Memories and a wrench

Friday I went for a bicycle ride on my brother's bicycle.  This is the first time I had ridden all month.  A long time for me to not be on a bicycle.  Since I am not returning to Montana - and my bicycle - until late on the 31st, I was in danger of going a month without riding at least one mile on a bicycle.  That last time that had happened was June of 1983 - over 26 years ago - back when I was in college.

Friday was a nice day.  The temperature was in the mid 50s, the wind light and the sky sunny.

I thought I'd go for a quick three mile or so ride but I ended up riding north of town and then on the way back home through the trailer park I grew up in.  It was more than an eight mile ride.

The trailer park looked about the same since I seen it last, which is to say, not the same as when my parents sold it decades ago.  It was neat to see the trees my father and I planted.  Quite a number of them are huge, especially the popular trees I planted and many of the evergreen trees my father planted and I watered.  The original shelter-belt trees that existed prior to the trailer park's existence are mostly gone, the victim of dutch elm disease.  Other trees need to be thinned now that they are large.

As I was on a mountain bike I rode over to the ponds for the sewage lagoon.  The trailer park my father built formerly was well outside the city limits and therefore the park had its own water and sewer systems.  The park is now hooked up to city water and sewer as the city is right across the street.  A street had been extended this year and almost matches up to one of the trailer park's streets.  On this street just across the road apartment complexes are currently being built.

One of the sewer lagoons is partially filled in.  Now that the only water in the lagoons comes from precipitation the water level is lower, and in one lagoon very tall cattails fill much of it.  No more ice skating on that lagoon during Winter.

The park also had it own landfill but that is now long buried and one could only tell where it had been if they had seen it when it was open. I walked over the buried pit.

Ah, memories.

The city now has built a street from 21st avenue all the way to 30th avenue.  It used to be a section line dirt road.  The new street is one and a half lanes wide each way with a full lane as a turn lane.  If the3 city wished it could turn the road into a tight four lane road in the future.  Right now it goes through hay fields.  That is changing as already a housing subdivision is being built just west of the large water tower.  Since at least the 1960s, well over 40 years, that red and white water tower has stood on a hill well outside the city's limits.  Now it is fenced off with a tall chain link fence.  No more will kids get a chance to play around its base and test their strength in trying to climb up one of the large cross cables.

Here are a few photos from a couple of winters ago prior to the new street.

Also during my bicycle ride I found a small wrench laying on the side of a road.  Score!