Tag: biking

july 9/BIKESWIMBIKERUN

bike: 7.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
70 degrees
9:00 am

FWA has figured out the shortest way to get to the lake, and when we bike over there to train for his swim across the lake, we always take it. We also bike much slower than I do by myself. It’s nice to bike slower. It’s safer, I notice more, and I’m less tired when we get to the lake. My most distinctive memory of this bike ride was seeing the flash of intense blue from a bird as it flew away. Was it just a blue jay, or something more interesting, like an indigo bunting? I checked with FWA, and he agreed it was blue.

swim: 1.5 small loops (500 yards?)
lake nokomis big beach|
73 degrees
9:30 am

A beautiful morning for a swim, even if we didn’t swim that much. I need to start pushing FWA to swim a little bit more. The thing I remember most about the swim was seeing 2 swam pedal boats off in the distance. One of them was facing us, looking menacing.

run: 3.5 miles
lake nokomis — one way
82 degrees
4:30 pm

So hot! I had the crazy idea of doing a one way run to the lake, then meeting Scott for a beer. I had to stop a few times to walk. Even though it was hot, I made it. It was very crowded at the beach — so many people! Lots of fun people watching. Lots of swans, kayaks, paddle boards, canoes, inner tubes out on the water.

Colors I noticed at the lake

  1. a woman’s bright blue suit with a ruffled collar
  2. blindingly bright white swan boat + a woman’s pale legs
  3. another women’s black adn white 2 piece suit (top: black, bottom: white)
  4. a young girl’s pale green board shorts
  5. a small bird, all black
  6. an orange ball
  7. an extra bright yellow bikini top
  8. woman in the water: dark red velvet overalls
  9. boat sail: yellow and red
  10. a lifeguard’s red suit

july 8/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees
9:00 am (there) / 10:45 (back)

More people on the trail this morning. Less chance to notice anything other than how close I was to other people. Even so, I’ll try to remember 5 things on the way to the lake, and 5 things on the way back.

10 Things I Noticed While Biking

on the way to the lake

  1. a park worker in a bright yellow and orange vest, weeding, on a part of the path that was blocked off with orange cones
  2. several walkers on the biking side of the trail
  3. pounding from the construction site across from the DQ that I momentarily thought was my bike pedal doing something weird
  4. wind rushing past my ears
  5. a close encounter with several ducks — under a bridge, as I hugged the far edge of the trail to avoid an approaching pedestrian and biker: ducks, right there!

on the way back from the lake

  1. getting stuck behind 2 slow moving bikes — difficult to pass, difficult to bike slowly enough to not run into them (6 mph?)
  2. behind another slow-moving biker — as they went up or down a hill, they shifted gears with slow, awkward clicks
  3. another biker behind us, too impatient not too pass: “on your left”
  4. the lines on the bike path have been touched up, but the big bump on the trail hasn’t been fixed
  5. road closed sign for july 13th. No, not again!!

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
9:45 am

Every time I come to an open swim, I am deeply grateful that this program exists. To be able to swim across the lake for 2 hours, 6 times a week? Sometimes I can’t believe that something this wonderful is actually allowed to continue without being “improved” in ways that make it worse.

It looked like it might rain and it was a little windy, but the water was fine. Warm, not too choppy. Mostly, I breathed every 5 strokes. Sometimes, 3 or 4 or 6. Once, when a wave hit me as I surfaced, after 2 strokes. Saw some more planes, but no dragonflies or birds. Where are the seagulls? I’m trying to remember the last time I noticed a seagull on the water.

I just remembered: just before I started the swim, I could hear the creeaakk of the swing at the top of the beach. I think they’ve needed to oil that swing for 10 years now.

Leila Chatti has the most amazing abecedarian poem in The Nation. Here’s a portion of it:

from Google/ Leila Chatti

july 1/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
72 degrees
9:00 am (there) / 10:45 am (back)

10 Things I Noticed While Biking

  1. more than 1 dragonfly flying in my face
  2. a car recklessly passing another car on the narrow river road, honking furiously
  3. less wind today — the only wind today was the wind I made moving on my bike
  4. 2 birds having an intense exchange of chirps and cheeps — CHEEP! chirp! CHEEP!
  5. my bike rattling as I went over the big cracks that I was unable to avoid
  6. a pair of speedy bikers talking loudly as they passed me — what were they talking about? now I can’t remember
  7. hearing a lifeguard’s voice through the speaker, directing other lifeguards on where to put the orange and green buoys as I neared the beach — I learned today, after overhearing the lifeguards talking to each other, that they direct some of the lifeguards by talking through the speaker and others by taking secretly through walkie talkies
  8. so much more crowded on the way back — lots of bikes and walkers and runners using the bike path instead of the walking trail
  9. biking back from the lake, there were kids at the Nokomis Rec Center for summer camp — my kids did those camps for 8 years. It was awesome
  10. passed a surrey on the path on the rim of Minnehaha Falls park

