Memorial Day 2020

West Bend may have reached 80° yesterday. Different weather websites say different things, and I didn’t see anything higher than 79° first-hand. But there’s no doubt that today we went soaring past the 80° mark. If we didn’t get there yesterday, then today was the first 80° day since September 30 of last year. That’s 8 months ago, and too long from my point of view. I celebrated, of course, with a 2-hour ride during the warmest hours of the day.

Today was Memorial Day, sometimes referred to as the unofficial start of summer. In Wisconsin it’s nothing of the sort, and for proof I offer next weekend’s forecast. We might struggle just to reach 60° on Saturday and Sunday. I will wait to complain about that in its own time; this is supposed to be a day of solemn reflection on the sacrifices of America’s war dead. And here’s something else to ponder:

Someone has placed a ghost bike where the Eisenbahn State Trail meets State Highway 33. Ghost bikes typically mark the locations of vehicle-versus-bicycle crashes—usually fatal ones—and it’s news to me if there has been such a crash at that intersection. Whatever the case, it’s good to remind ourselves of the dangers inherent in what we do … not to live in fear or to create martyrs, but to mitigate those dangers.