Saturday’s weather was immaculate.  It was way too nice for Saint Louis and especially for the last weekend in October, sunny and with a high of 75 °F.  So to take advantage of this weather I went biking.  Anne on the other hand elected to sit inside all day and participate in a long range planning meeting for our local school district.  More is the pity for her.  😥

So without any adult supervision for the day, I drove out to Saint Chuck to ride the Katy Trail.  I put in at the Weldon Springs trailhead, where I normally start.  It is the closest trailhead from the house.  It has been a while since I last rode the Katy.  Last time there were flood waters on the Missouri River.  This time everything was as dry as a bone.  I heard later that a red flag fire warning had been called, because of the high winds and the dry conditions.  This being Halloween weekend there was a bicycling costume party going on the Katy, called the Monster Bike Bash.  I photographed some of the costumed participants and a few of those photos appear with this post.

What with the holiday revelers and the crush of fair weather cyclists, the Katy Trail was pretty crowded.  On the way back to the car, I elected to take the Hamburg spur to get some extra miles, but to also get away from the maddening crowd.  The Hamburg Trail runs uphill from the Katy Trail to the Weldon Springs Site as in Superfund Site.  According to the informational sign at the Hamburg trailhead, during World War II Weldon Springs was an Army ordnance works.  An important adjective is omitted from this sign, that word is nuclear.  During and after the war uranium tailings were dumped at this site.  Why the so-called experts of that day did not expect radiation to leech into the groundwater is a mystery to me.  Missouri’s subsoil is as porous as a sponge.

Checking the amount of water still in my water bottle, I decided that I had enough for both the outbound and return legs of this side excursion.  I wasn’t planning on refilling at the Corps of Engineer’s visitors center, no matter what assurances were given.  The outbound leg was all uphill, some times reaching a 6% grade.  It is a pretty trail.  On the return leg I just coasted back to the river.  I got 30 miles for the day.

Dave went down to the National Mall (it is only a couple of miles from his apartment) for the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”  He had a good time.  When asked, Dave said that he was rallying to restore sanity and not fear.  He also said that it was very crowded.  The news reported nice weather for this event too.