Yes. a lovely day for cruising, and I keep the camera in the pocket as I have a lot of ground to cover before dark. But when I get to Loring Park it is so stunningly beautiful and pleasant, such an unbelievable little gem in the heart of the urban space, that I can't resist stopping on a little bridge there and looking at the ponds, the sky, the people, and the birds. Red-winged Blackbirds are everywhere, some fighting over territory. Wood ducks calmly ply the reflective waters under puffy clouds.
Back on the trail, I get to my usual left turn under I-94 and jog just slightly to the right this time, then cycle up, climbing the spiral walkway to cross over the old rail corridor and area the city uses for materials, scrap, and whatnot. It's been a long time since I've been over this way, but I find my way onto the old patchwork of trail sections, streets, and bridge crossing very easily and naturally, as surely as I found my way from the Central Station to the Vondel Park youth hostel in Amsterdam after having only been there once two years earlier.
Here it's shaping up to be a wonderful evening – folks are playing soccer in Bryn Mawr Park, and further up there are several groups of adults playing a game we used to call kick-soccer (also known as kickball to many) in Bassett's Creek Park, not a few of them lolling about or sitting on the trail as though it were some kind of sideline bench. I just carefully run that gauntlet as they stare, as though I were the oddball. Here I pull up to Glenwood Ave by the old bottling plant.
Could this be it?
Or this?
I'll never know. Later I would try some Internet research and only find the notions that there were indeed two natural springs near here (Glenwood and Great Medicine, the latter in Theodore Wirth Park), and apparently MNDOT drained and closed these as part of the I-394 building project. I'm utterly curious about this whole matter, but can't find anything more about it ... yet.
For now I'm on a beautiful ride, and I know I should not have taken time out to look for the secret spring and take pictures. I consider turning back for a shorter loop home as the sun is rapidly sinking in the sky. I figure if I have an hour of daylight left I'll be fine though and pull out my phone to check the time. Oops – by my rough calculations I've only got about 35 minutes. Still I can't resist following the rest of the creek trail as the next section is the one I'd looked forward to, so over the bridge I go and onto the rough, broken, narrow, muddy trail that leads through secret woods and next to intriguing backwaters and ponds. I've got he right bike but the wrong tires, again, for this rough terrain, but I do just fine, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to pick my way through on the best level spots.
This fun stretch of trail is shorter than I remembered, though, and before I know it I'm dumped out into Theodore Wirth well north of Highway 55, with the sun going down and actually quite close to a "bad" part of town (North Minneapolis), although you'd never guess that in this quiet parkland. I start heading down the road, south, and actually get a little turned around at the intersection of Wirth Parkway and Plymouth Ave North. Someone has pulled a trick and revolved the signpost so that the actual streets are represented opposite of reality. I'm a little disoriented, still, but believe it or not when I see an old model car with exhaust pouring out of its tailpipe and the stereo blaring go tearing up what is labeled as Wirth Parkway, I just know that is the wrong way. I head south on the real Parkway and before long all is familiar again, with known spots like the quaking bog and Eloise Butler wildflower gardens along the route. I really get pumping here, seeing as it is getting dark and I'd like to at least hit the Greenway before the sun really sets. There are some hills in here too so I start to get a real and genuine workout. I sneak across Highway 55 (something I normally would never do) because of the late hour and clear opportunity to do so. It's shaped up to be an incredible evening, and even though I'm running late, I can't resist stopping to take a look at a and photograph of one of Minneapolis' lesser known lakes (Brownie).
After this point the ride is no longer in question – it's no longer exploration, but a full-on workout. As I skirt around the western edge of Cedar Lake, riding the road in favor of the trail around the other side), I'm lathering up and in full racing mode. I grab the remaining chuck of the Kenilworth Trail and by the time I make the turn onto the Midtown Greenway, I'm embarrassed to admit that I begin to cramp. I get a cramp in my left, then right, calf. Unbelievable – I don't remember this since soccer tournaments a decade or more ago. Well, I did work out hard the day before, and recently upped my running mileage at the gym, so ... maybe ... or could it be that I'm just getting old?
Experience comes with age, though, and I adapt my pressure on the pedals and settle into an easy groove, just spinning to keep the cramps at bay ... no time to stop. And it's as enjoyable as ever, after all, to sail back on the Greenway as the light drains from the sky behind me ... very very slowly. In the end I make it all the way back home before it even get close to real darkness, and I guess I'm about as satisfied and proud as I could reasonably be for a middle-aged exploratory urban biker with a blog that no one reads.
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