It isn't perfect weather, but it's as close as you'll get for this time of year. Sunny with just a hint of chill in the air. Out for a group ride on a Saturday and of course lots of others have the same idea. It's my most frequent ride – from the traffic circle on Minnehaha straight up the creek, skirting Lake Hiawatha and Lake Nokomis, then around the west sides of Lakes Harriet and Calhoun before grabbing the Midtown Greenway and cruising back east toward home. I'm surprised to see that the lakes are still covered with ice except for the edges, and there are still some remnant ice shelves on shady bends in the creek and some ice and snow patches down in the valleys as well.
At Harriet the growing crowd is agog over a lone possum in a barren tree at the lake's edge. One biker in my party says that opossums were unheard of here in decades past, that the harsh Minnesota climate kept the range of these creatures limited to more southern lands. I note that sightings in Iowa were not uncommon at all, and in my memory this is the first I've seen in the Twin Cities. The poor creature looks out of its element, and I wonder why it is out and active, scaling the branches of this tree so out in the open during the light of day.
We take a break over at the "Secret Spring," located near the Northwest corner of the lake, roughly across the road from the main facility and parking lot there. I've heard plenty of folks attest to the quality of this water and have often witnessed folks pull up in cars to fill jugs and even large tanks from the hand pump here. Today is no different. The first is a middle-aged couple with perhaps a half-dozen well-worn and yellowed plastic gallon jugs.
The second is a mother and son team with about two dozen jugs of the same shape and size (only cleaner). As we talk with them it becomes evident that they are first and second generation immigrants (from Russia or Ukraine, I guess). The mother tells us she has been coming here for this water for 40 years now, and that she drinks nothing else but this water ... only this water ... and beer. The son, who looks to be in his fifties, explains that she boils the water and strains it through cheesecloth before considering it ready to drink.
He also tells us about the spring over by the Glenwood bottling plant where people would line up starting at 6 in the morning on Saturdays to fill up their jugs until "they closed it." I found this story most interesting as I was excited a number of years back to come across that bottling plant up by Bassett Creek on a bike ride, but had never heard about the public spring. I want to investigate this story further and must remember to research it.
Lots of joggers, skaters, strollers, and whatnot flood the trail up around Lake Calhoun. What a beautiful day. We hop on the Greenway and just sail along back east, finally up and over the new bike bridge at Hiawatha. The ride ends back in the neighborhood where I show my friend the spot where storm sewer pressure created a continual problem that resulted in a manhole cover flying off and a geyser of water shooting out, with the eventual tragic result. The neighbor who had been putting it back by hand repeatedly out of sense of civic duty and safety was sliding the cover on yet again and was struck and paralyzed when it shot back off. We take a look at the new infrastructure that the city has installed, with multiple vents and manholes on both sides of the street in a short stretch of maybe 50 feet or so. It does look very odd, but it's not something one would likely notice just passing through in a car, on a bike, or even on foot, so visually insignificant that I even forget to photograph it. It's a lovely day and hard to imagine such a terrible incident occurring on this spot. We part ways until this evening, where we will see each other at a friend's party back uptown. That's right, the party is today because it is the first day of Spring.
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