Monthly Archives: August 2011

Crepuscular Rays

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Crepuscular rays are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from a single point in the sky. These rays stream through gaps in the clouds and appear as columns of sunlit air separated by shadowed regions. Their name comes from their frequent occurrences during crepuscular hours, around dawn and dusk, when shadows are most prevalent. Anne took this picture while she was at the cabin this summer. Jay dubbed them crepuscular rays, but Anne preferred to call them “Come to Jesus” rays.

Amanda, a CalArts MFA student, flew in from LA today. She is going to spend a week in Saint Louis and then fly back to LA when Dan returns there too. The weather turned warm again today and is expected to hit a hundred tomorrow. So you can’t say that we’re not giving her a warm Saint Louis welcome, well, maybe too warm. The house’s air-conditioner broke down yesterday and in anticipation of today’s forecast I called a repairman up last night and got it fixed, albeit for a hefty price. It turned out that a capacitor had gone bad, but the repairman had one in his truck and quickly fixed it.

While I was messing with the air-conditioner, Anne and Joanie went to go see a prescreening of the spy-thriller, “The Debt”. Starring Helen Mirren, she plays a retired Israeli Mossad agent who had famously tracked down a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin, or had she really? Either because of the movie’s subject matter, or simply to prevent piracy, all bags were searched upon entry to the theater. The film opens in theaters on Friday. Anne liked the movie and recommends it.

Della Walker Residence

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The two photos with this post are courtesy of Chris and his camera. They show the Della Walker residence in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Described as a cabin on the rocks, it was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1951, for $125,000. If you haven’t seen it as you’ve driven down the coast, you may have seen it in the 1959 movie, “A Summer Place”. Distinguished by its stone terrace that juts out into Carmel Bay, the large stone chimney/fireplace and the blue metal cantilevered roof, and the bank of windows, the house is the only building on the ocean side of Ocean Ave. in Carmel. Chris shot these two photos, Monday night at sundown. He used his new Canon 5D to shoot the pictures in high-dynamic range. Chris has allowed RegenAxe a limited time exclusive on these photos. Eventually, he’ll post them to his Flickr website, which can be found, linked to in the sidebar. Also, Chris has entered a photo contest in Monterey. He had four of his Monterey area photos printed up and framed for entries. He hopes to hear good news this week.

New Links

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In less than a couple of week, Anne and I are going to participate in the 2011 MS-150 bicycling ride/challenge. We have trained for this event all year, including riding 506 miles in Michigan in nine days. The weekend after Labor Day, we will ride 150 miles in two days. We would appreciate your sponsoring donations. The links to Anne’s and my individual donation pages can be found below and also on the righthand side of this page in the sidebar. This is our only fundraising charity event, so your help would be appreciated.

Dan has updated his website, which is linked to here and below in the blogroll. He has added four new art projects to his website. They are listed below, check them out:

  • Running Away From Responsibility On The Super Hammock
  • The Regret of the Personified Inanimate When Confronted With an Approximation of an Alternative
  • Broadcast Towering
  • The Implemented Particularism Project (in Progress)

After yesterday’s bike ride and bike party, I was too tired to give much attention to describing the Tour de Wildwood, which was a pity. As I mentioned yesterday, it was a very hilly ride. I learned today, from Dan at work, one of the denizens of Wildwood, that at least by area, Wildwood is the third largest city in Missouri, just after Kansas City and Saint Louis. Some of the hills that we climbed have names, like Ossenfort, which routinely makes the list of the top ten hills in Saint Louis. Others prefer to remain anonymous. I found the two toughest hills to be a short little wall of a climb, at the very beginning of the ride. It was quite the wakeup hill. Last year, Anne ended up walking it, but not this year. The most challenging hill was the second from the last. It climbed Woods Road. It was a wooded, windy road, not particularly steep, but long and very beautiful. I want to do it again.

Anne was in the third grade today She introduced herself as Ms. Regenstreif, but also offered the kids the opportunity to call her Ms. R, because that is the first letter of her last name. One smart, young girl suggested, Ms. Rock’n Roll. Go to the head of the class!

We have house guests tonight. Cait, a classmate and friend of Dave’s from Rochester and her friend Brant. They arrived today from NY and are headed to Denver tomorrow. Cait is starting graduate school at UC Irvine in Criminal Psychology. Like ships in the night.

Anne took the picture with this post. It is from the cabin and not some other worldly sphere. The double sun is caused by refraction from the cabin’s triple-pane glass.