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis beach
72 degrees
9:30 am

10 Things I Noticed While Swimming

  1. half of the sky was a clear blue, half was convered in feathery clouds
  2. the water was smooth — no chop today!
  3. I couldn’t see the orange buoys at all until I got within 20 or 30 feet of them, but it didn’t matter because I used the silver bottom of the rowboat the guide me
  4. a few silver flashes below me
  5. entering the lake, the water was green at the edges — why was the water green? what does that mean? looked it up and it means there’s lots of algae near the surface
  6. a black (at least it looked black to me) plane flying above the lake
  7. one duck floating near the yellow paddleboats
  8. exiting the lake, a kid calling out to an adult, “why is the water so green today?” “green?” “yeah, green right by the edge.”
  9. very small particles, illuminated by the sun, floating in front of me, being stirred up by the motion of my hand
  10. the far buoys — the orange one near the little beach, the green one near the big beach — were closer to shore than usual, almost right next to the white buoys. I didn’t mind; more of the lake to swim in!

june 30/RUNBIKESWIMBIKE

2.5 miles
2 trails
73 degrees
9:30 am

Was planning to swim with FWA at the lake, but when that didn’t work out, I went for a quick run. Too warm. I listened to a playlist on the upper, paved path, and the gorge on the lower, dirt trail.

a distinctive sound

When I reached the Winchell Trail, I took my headphones out and stopped to walk for a minute. I could hear the strong buzz or hum of bugs — cicadas? isn’t it too early for them? Whatever the bugs were, I imagined hundreds (thousands?) of tiny wings flapping fast, making this not very pleasing sound. I wondered how long it would last as I kept walking. In a few minutes it faded, replaced by the whooshing of car wheels from above. Hearing this sound reminds me of the poem Babel by Kimberly Johnson:

Babel/ Kimberly Johnson

My God, it’s loud down here, so loud the air
is rattled. Who with the hissing of trees,
the insect chatter, can fix devotion

on holy things, the electrical bugs
so loud the air is stunned, windy the leaves’
applause redoubled by the clapping wings

of magpies? Who with their whispered psalm
can outvoice their huckster cackle, the trees
blustered to howls while the tesla bees

whine loudly to the shocked air? O who
can think of heaven in such squall, shrill wind
of trees, magpie wings, and throats in fracas,

the bluebottle static, the air stupid
with the shrieks of devils,— of angels,—
who in such squall can think of anything

but heaven?

The bluebottle (flies) static. I don’t think I was hearing flies, but it did sound like a sort of static.

bike: 11 miles
lake nokomis and back + extra
90 degrees
5:00 pm (there) / 6:15 pm (back)

Do I remember anything about my bike, other than it was hot and very windy. So windy, and right in my face, both ways! The only other thing I remember is feeling comfortable and not nervous about whether or not I could see. Either my brain has adjusted by tweaking the visual, or it has adjusted by making me feel less anxious about not totally seeing everything. It’s probably a bit of both. Oh, one more thing: the sky looked a bit ominous — some spots of dark gray. At some point, it started raining, barely.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
90 degrees
5:20 pm

It wasn’t too choppy in the water. Hooray! I didn’t have any problem sighting, or any problems keeping swimming when I couldn’t sight the buoys, which was most of the time. It’s getting harder to see color, I think. I rarely saw the orange or lime green until it was right in front of me. The final green buoy was lined up right in front of 3 white sailboats. I saw a few silver flashes below me — fish? Some wetsuit ran into me. I don’t think it was my fault, because I was keep my straight line, but who knows?

june 28/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
70 degrees
9:00 am

Biked over to the lake with both of my kids. I don’t think we’ve done that in 10 years. Very nice. At the lake, we were passed by 2 kids on electric bikes. So many more electric bikes on the trails these days (which doesn’t bother me). A bird (moving too fast for me to tell what it was) flew right in front of me, across the path. Also: the irritating screech of a blue jay.

