First off, we would like to wish a happy anniversary today, to sister Jay and brother Carl. We both wish you both many happy returns. Anne and I also have our anniversary to celebrate today. Today is our 29thwedding anniversary. Yesterday, we got the best anniversary present a couple could ask for, an unexpected meeting with old friends friends that we have not seen in a while. I’m speaking of Dave and Jill, arguably the first friends that we made here in Saint Louis.
Anne and Dave worked together in the early eighties, at Environmental Science and Engineering. We would all bike together on the weekends. If I remember correctly Dave and Jill attended our first anniversary party. Work moved them away to Massachusetts. We visited them there right after the birth of their son, Sam. Eventually, we lost track of each other. They returned to Saint Louis and I remember bumping into each other in places like Fire and Ice in Kirkwood. Saturday we bumped into them in the Compton Hill Water Tower.
The Compton Hill Water Tower is a nineteenth century water tower and was open to the public. It was a water tower designed not to increase water pressure, but to moderate it. Saint Louis’ huge piston driven water system of the time was creating tremendous hammer-shocks throughout the water system. The Compton Hill Water Tower was just a larger form of the six inches of water pipe that is normally installed above a faucet. Saint Louis still has three of only seven such water towers still remaining. The other two towers look like columns and are on the north side.
The Compton Hill Water Tower was featured in the finale of the Jon Williams’ science fiction novel, Rift. In the novel Saint Louis is destroyed by a category nine earthquake. FEMA steps in and declares marshal law. Forest Park is turned into a refugee camp and Busch stadium (the old one) is turned into a prison. The climatic ending of the novel involves a face-off between the protagonists, holed up in the water tower, and a surrounding troop of Apache gunships. Not to give away too much, but cyber security really is paramount.
After the water tower we met Dave and Jill again at the CityGarden. This was Anne’s first time to view the park; we have to go back after dark. We all decamped to Sasha’s Wine Bar in Clayton, for more good conversation. I got to tell a joke that I had heard on NPR that morning: “Have you heard about the new reality TV show? It’s called Republican Governors.”
Today’s header is a result of last Friday’s fun in the sun at Johnson’s Shut-Ins, but that is another story. Did anyone notice that Anne is wearing the same halter top in the picture at the top of this post, from the first year of our marriage and also in today’s header?
And what is it all about water towers and men??
Today marks the beginning of this year’s Tour de France (96th). The big news with this year’s tour is that Lance Armstrong is back in the race again. He has recovered enough from a March bike crash that resulted in a broken collar bone, to compete in this year’s tour. Lance has his detractors (read the French), but I still like him. I saw him speak onetime when he came to Saint Louis to speak for the Siteman Cancer Center. He was at the Worlds Fair Pavilion, in October of 2003 and a bunch of Team Kaldi members and I came to hear him speak. What I remember best about the event is that halfway through his speech, he realized that his pants fly was down.
Thursday night Anne and I joined Ronnay at the Kirkwood Kaldis to hear Erin Bode, who was performing in concert. Ron is an old biking buddy, one of the ‘ons, as Dave would say. Click on over to his website to see a picture of Ron and Ms. Bode, that I took for him. Ron once organized a successful charity bike ride to help fight cancer. It also was based out of the Worlds Fair Pavilion. Boy, did it rain that day. Because of the money raised, our mutual friend Don, the other half of the ‘ons, got to represent us and got to attend Lance’s annual charity ride that year, down in Texas.
In other news, we got a letter congratulating Dave for making the Dean’s List. Way to go Dave! I’m not sure if this is the first time he made the Dean’s List or not. If it is, I guess that he his getting smarter. Maybe all that high priced education is starting to pay off?
Today is the 135th anniversary of the Eads Bridge. The Eads was Saint Louis’ first bridge across the Mississippi. The river built Saint Louis, but it was trains that built Chicago. Before the Civil War, Saint Louis was larger then Chicago. The Civil War and its aftermath starved the river trade. After the Civil War, Chicago prospered as the rail-head for western expansion. The Saint Louis city fathers took too long to bite the bullet and build a bridge across the Mississippi. Before the Arch was built the Eads Bridge was the symbol of Saint Louis.
