Last day in Duluth, and the weather couldn't be better! In the forties with sheets of rain and huge winds! Loving it!!!
...when the winds of November come early (in April)...
Sherry is bundled up and staring moodily, probably because she's had a hard morning in the hot tub. It's placed in the open air on the roof of the hotel, and with the bitter winds, the water has to be actually hot, which it wasn't, plus people at a HUD convention in the next room were staring.
Surfing bird:
And the trashmen. Note the nasty beer cans in amongst the lake litter. Why can't people JUST PICK UP AFTER THEMSELVES? Sher and I usually bring a plastic bag along for just such occurrences, but today we forgot.
There's a thriving surf scene in Duluth - today a surfer waits hopefully for the wild waves (note preceding video) to get a little more rideable.
Get your (almost) live 2 minute Superior wave experience here! (Here's what the surfers are worried about.)
Now we are leaving the hills and cliffs of Duluth, sadly. I love the ocean, easily reachable from where I live in Brooklyn, in fact, Kingsborough where I teach is on the ocean, but there is something about Lake Superior impossible to find anywhere else. The clarity of the water, the moods from absolute stillness where the horizon and sky merge as one, to what we see today...the colors, the refractive clearness of the air - what's a little bad weather now and then? Okay, a lot of bad weather, long, cold winters, ice on the steep streets, interminably slow springs...but then there are those three days of beautiful summer weather! Come on!
I don't think of this as bad weather, to paraphrase Tyra Banks: it's fierce. I grew up here, it's in my blood.
On through the saturated fields and woods of North Central Wisconsin:
I've never seen such a wet spring, all the land in the Midwest full up with water, flooding everywhere. The farmers are no doubt getting a little frantic to get on their John Deeres and Allis Chalmers and get out into the fields. Well I remember my farming days of mud and manure and constant worry over the next natural (or otherwise) disaster. Will the cows get hit by lightning? Will it rain on our hay? Will the tractor fall apart? All these things of course did happen. And so many, many more...
Even my brother's normally dry back yard is currently a wetland.
Back on the plane, rising over the city they call the Mini-Apple, here seen in the mist:
and home again, home again where the weather is still gloomy and wet. Here is the Big One, lurking moodily on the horizon:
And through a scrim of spring trees:
I've gone from bridge to bridge, Duluth Aerial with its ups and downs...
And the one in Brooklyn, for sale...
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