swim: 500 yards
lake nokomis, big beach
75 degrees
10:00 am

FWA and I had another swim session. Slowly, he’s building up his endurance. Today he did a full loop around the white buoys, which was probably at least (?) 20 minutes of either swimming or treading water — no wall to lean on or tiled floor to step down on. He’s not ready to swim across the lake yet, but he will be. So exciting! The water was much calmer than it has been, hardly any waves. I mentioned that to FWA and he said, “it’s still pretty wavy to me.” I remember how rough the water felt when I was first starting to do open water swim. Noticed at least one kayak just off the white buoys. Two little boys were playing in the water. One of them kept ending every sentence with a “bruh.” His friend called out, “Stop swearing at me!” Little kids at the lake are entertaining, especially when you can observe them from a distance.

Read this tweet the other day. I might want to read this entire book:

https://twitter.com/themoneyiowe/status/1541483203411808256

I like this idea of asking a place/landscape, “Who are you? How do I say your name?”

june 23/BIKESWIMBIKE x 2

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
85 degrees
8:00 am

A slow bike ride through the neighborhood with my 19 year old son, FWA. We talked a lot about “The Walking Dead,” which he is currently watching, and I’ve never seen. From video games to tv shows, I always appreciate his insights when he’s describing them to me.

swim: testing out the water
water temp: 78 degrees

I’m trying to be as chill as I can about FWA agreeing to swim across the lake with me this summer so I don’t overwhelm him, but it makes me so happy to get to share this thing I love with him. He did 5 years of swim team before high school, but he hasn’t been in any water for 6 years. This first time in the lake went pretty well. He has a long way to go to build up the stamina to make it across (600 yards) and back again, but I think he’ll be able to do it. Hooray!

bike: 8.5
lake nokomis and back
94 degrees
4:45 pm (there) / 6:30 (back)

Biked to open swim club. So hot! I really felt the heat on the way over. I can’t remember anything but feeling hot and happy that I could see well enough to bike. On the way back, I didn’t feel as hot, but I still don’t remember much about the bike ride. It’s hard for me to be open to noticing while I’m biking. I have to devote so much energy to staying alert and concentrating on the path. It can be tiring.

swim: 2 very choppy loops
lake nokomis open swim
94 degrees
5:30 pm

So choppy today. Very big swells and waves. Lots of breathing to one side. In the middle of my first loop, feeling very tired from the waves which seemed to want to drag me under, I remember thinking, “I’m only doing 1 loop today.” But, rounding the final buoy and swimming parallel to the big beach, I decided I could try one more.

I was going to do a list of 10 things I noticed, but instead here’s one image that I want to remember: finishing up my swim, standing in the shallow water and recovering from my effort, I heard so much noise from the beach and the swimming area — not individual voices as much a din of voices. A loud roar. I wonder what the decibel level of the beach was tonight? This loud noise was a sharp contrast to the absence of sound out in the middle of the lake. Out there, all I could hear was the sloshing of water.

june 21/RUNBIKESWIMBIKE

run: 2.25 miles
river road trail, north/south
73 degrees
humidity: 87% / dew point: 73!
7:45 am

I ran north on the river road to the top of the hill just past the lake street bridge. Stopped for a minute, then turned around and headed back. Sunny, but with lots of shade. Forgot to look at the river.

73 for the dew point? That’s bad, or “extremely uncomfortable,” according to Runner’s World. Yes, it was. Do I remember anything other than being uncomfortably warm?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. rower’s voices from down below!
  2. 3 stones stacked on the boulder
  3. a man fully covered in black sweatpants and a black jacket, with a white towel around his neck. Aren’t you hot, I thought as I passed him
  4. dark in the tunnel of trees, difficult to see if other people were there
  5. the pedestrian part of the double-bridge between 33rd and 32nd streets is overgrown with vines and bushes and leaves. Makes it harder to see if someone’s coming the other way, and narrower, making it harder to pass. Thankfully, no collisions today
  6. the small stretch of dirt trail that I take as the path nears the lake street bridge is wet — I think there was a brief, strong storm last night, or was that a dream?
  7. a group of 3 fast bikers riding on the road, a cautious car following behind
  8. a darting squirrel
  9. a flash of movement of the leaves beside the trail – was the flash from the sun hitting the leaves just right, or a critter — a bird or chipmunk or squirrel?
  10. later in my run, encountered Mr. black sweatsuit with white towel again. He said a soft, “morning,” and I nodded my head as a reply

Wow. Finding 10 things today took some thinking and remembering and getting past my overriding feelings of heat and discomfort. Such a great exercise in noticing!

