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.