. Christians called Frigga a witch and Friday the witches' Sabbath; modern Wiccans are happy to oblige. There is also "triskaidekaphobia", the irrational fear of things or events associated with the number 13.

Today is July 13, 2007, the second Friday the 13th of the year. There won't be another one until June 2008. The months beginning on a Sunday are the ones with a Friday the 13th.

A lot of the above stuff should be cited and in quotes. Sorry.

And I ran across "googlewhacking" a game associated with my favorite search engine. It is a game where you enter two words into google and only one hit results. For example: "gerrymandering jillionaire" which now probably has two results including this one. The game has a web site:
googlewhacking which gives some other examples.


Tomorrow is Bastille Day, followed by Nils Olai Hansen's 150th birthday. Nils was born on July 15, 1857, in Magisaas, Norway, to Hans Nilsen and Berit Marie Samuelsdtr. He was my great-grandfather. He will be pictured here on his birthday.