Velodrome

First. To show the difference between a dry month and a wet month, I'm bringing out a photo of Minnehaha Falls from July (dry month) followed by a photo of the falls in the wettest August in Twin Cities record keeping. The pictures were taken from nearly the same spot; you may be able to pick out the two trees that are in common in each. I thought I was in the same place, but I didn't have the original photo with me. You may perhaps notice a difference in flow over the precipice.

Minnehaha Falls, July 13, 2007.


Minnehaha Falls August 29, 2007.


The Cedar Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi next to the fallen 35W bridge was open to pedestrians and bikes today. I recommend a stroll across the span, although you will be in the company of a lot of other gawkers. I took the walk this morning and have quite a few photos which I'll try to organize for future blogs. The Mississippi is still blocked by the ex-bridge and the debris is being removed as quickly as it can be jack hammered apart and toted off. It's an other worldly sight.

This evening I went to the National Sports Center's Velodrome to watch bike races. They have races there from May through early September on a 20 year old wooden track. The bikes are single speed and brakeless, but the riders are fast and seemingly fearless. It was a pretty good show, even with the mosquitos and lack of scoreboard. They had some nice bikes, too. There were a couple of crashes, but no serious injuries.


There was a great US Open tennis match last night on the USA network between James Blake and a French guy, Fabrice Santoro, whose nickname is the Magician. Blake won in five sets, but Santoro was amazing to watch. He was cramping during the whole fifth set, but during actual play he ran around like a youngster. Between points he limped and was unable to move without wincing. 6-4, 3-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4. There were magical moments of shotmaking and retrieving in a very entertaining late night match.

Name this flower

This pretty red flower is probably not native to Minnesota, but appears happy to be here. I found it in a sunny garden in Minneapolis. Does anyone know its name?


It was a beautiful day. Another one in a string of nice days. We had team practice at Highland High School courts. Jerry's 8.0 Mixed Doubles team is playing in the end of season tournament - I think it's called the Areas - on the weekend of September 14th, and we needed to practice some together. I'm going to play quite a bit because I am the only available 4.0 man and the 4.5 men can't play with the 4.0 women (that would be an illegal 9.5 team), and there are a couple of them on the team. Tonight I played a set with Barb and set with Marcia, plus a couple of ten point tie breakers. We played until the sun went down. It was a nice sunset, highly visible from the Highland Courts which sit on top of a St Paul hill. I didn't have my camera with me, so you will have to imagine the beauty of the occasion.

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.

Changeable

We have plenty of rain the last few days. Overnight we had a deluge and some power outages were reported.


I played tennis indoors at Wooddale last night because of the threat of rain. We are getting the mixed doubles team ready for the sectionals in September, so it was an oppportunity for practice with the team and get some court action. My 8.0 team qualified for the tournament via the back door. We didn't win the league (it was the winter league), but the team that won the winter league also won in the summer, so we were moved up. We'll be playing the second weekend in September at Reed Sweatt (aka Nicollet Tennis Center). Last night we split sets and then won the ten point third set tie-breaker.

The US Open started this week in New York. The Williams sisters are both playing and both won in the first round. They are in the same bracket so won't be playing eah other for the title this year as they have in the past. I'm predicting another Williams tournament win, but I'm not saying which one until after they play each other. The men's title may go to the new kid on the block, the Serb youngster, Novak Djokavic, but Nadal and Federer are more likely this year. Djokavic holds recent victories over both Nadal and Federer. Not a small feat.

Sunday Crosswords

No tennis today. It was a beautiful day and I was outside quite a bit. One of the tennis crowd had an open house this afternoon, so I spent a couple of hours talking about tennis and the unfortunate closing of the Lilydale tennis facility. And how sorry we are that the new owner is losing his shirt because the real estate market, especially for condos, seems to have tanked. He has yet to demolish the old building and seems to be in arrears on his property tax payments, according to interested and informed sources.

The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles had one of those nasty little gimmicks today. The title, "Buried Treasure" was meant to refer to the gimmick: use the symbol for gold (AU) in a single square in selected words to answer a clue. There was reference to Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" song and a requirement to supply some of the lyrics. Thankfully, google knows almost all things, even 53 across, the first Shia imam, Ali. "I've been a miner for a heart of gold" are the Neil Young lyrics.

I close with a photo from the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis on the mighty Mississippi. The new Guthrie Theatre is in the middle of the photo, with the "bridge to nowhere" protruding towards the river. There were people on the deck when the photo was taken. It offers a high view of the collapsed 35W bridge, but at a considerable distance.

A Museum

I was up early for tennis. Adam was off to Chicago again early and won't be back until Sunday night. We played at eight a.m. while the clouds were still with us. The geezer tennis players had a substitute today, because Curt was off on a quest. The new guy is 68 and thus I fell to third eldest on the court. The adjoining court was used by women's doubles - women well known to us from Lilydale. I wouldn't have been in the older half of that foursome either. The tennis on both courts was pretty good and we passed about two hours playing three sets and I finished a little used up and without any water left. I don't remember the scores. I did remember to have a nap this afternoon.

It's a beautiful evening, too. I managed to get the long grass mowed back to a socially acceptable level - even the yarrow - and spent some time lounging on the patio. The tomatoes are still bearing fruit and there will be more zukes. The rain of the last week was a huge problem for southern Minnesota, but turned a lot of the brown spots in St Paul a lovely deep green.

This photo is from my ride on West River Road in Minneapolis. It's an Art Museum. One that I would like to visit one day to check out its collection of Georgia O'Keefe paintings. I only know about Georgia O'Keefe because KS wrote a paper about her while in high school. O'Keefe was born in Wisconsin and is famous for big bold images of flowers. The museum is the Weisman Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota and is known for its avant garde architecture. The photo illustrates that pretty well.


