Coop's Corner: October 2020

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Carley Visit w/o Camping - Sunday, 2020/10/17

Considering that it was October, the latter half of October, it was a very nice day. Not as nice as some of the last ones had been but not tooo bad. After some morning chores were covered (and any daylight warming that I could get) the afternoon saw me back on the Himalayan for another ride. I knew what I wanted to include with the ride but where I'd go and where it would happen were decided only at the last minute.

It was to be another wander, a look for the last of the maple colors and for the brightest oaks, plus a lunch cooking stop.

All I knew was that somewhere along this Route I'd be stopping to make my burger...TBD.

Not here....

I stopped at various parks, Whitewater State Park in particular, one of Minnesota's most popular and the place was more crowded than our State Fair. That wasn't going to work. Due to the pandemic, our parks and especially our State Parks have seen an explosion of attendance. I'm quite sure that Minnesota will start asking for some of their funding to be returned as a result.

Whitewater is nearby Carley, the place that I've been overnighting at so it was easy to give that a try. When I arrived, the picnic area was crowded, none of the picnic tables private enough for me. But when I rode through the campground, my favorite site was wide open, campers that had been there and in nearby sites for the weekend were already on their way home.

The culinary culmination!!

Now we wait for a day, here or there with just enough improvement to get back out for some more of my foolishness.

Monday, October 26, 2020

Quick Wednesday Afternoon Ride - 2020/10/14

I had been working in Waterloo since early Monday, home Wednesday afternoon. An extremely nice day, as quick as humanly possible, the KLR was my pick primarily and exclusively because nothing else needed moving for out the door access. No GPS, no helmet cam and horror of horrors, no tank bag! Time, she was a wastin'....Get out there and GO!!

Surprising myself, without my customary GPS along (almost always feels naked) it was easy to turn down some 'other' roads, more than one of them that I'd never been on before....too close to home! Normally most everywhere, it takes a lot to get me turned around but it happened that Wednesday. This big move west had me fooled, for a couple of miles I believed that I was going south and had to smile when I realized that I was crossing roads that I should have been paralleling. Excited about the entire adventure, when I got home I quickly sat down and created this Track to save as a reminder. It was a really fine 76 miles.

A reminder to never again leave home without my GPS.

Ever watchful of the time, my scheduled call to mom was about due so I hustled that last little way to the Cheese Curd Capitol of the World in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. I didn't visit their retail store, instead stopped for a coffee to accompany my phone call in their convenience store across the parking lot.

No curds though.

A new one...I knew it was there but had never bothered to try it. We all make mistakes.

A true enthusiast....

A stop at the little riverside park in Diamond Bluff...

On September 2nd, only two hours after I'd enjoyed dinner there, Liberty's Restaurant in Red Wing suffered an automobile crash that tumbled the corner of their building down. A police chase resulted in a very altered building on one of Red Wing's main intersections. Brother Kevin had done all the air handling duct work back when the restaurant originally opened.

Courtesy of KARE11 TV

Wednesday afternoon, for the first time, I realized that the restaurant had reopened, so I stopped to dine and to see my favorite waiter, Duane. I think he'd rather talk sleds but he's a motorcyclist as well and seems just as adept at the machines with wheels.

It had been a long day but a great one and I was tired. One more too-good-too-miss riding day, a successful run in Iowa but really nice to be home.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Sunday, the Overnight A Memory - 2020/10/11

Another turn for Old Blue, the '78 XS650 Special. Not everyone appreciates the unique qualities of the Special's but I sure do enjoy this one. You'll see few machines with rear view's as exceptional as this making it even better!

And when it can take me places like this??

Pier 4 for breakfast, an especially good place!

No Planes, but Trains, Automobiles and Mississippi Tugs surround the establishment. Lock and Dam #4 right here. A very mainline BNSF double track is quite literally adjacent to the outdoor seating, Wisconsin 35 out the other side.

Right at the crest on County H....

Hay production along County ZZ....

For Pete's Sake Bar in Arkansaw, Wisconsin....I'm waving to two riders on the bench that I recognize but don't really know.

Seen all over the area, obsolete dairy farm milk bulk tanks that are now used in the woods for maple sap collection.

Hoses through the woods that plumb the sap to the collection tank...

More apparatus in the sap/syrup collection process, these 'pipeline' systems can be extensive.

County S....

Back in Minnesota where we label County Roads with numbers, this one County 10. Wisconsin uses alpha names.

Alongside and above US Hwy 61 and Lake Pepin...almost home.

A great ride and day for riding, 201 miles worth. The 42 year old bike is just fun, easy and Pleasant with a capital P.

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)