Oh — I almost completely forgot: I also chanted in triple berries. Lots of strawberry/blueberry/raspberry and gooseberry/blackberry/red berry to keep my feet striking steadily. Added in a few mystery/history/mystery, which didn’t quite work, and butterscotch/chocolate sauce/caramel, and please don’t stop. Now I wish I had done more of them. I love the triple berry chants.

At the end of my run, as I was walking back, I listened to my first lecture for the class I’m teaching. I’m asking the students to listen to it on their first walk or run outside. I’m doing this partly because I’d like to make outside be the classroom space as much as possible, and partly because I think listening while moving can help you hear/process the words differently than when you’re inside, sitting still. One thought about the lecture: will my voice put them to sleep?

Mostly I don’t use headphones, but I do like to listen to podcasts or music sometimes. It’s strange how ideas or stories I’ve heard while running get imprinted on where I was on the trail. Even now, years later, as I run below the lake street bridge, I often think of the first season of Serial. Running from downtown to the Bohemian Flats, I think about an episode of “On Being” with Eula Biss. Listening to music or podcasts while moving might seem like a distraction from giving attention to a place, and it can be. But it can also be a chance to create a map of a place, connecting ideas that matter to you with locations that you move through regularly. Does that make sense?

Many people have strong opinions about whether or not you should be listening to anything while you’re moving. Although I do move much more without headphones, I like wearing them too. In my first year of doing this running project, I wrote a series of four acrostic poems exploring this no headphones/playlist debate: Playlist/No Headphones, some reflections

note: I’m typing this paragraph an hour later. When I was writing about headphones and listening, I thought there was something else I wanted to say, but it had drifted from my mind. It came back, in the midst of thinking about podcasts.

When I listen to podcasts, I always wear headphones, not broadcasting them to anyone else on the trail. For the most part, I prefer that others listen with headphones too. Yet, even as I write this, I’m reminded of how hearing someone’s irritating TEDtalk inspired a poem, and how I find some delight in hearing a song blasting from a bike speaker, especially if it’s accompanied by the Doppler effect.

Found this Anne Carson poem on twitter this morning:

Could I/ Anne Carson

If you are not the free person you want to be, you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to be unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name.

(added this later in the day):

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
87 degrees
4:30 pm (there) / 6:00 (back)

Biked without any problems. 2 distinctive memories, one of the way to the lake, one on the way back.

to the lake: Coasting down the hill between the double bridge and Locks and Dam No. 1, in the hot sun, I passed someone pushing a canoe on wheels. It looked awkward and like they were struggling. I tried to imagine the scenario where you would be pushing a canoe at this spot.

from the lake: Biking under the echo bridge, I heard 2 flutes playing a duet under the bridge, on the other side. It sounded very nice. I imagined calling out, “that sounds great” or “you’re awesome” but I didn’t.

This is the first time I’ve witnessed a canoe being pushed on the paved path or 2 flutes playing a duet under a bridge.

swim: 2 loops
87 degrees
windy

So much wind again. I’m getting used to it. I stayed on course. There was one point where I oriented myself in relation to another swimmer who was off course, so I got a little too close to the buoy, but otherwise, no problem. Again, I seem to swim straight towards the buoys even when I don’t see them, or think I see them. My googles leaked a little, and when I got out of the water there was a film over my eyes. Everything looked like it was fogged up, even though I wasn’t wearing glasses.

One memorable thing: Rounding the last green buoy, parallel to the big beach, I suddenly hit something hard with my hand. Huh? A green plastic bucket. As I flinched and lifted my head out of the water in surprise, I heard a woman laugh. Was she laughing at me? I doubt it. How did the bucket make it out this far?

I breathed every 5 strokes and had fun punching the water when it was extra choppy. Noticed a few planes and clouds above. An occasional flash below, and nothing else but brown, opaque water. Oh — a menancing sailboat, off to my left side. The first one this year!

addendum, june 22: I remembered 2 more memorable things that I don’t want to forget. One while I was swimming, the other while biking.

swimming: I kept seeing another swimmer out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked back again, they were gone. It was strange, because it happened more than once and felt very real, like they were there, and then they weren’t. Maybe it was the yellow buoy tethered to my waist?

biking: Biking back home on the river road trail, I passed a runner, running smoothly and quickly, snapping their fingers repeatedly. Why where they snapping? Not sure. In all the times I’ve passed a runner while biking (or while running), I don’t think I’ve ever heard them snapping!