The Minnesota State Fair is in its third day and all the news creatures from our local TV stations are telecasting from the fairgrounds. Most of the news centers around the new kinds of food on a stick at the fair. There is even a place that sells hot dogs with peanut butter and mustardo. Yum.

There is rumor of a visit from a wise woman from the east. Someone with an assumed Italian moniker.

Search for the 35W Bridge

A fine day arrived in Minnesota after a long string of cloudy and rain. I haven't been on a bike ride in a while and I wanted to get a good view of the collapsed 35W bridge. It has been hard to get even a distant view until the last few days and I suspected that there would be some better vantage points available today. I'm not sure why I wanted to see the wreckage for myself, but I found that I wasn't the only one with the same impulse.

I decided to cross the Lake Street Bridge to Minneapolis and go up the West River Road until I could get close enough to see what was happening at the wreckage. I made it to the sign that told me the road was closed - somewhere north of Franklin Avenue - and went inland a while to the West Bank campus of the U of Mn. I rode along Washington Avenue and managed to get right next to 35W about a quarter of a mile from the bridge. There was no traffic on the three or four lanes leading to the river. There also was no view of the bridge. After more roaming around, no view seemed possible on the downtown side so I decided to bike home and try the east bank later on. It was a 17 mile round trip, so, given my questionable biking condition, I opted to drive to the Cedar Avenue Btridge by the U of Mn and drive across. However it was closed so I parked on 8th Avenue near University and walked. I found some places to see some of the bridge, but the yellow caution tape is everywhere and the viewing is not too easy. Or satisfying. This one is on University on the bridge over 35W looking towards downtown.


This is on Second Street, south of University where it is possible to get fairly close to the bridge approach. The concrete on the standing parcel in the photo wasn't injured in the collapse, it's just old and starting to crumble. This is near where some people have conjectured that the collapse began.


This is at the end of Main Street, the parallel street closest to the River. The bridge area is fenced off and there are men working inside the fence. There are also memorials hung on the fence to the unlucky 13 who were killed here.


I also had a stroll on the Stone Arch Bridge. There are some parts of the bridge in sight, but it's a fair distance from the bridge and the details are not easy to make out. There were a lot of people with cameras and people just looking at the scene, trying to take in its meaning. It's been over three weeks since the tragedy and it is still hard to find a place to take it all in.

The Century Mark

This is my 100th post on the Tennis Tousan Blog. In celebration, I present a photo of Taggy. [I had no other good photos, so why not.]


The rain stayed away most of the day. The Wednesday group of tennis players assembled, swept the water off the courts, drew for partners, and then we slugged it out. I played three sets with three different partners and won only one of the sets. 6-7, 7-5, 3-6. I was weary by the last set and missing on six of the eight cylinders. I may need a daytime nap tomorrow, a luxury of the retired among us. The weather creatures are prognosticating all day precipitation on the morrow, so a welcome day of rest may be upon us. The people living in the Winona area got another rainstorm today, on top of the 15 plus inches that they got in a 24 hour period earlier this week. It's time to build an ark.

The Minnesota State Fair begins tomorrow. It's a place to get almost any kind of food on a stick.

The lightening prevails

There was some tennis today. We had enough time for a little more than two sets of doubles. The scores were 4-6, 6-1, and 2-1 in the third when the dark sky lit up with nearby lightening. We nearly immediately decided that the third set was not worth the risk of a frying death. We quit and on the way off the courts the sky opened and it rained hard again.

About noon I went to Como Park to check on the tree harvesters. I walked around the lake. The chain saws and the Park employess were hard at it. Many of the downed trees are still being removed. There are painted red rings around the trees that are too wounded to continue living. The mercy killing will go on for some more days. It's a sad place for tree huggers, but a bonanza for free lance tree services.

Whose birthday is portrayed here? There appear to be eight candles on the cake. Maybe it's Tom. Then it is May, 1949. Then Gino would be less than three years old. He looks older than that to me. If it is October, 1950, it is TT's birthday and Gino is four years old. I think we moved to the Iron Range in the fall of 1950. Whose birthday is it?

Calamities happen

I played indoor tennis tonight at Wooddale. It's been raining since Saturday morning, on and off. Mostly on. We took the game inside because we could. It was three sets of uneven tennis. The lighting is different inside, but there is no wind, and only half lobs because of the ceiling. The gang of geezers participated. Tennis Dennis will be having cataract surgery soon, followed by hip replacement surgery. He has about two weeks to play, so when we are scheduled, we play.

The drive to Wooddale took me through Spaghetti Junction - the interchange of highways in downtown St Paul. The traffic was as clogged as I've ever seen it. I think the city is feeling the loss of the 35W bridge and more of the traffic burden goes on 94 through St Paul. Traffic patterns have changed and people have to get used to the new reality, and must find new routes home. We're going to be clogged for a while.

It has been a bad streak for Minnesota. This weekend was the big rain and flooding in the southeastern part of the state - 17 inches of rain near Winona. At least six people were killed and beaucoups damage to homes in the area. Last week it was wind storms taking out the big trees at Como Park and the State Fair Grounds. On August 1st the 35W bridge collapsed and they are still searching for the last missing person. It has been a bad spell, but things could be worse. See below. Ground zero in Hiroshima. The Japanese people left standing the shell of the building at ground zero, as a visual reminder that worse things can happen unless we remain vigilent. This building was directly below the atomic bomb dropped there in August, 1945, and miraculously, partially survived. For 62 years.