St. Paul by Kodiax

St. Paul by Kodiax

I went on a bike ride into downtown Saint Paul today. I was with the spouse, and he spotted a few things I didn’t, because a) he’s generally more observant than I am, and b) he’s a train/boat/plane buff.

We decided not to take the streets into downtown, partly because of the barricades put up around the Ramsey County Law Enforcement Palace on University and Lafayette that are taking up the whole right (slow) lane on University, but also because it was too damned windy today (20 mph steady, gusts over 30) to be riding safely in traffic, in our opinions. So we took the Gateway and Vento Trails most of the way into downtown. Nothing too out of the ordinary here, aside from the two low-flying helicopters patrolling the area.

The Farmers’ Market was fun, as it always is. The salient feature of the St. Paul Farmers’ Market is that most products come from within a fifty-mile radius of the market; the rest are from outstate Minnesota or western Wisconsin. The early apples are just coming into season — and they are tasty sweet! I’d already picked up some yesterday, so we didn’t get any more; we contented ourselves with some spinach and lettuce for our salad tonight. On a utility box on the Fourth Street side of the market, somebody stuck a yellow sticker meant to resemble a Yield sign. The black-lettered message read: "Welcome to St. Paul. Caution – the police have plastic bullets." Somebody else had taken a pen, crossed out the word "plastic", and written "real" underneath.


We rode off to Sawatdee on 486 Robert Street North for lunch. Note well: Saint Paul used to have a somewhat rational street system, but over the years streets were renamed and/or renumbered with great frequency, whereas the address numberings were left untouched. So, while you might expect 486 Robert Street to be between Fourth and Fifth Streets, it’s actually on the corner of Ninth Street and Robert. (Oh, and there is no Eighth Street here; there used to be, and it still exists starting a couple of blocks to the east, but from Sibley/Temperance Street on west, it was renumbered as Seventh Street and the old Seventh Street is now "Seventh Place". I have no idea why the hell this is, other than to be weird.)

We noticed a couple of dark helicopters overhead as we rode up Robert; there was also a Ramsey County Sherrif’s vehicle (surprise, surprise) parked on Sixth Street. Interestingly, while there is some car traffic on the streets that lead to and from the Xcel, the rest of downtown St. Paul is as it always is on Sundays: a ghost town. There are some streets you could literally shoot a cannonball down and not hit anything — even streets like Fourth Street, which you would expect to be busy with convention traffic.

The Sawatdee chain of Thai restaurants has a number of locations in the Twin Cities; the one in Saint Paul is their newest. Business was slow: We were the only customers at 12:30 in the afternoon. I suspect the conventioneers haven’t started trickling down here yet. Spouse had the chicken pad thai (highly recommended) and I had the lob esan with tofu (also highly recommended).

We headed back down (and we mean this literally: Saint Paul is a hilly city, much more so than Minneapolis) towards the river and got onto the bike path that parallels the river road, aka Warner Road (south of Robert Street), Shepard Road (north of Robert Street) or just plain old "The Great River Road". Spouse, being the train geek, wanted to get a good look at the spiffed-up Union Pacific passenger cars that were parked on the tracks near the river. They were probably rented by some big Republican donors who wanted to travel in style (and also serve as hotel rooms as the lodging in both downtowns is pretty close to fully booked).

At the Shepard/Jackson intersection, we met another cyclist who had just come from by the Xcel area. She said that while Shepard was still open to bike and car traffic, it looked like it was about to be shut down. This really hurts the industries in the area, as Shepard/Warner is their main artery. In fact, the railroad lift bridge that crosses the Mississippi near Robert Street had the main span pulled up, meaning that no trains could cross it. Spouse the train buff thought that this, and the extreme lack of any barge traffic, was significant: It looks like many businesses that depend on the railroad or barge traffic might be taking the week off — which is yet another reason why rescheduling the convention would be decidedly inadvisable.

But that wasn’t all. Riding under the Lafayette Bridge, my spouse stopped and pointed at a bunch of boats docked underneath it on the south side of the river. "Look at that! Look at it!"

"Look at what?"

"Look at all the Coast Guard vessels!"

"Yeah, I see them."

"There’s at least twenty of them there. They don’t need to have that many boats up here."

"Not at this time of the year?"

"Not ever. They’re here for a reason." Another Coast Guard vessel cruised by, to underline the point.

"Wanna take a picture?" I asked.

"I don’t dare," he said, his voice low. "I’d love to, but I don’t wanna get arrested." He indicated the presence of squad cars going by on the road. "I’ll risk the train cars, but not those. Let’s get moving."

So we got moving, but not before Spouse got a few quick train car pics.

We backtracked to Sibley, saw another helicopter on the way. Went through the Farmers’ Market as the vendors were tearing down for the day, then to Commercial Street and the Vento Trail, going back the way we came, kinda-sorta. Spouse showed a nice spot near the railroad tracks that he thinks would make a great spot to put an elevated walkway over the tracks, for train and plane and barge spotters. Unfortunately, the cops apparently think it’s nice, too: A couple squads in the area — an area not normally this heavily-patrolled — seemed curious as to why we were stopped where we were, so Spouse decided it was time to move on.

Up the hill, over the old railroad bridge crossing over Commercial Street, back onto the Vento Trail. Instead of going straight back the way we came, Spouse decided to take a longer route back, along Phalen Boulevard, to get onto the Gateway Trail from the northern end. We saw a cop, looking rather bored, parked under a bridge near Phalen Boulevard; we waved, and he smiled and flashed us the peace sign. We figure he hates this as much as we do.

When we finally made it home, there was a helicopter overhead. Spouse looked up at it, made eye contact with the pilot. The copter pulled away.