April Snow Showers?

This is why I hate spring:

What the heck is that crap?!  I was done with snow a month ago.  I started thinking about a garden. Thanks a lot weather for dumping on my home-grown vegetable dreams.  A couple weeks ago I was outside raking leaves in a t-shirt with my pants rolled up.  I didn't realized I would need to keep my snow boots out until May.

The above picture was taken at 9:11 am.  The following picture was taken at 6:36pm that same day:

Talk about strange!  The snow melted so fast it sounded like it was raining.  I'm done with kooky weather.

Here are some fun things we've done recently:

It's Maple Syrup time!  At least it was, until we went to the Maple Syrup demonstration.  Andy and I enjoyed the information, along with 20 children and their parents.  And we actually took a decent picture together!

We've also gone on a few bike rides:

My two favorite forms of transportation together!

Lake Nokomis by our house.

Fancy Pictures

I recently got the program "Picasa" and I've been messing around with some photos and "enhancing" them. So I figured I'd put them on display.

In fitting with my "I love fall" claim, I love this photo. This is Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Walk in London.

A tour of the seasons. This over spring break this year when we got a lot of snow. I liked this path.

This is my most patriotic of pictures. The old Grain Exchange is on the wonderful corner of 4th and 4th in Minneapolis.

Here is my favorite wind farm just south of Rockford, IL. The colors are more prominent in this picture.

This is Andy when we biked up to Coon Rapids. We're at the dam looking over the Mississippi.

Andy and I went to fancy dinner and took a fancy photo by the fountain in Irving Park in St. Paul.

This is at some park area in San Francisco commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. I think.

This is the controversial Weisman Art Museum. Though you have to admit, its metallic sheen reflects the setting sun beautifully.

This is Eddy Hall on the U of M campus during the spring break snow earlier this year.

Scavenging Around Minneapolis

Last Saturday was my first alleycat race, known as scAVENGER! Basically we got a list of things to find/do in Northeast Minneapolis and about 2 1/2 hours to get it all done. The results are now in and our team, the Fightin' Unicorns placed an admirable second-to-last. We didn't get handicap bonus points like we deserved, but all's well that ends well.

Someone else took this picture of our team's bikes. Maddy is mine on the far right. That's our team up in the corner, devising our strategy.

Andy plotting out all the stops on a map that already had the stops plotted out.

The day started off pouring rain, but it let up just in time for the race to start. However, at that point I rolled over some large form of a spring and popped my first tire. Luckily Andy has the same bike as me, and he rode of to switch out tires quickly. While he was doing that, the rest of the team (which consisted of Jon, Katlin, her friend, Anouk, from the Netherlands, Kim, Andy and myself) checked an inappropriate picture off our list.

I'm pretty sure Mom wouldn't want me to bike around in my underwear. He could've caught hypothermia!

After that we were off to the highest point in Minneapolis to get a number off a kiosk and to take another photo of a "pointless" human pyramid. This took a lot more discussion than should be required for a pyramid. It didn't help that I couldn't figure out the timer on my camera right away. At any rate, we took a good picture.

I'm not actually really resting on anyone since I had to run around to the back.

Then we rode around and accomplished a few other tasks. Jon wrote a short essay about two songs from a juke box in Grumpy's bar and I tipped the bartender $1 (that was Andy's) for doing nothing. After that we headed to Boom Island to get a bloom and a wonderful picture. Though on the way Kim's chain broke in the middle of the road and we had to take yet another break. For some reason Andy was actually prepared for this set back and magically had a chain tool to fix her chain. The break was helpful in that we found a copy of the surprisingly elusive Northeaster for our collection of things.

Andy Has-the-world-in-his-backpack doing what he does best.

The task was to take a picture of the team on a picnic table with the skyline in the background. I should not have included so much of the other picnic table.

Then we were off to the "Feats of Strength"! Where we had used 40 oz of Miller High Life as a key to get into the stop. Our feat of strength was to each eat a large chunk of tofu covered with cinnamon, and then chug the 40 as a team. Lets just say that it was very beneficial to wash down the tofu with something.

Andy was amused by the tofu, Kim was disgusted, and Jon was thirsty.

Someone else also took another picture of our bikes. I was very excited.

I might have gotten the order of events a bit wrong. But at any rate, we were on our way to being done when I ran over a very dead squirrel and we were able to finish off the photo portion of the scavenger hunt.

We got 10 points for finding roadkill and taking a picture. Ten more points for a team member picking it up. Zero points for pretending to lick it. Jon's hand was immediately doused in whiskey to cleanse.

Then it was off to the after party! I've never seen so many bikers in the same place! It was really exciting. We turned in our manifesto and showed our pictures. The judge was appropriately disgusted with Jon's roadkill photo. Though we didn't win, it was still lots of fun. I really enjoy doing active things on the weekends. Next time though, I won't get so excited that they serve me at a bar.

A pitcher of beer!