Today’s destination was Dutchtown and the Blessing of the Bikes at St. Anthony of Padua Parish.  Originally settled by German immigrants at the turn of the century, Dutchtown is one of many historic neighborhoods in St. Louis.  The blessing was at 10, but we didn’t arrive until 11, so no blessing for us.  We had heard about it on stlbiking.com.  In addition to St. Anthony, a restaurant, Urban Eats, was sponsoring the blessing and as it turns out was the site of it too.  One of the parish brothers had built a rather nice bike rack in front of the restaurant.  Its dedication was part of the ceremony. 

Starting out we could have used a blessing.  I had installed some new bike parts on to Anne’s bike and her chain kept skipping.  We stopped.  I made a quick adjustment and it seemed to help.  Maybe combining a Shimano derailleur with a SRAM cassette wasn’t a good idea?  Passing through the Park we saw this post’s picture, a Yellow Crowned Night Heron.  Anne thought it was a juvenile male.  Probably a friend of the son who got home late enough last night to bring in the morning paper. 😉  

We had a smoothie at Urban Eats and then set off to do their Duchtown Bike Tour.  This short tour was only three miles and consisted of tours around about half a dozen parks in the neighborhood, a so called urban arboreal wonderland.  By the time that we made it back to Urban Eats we decided to head home.

As we were passing back through Tower Grove Park (see today’s header) the annual Gay Pride Festival was just getting underway.  We stopped to look through the booths.  Today’s paper announced that Archbishop Burke is being promoted and is moving to Rome.  Burke has ruffled some feathers during his tenure in St. Louis.  I don’t think everyone will miss him.  Anyway, we got 25 miles today.