june 19/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees
9:00 am (there) / 10:40 am (back)

My first bike ride to the lake by myself this year. Everything was a bit fuzzy, but I wasn’t scared to bike and I didn’t have any problems almost running into things or hitting a big pothole. Hooray! I’m always grateful to still be able to bike. My most distinctive memory of the ride was on the way there, right after I entered the Minnehaha Creek path, past what we (me, my husband, and our kids who named it 10 or 12 years ago) call the duck bridge. A very irritating sound. A person walking with ski poles, scraping then clicking them on the asphalt with every foot strike. Ssscrape. Click. Ssscrape. Click. Over and over. I wondered if the runner right ahead of this walker couldn’t wait to get away from the sound.

swim: 2 very choppy loops
lake nokomis
80 degrees (air) / 75 degrees (water)
9:30 am

I checked the weather earlier in the day and knew it was going to be very windy. And it was. 25-30 mph gusts, I think. It’s hard for me to tell, but this felt like one of the choppier swims I’ve done ever. And I did a lot of choppy swims last year. I wasn’t scared, just tired out by it. My chest burned a little as I tried to get oxygen to it. Hard to think about much else, other than: where’s the buoy? is that the buoy? breathe away from the wave. is my neck getting too sore? am I almost to the big beach? Nearing the final green buoy, at a part that was extra choppy, a big wave washed over me as I tried to breathe. I didn’t inhale any of the water, I guess because I’m a strong, experienced swimmer, but I imagined if I had, how that might have been very bad. And when I say imagined, I mean I literally imagined the scenario, or a vague, dreamy approximation of it, in my head. Swallowing the water, panicking, flailing, drowning. I wasn’t feeling this, but almost watching it like a movie. I often daydream alternate scenarios in my head right after something has happened. Everybody does, right?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the orange buoys, at least 2 of the 3, were in a neat row, cutting diagonally across the lake
  2. the bottom of the overturned lifeguard boat at the little beach was hard to spot through the waves — no sparkling silver streak to follow
  3. water visibility: I could see my hands in front of me and the bubbles they made with each stroke, but not much else
  4. the final green buoy was drifting in the wind, the rope attached to a weight that anchored it was close to the surface, I barely cleared it as I rounded the buoy
  5. my bright yellow buoy, tethered to my waist, was pushed into me by the wind several times
  6. a few female voices near the orange buoy closest to the little beach, a few swimmers resting and comparing notes before heading back to the big beach
  7. the water felt heavier or slower or like some part of it was trying to drag me down, harder to float
  8. off to the side, I noticed another swimmer swmming very far from the buoys — was this on purpose, or were they way off course?
  9. no vines wrapping around my head or big branches floating in front of me
  10. one seagull flying towards me

Overheard, right before starting, near the lifeguard stand:

Swimmer One: I see you’re wearing the wrong colored cap. The lifeguards will make you get out if your cap’s not the right color.
Swimmer Two: I know. I talked to a lifeguard about it. It’s okay.
Swimmer One: Okay. My daughter’s a lifeguard and she’s always saying how awful it is to make someone have to get out because their cap is wrong. You might have to get out on the opposite side and then walk around.

Was there anymore to this exchange? Was the second swimmer irritated by the first swimmer? Why did she have on the wrong colored cap? Was she confronted by a lifeguard in the water? That would be very irritating to be a lifeguard having to confront someone about the wrong colored cap. I don’t like disciplining people or enforcing rules.

This swim and bike was wonderful, and made me feel so relaxed and happy after I was done. Lake Nokomis swimming is the best.

I found this poem via twitter this morning. So great, so perfect for one of the weeks of my summer class!

Calling Things What They Are/ Ada Limón

I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that I’ve even dug out the binoculars an old poet gave me back when I was young and heading to the Cape with so much future ahead of me it was like my own ocean. I yell, Tufted titmouse! and Lucas laughs and says, Thought so. But he is humoring me, he didn’t think so at all. My father does this same thing. Shouts out at the feeder announcing the party attendees. He throws out a whole peanut or two to the Steller’s jay who visits on a low oak branch in the morning. To think there was a time I thought birds were kind of boring. Brown bird. Gray bird. Black bird. Blah blah blah bird. Then, I started to learn their names by the ocean and the person I was dating said, That’s the problem with you, Limón, you’re all fauna and no flora. And I began to learn the names of trees. I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates you, and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in, but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.