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Cainmark Does Not Comply 🚲

🧵🧵

Today is "Pi Day" under the ridiculous American dating system. 3.14.

When I got home, I made an apple pie. But in a rectangular pan.

Beautifully warm day so I bicycled 42 Kilometers on the Root River Trail from Rushford to Peterson to Whalan and back in Minnesota.

1/7

Saw my first recumbent bicycle here today. The wheels were angled like the wheelchairs in wheelchair basketball.

A couple bicycling.

A man with a dog that had Irish Setter hair, but was definitely not one. Size of a Beagle, but not a Beagle.

Another older couple bicycling.

2 people walking.

A man on a "Rascal" scooter.

A teenage girl with huge white headphones walking.

A couple pedaling electric bicycles toward Rushford.

A man, a woman, a boy teenager on electric bicycles.

2/7

A long stretch from Peterson to Whalan I didn't see anyone else.

4 older women were walking. One asked "are we close to the bridge"

"I don't know. What bridge are you asking about?"

"The first one.'

"The one I just crossed isn't that far."

"If it is, we'll find you." She said smiling and laughing.

Man and woman with really light sport bikes at the spot on the trail near the outdoor restrooms.

3/7

2 older men on nice electric bikes going towards Lanesboro. One said "Beautiful day!"

I said, "Yes, it is!"

Saw a rabbit while looking in a closed store window. T-shirt had a picture of bicycle handlebars, underneath it said, "Life behind bars"

While taking a picture at the old gas station with the really old pumps in Whalan, a school bus driver waveed at me. Lanesboro school bus.

4/7

I bicycle back in a circle and waved on through the same bus who made the opposite circle through the 4 way stop.

A man with a bicycle, walking it and a gorgeous beagle dog.

2 teenagers on "One Wheels" (side note. At least an electric bike gives you some exercise. Those don't. Motorized on the trail and pretty sure not for disability reasons. I hate those things with a fury. I *know* it's irrational and I admit it. I don't stop them or throw a soda or beer can or bottle, or a knife, or

5/7

a rock, or yell at them, or shoot at them--all which have happened to me bicycling).

Saw 2 black and white cats, just chilling on old tree stumps, looking like I just interrupted a very important conversation.

Near Minnesota Energy a whole bunch of fire trucks, no sirens exiting onto highway 16. I hung back and let them all go before I went across.

6/7

Saw about 4 Robins and 4 black with white stripes on their wings birds circling each other on the trail (Jets! Sharks!) before they scattered as I approached.

Wife told me when I got home that earlier was the first she'd ever heard fire truck sirens around here.

Most people I've seen on the trail since we moved here last Halloween. Glad everyone seemed to be enjoying it.

7/7

@cainmark Then you could have stopped at the pie shop in Whalen. 😜

(Homemade pie is always better.)

@steveyaeger

I did. Still closed for the season.

Something I've had to adjust to up here. Huntsville, Alabama didn't have anything close for any season. After experiencing negative temperatures here, I understand why now.

@cainmark Speaking of the ridiculousness of the American system, I follow a couple of other people who bike in the USA, and I noticed that most of them use the normal (sorry, I mean metric 😄) system. Is this somehow connected to biking culture, or is it just a coincidence?

@esther

I think it's just a coincidence.

I've tried to use Metric for more things recently. All started because some software wouldn't sort my photos by date properly until I used yyyy-mm-dd.

I still use cups and ounces in recipes because that's all I see to use, and being off a little can mess things up a lot.

@cainmark To be fair, cups are much more practical for recipes (I still have no idea what an ounce is, let alone a difference between dry and wet ounce), but I mostly stick to grams. For some reason, switching to miles and F for baking was relatively easy for me, but I still struggle with feet and yards, and I can’t make sense of F in weather without converting it first. The only weather-related F I know for sure is that -40°C and -40°F are the same temperature, and its freaking cold 😄. And the only reason I know that is because in 2020, we hit that exact temperature on the North Shore, right when I decided to go on a winter dog sledding trip 😄

@esther @cainmark I do believe it is from the bike world. In the 70s/80s/90s all good quality bikes came from France and Italy, and everything was listed in cm/mm, so bike geeks and mechanics got very used to metric.

Even now, for measuring small things, I’m perfectly content using either (like carpentry, 24” = ~60cm).
For distances, I still stick to miles though. 🙄

No one I know outside the bike world could answer how many cm in an inch. Bike nerds know (2.54!)

@ironcladlou @cainmark In the country where I was born, we used the metric system, and obviously, in school, too. However, for some reason, we studied inches (and it was the only nonmetric unit that we learned), and most rulers also had inches. I still don't know why; I don't remember using inches outside of math class before I moved to the US 🙈