Wednesday evening Anne left to pig out with the women that knit in public. I’ll leave it to her to explain the details. All I can say, is that it involved bacon. She brought Pig Candy as her dish to pass. Being left to my own devices, I decided to go downtown and view the CityGarden park that had just opened that day.
It being rush hour, I took the MetroLink downtown, which was a bit of an adventure in its own right. There was a ballgame that night, so the train was populated with people in red. After purchasing my ticket, I saw that there was a train already at the platform. I ran down the platform, without much hope of actually making it, but to my good fortune, one of the security guards held the door open for me and I made it.
On MetroLink you are sort of on the honor system. No one and nothing checks your ticket before boarding like on other subway systems. Instead there are roving security guards that act like train conductors. If they catch you and you don’t have a $2.25 ticket, they issue you a one-hundred dollar one. A stop or two after I got on a huge security guard got on, huge as in muscular. Did I mention that all of the guards are defacto police officers? A stylin’ young lady quickly got up and moved to the far end of the train.
I didn’t get to see the resolution of that story.
I mention earlier that I had the good fortune to have the train door held for me, well there was this other guy who after the train had been in the station for a while decided to leave the train. He got as far as his right hand that was literally holding the bag. The doors slammed shut with his plastic bag and hand outside the car. Nothing worse happened then having some of his potato chips littering the floor. At the next stop he was released. I don’t think that he appreciated the derision of his spectators, because he marched off to give the driver a piece of his mind.
I’ve talked so much about the train ride that I’ll have to get back to you all about the CityGarden. I have made a YouTube video, please watch it. It gives you a taste of the CityGarden, but it only covers the more animated exhibits. Today’s header is a shot of the Floodplain Band, a fountain that is featured at the start of my video.
I biked Thursday morning in the Park before work. It was a little bit cool, so I had to wear extra clothes. I like cool mornings. I paid my respect to all my bird friends and got eighteen miles.
The picture above, with today’s post is from a beach wedding. A beach wedding that was held on this day in 1982. Do you Kayak Women take the Grumpy Growler to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, … 
I watched the pilot for the series Virtuality. It aired on Fox last week; I watched it on Hulu this week, when I wanted to I might add. Virtuality was made by some of the creators of the successful Science Fiction TV series, Battlestar Galactica. Fox has not picked up the series, Virtuality, but instead it decided to air its pilot as a made for TV movie. My review is that as a pilot it looks like it would have been a fascinating TV series, but as a movie its ending will leave you hanging.
The storyline goes like this, as Earth is ravaged by global warming and is rapidly becoming unlivable, a small crew aboard the starship Phaeton begins its ten year mission to find a habitable planet orbiting a nearby star. The crew of twelve men and women not only have to negotiate the personal politics of the ship, but are also subjected to a Big Brother like reality TV show that is being beamed back to stricken Earth. The crew’s only sanctuary is the virtual reality module that lets them escape into their own personal fantasy worlds. However, there is bug in the virtual reality module. The bug is personified by another actor who proceeds to murder and rape the individual crew members, at least the virtual sense. The show kind of devolves into a murder mystery.
It is hard to go further without divulging too much. The crew’s quarters look like they were designed by Armani and not NASA. The exterior video cam shots still look like twentieth century NASA technology on a foggy day in space. The actor that plays the Phaeton’s captain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, also starred in another all too quickly terminated Fox series, New Amsterdam. I wonder if he is getting gun-shy of Fox. You know, he bears a striking resemblance to Lance Armstrong. I wonder if he can ride a bike?
Today’s header shows a Great Blue Heron that I saw from the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge last Sunday. The picture above shows some of that heron’s tracks in the Mississippi’s mud banks. Below is a nice picture of a Great White Egret among some yellow flowers in the Park. I biked in the Park before work and got fifteen miles. Anne biked around noon and got twenty-two miles.