Packet Pickup Party Potluck

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Team Kaldi’s had their packet pickup party tonight. The packets to be picked up were for this years up coming MS-150 bicycle ride. The packets included a T-shirt, rider numbers and information for the MS-150. Distribution of said items could have been easily accomplished through the mail, but why not throw a party instead. The team has grown to such a size that the packet pickup party has outgrown all of our team member’s houses and some of our team members have some pretty big houses. This year’s party was held at Kaldi’s roasting house. It is a coffee factory in one of the factory districts in town, but on a Sunday evening it made for a great venue. Anne and I participated in the distribution of the packets, in-between potluck eating and plain old partying. About the couple’s photos, I asked each couple if I could take their photo. I gave them time to pose and then I shot the picture. Guys, the girls rule in these photos, that is as it should be, but you guys could have tried a little bit harder. Girls can rule, but guys don’t have to drool. There are a couple of photos in this mix from Sunday morning’s Tour de Wildwood. Wildwood is the newest, western most, and one of the toniest of Saint Louis County’s municipalities. Wildwood pulled out the stops to support this ride, from high school students manning the registration tables to a comprehensive police presence on the road. Then there were the hills. There were fabulous hills on this ride, there were grueling hills on this ride and then there were these fabulously grueling hills that almost made you wish that they would never end and then they almost didn’t. We got 28 miles.

Festival of Nations

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Earlier this month Anne and I completed an epic, nine-day, 500 mile, bicycle ride. You might have heard me mention it once or twice before. What has not been mentioned during the subsequent twelve days is our complete lack of bicycling, at least that is until today. If we had been smart about it, we would have biked in the morning, when it was still relatively cool, but no, we launched at high noon. Mark asked, “Is it hot enough for you, dear?” Anne replied, “That question is just so not cool.” 😉

Anyway, off we went. We rolled through the Park, accompanied by the muffled melodies of Loufest, a music festival that is ongoing this weekend. We passed the botanical gardens, as we rode up Tower Grove Ave. Two cyclists were assaulted by a group of six to ten men at this spot the other night, but that was night and this was day. We passed many other cyclists, including whole families on bikes. It felt very safe.

Our destination was Tower Grove Park and the Festival of Nations. This is the third year in a row that we have attended this festival and it has always been hot in the past, so it shouldn’t really come as too much of a surprise that it was hot again this year too. The Festival of Nations has three main attractions, food, shopping and musical acts. Because of the heat, it didn’t seem as though we did much at the festival, but here is my report.

We strolled up the food aisle first. I bought a pair of Cajun lemonades. They really hit the spot. They were almost too big to carry. Anne eventually had some Thai food, primarily because the lines were short. We bumped into Jim and Diana and spoke with them for a while. Next, we window shopped the ethic arts and crafts aisle. The group that impressed us the most was Cobu. Cobu is from New York City. Yako Miyamoto, the founder of Cobu is a member of STOMP, which we really love. Cobu combines elements of the Japanese traditional Taiko drumming with rhythmic Tap dancing. I love Cobu’s motto, “Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing”.

On the way home, we were passed by this guy on a motorized bicycle. We were going uphill when he passed us. I accused him of cheating. We caught him at the next light and he admitted feeling a little guilty about passing us. He seemed friendly enough. He killed his engine at the light, I guess to save gas. He told us that it easily push started again, at only 5 MPH. We got 16 miles.

Dan’s Back in Town

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5400 miles, that was the mileage on the Prius when Dan returned to Saint Louis today. Most of those miles were put on when Anne, Jay and Carl sojourned up to the cabin, but Dan’s double trips from Saugatuck to Saint Louis added a few more too. Anyway, both Dan and the Prius made it back to town intact. All of the traveled miles were not entirely sanctioned though, at least by me. Dan drove the Prius to downtown Detroit and played soccer on the field where the old Tiger stadium once stood. He broke his glasses while playing soccer and the next day found a nail in a tire. He ended up super gluing his glasses together and then bought a new tire. I am still not entirely pleased.

Dan’s art projects, as featured in the pictures with this post included a wood model of the boat, Keewatin, at least the front third of it, the part that was disconnected to fit through the Welland Canal, and then some sort of war of the worlds, old-time radio on stilt legs piece and his Vans. Pictured are an after art camp shoe and a new shoe. Dan also modeled his art camp T-shirt, “Camp Life”. He designed the lettering. We went to Dewey’s Pizza for dinner in Webster Groves. My now former co-worker Barbara had been egging me on to go eat there for some months. It was only after eating at the Webster Grove location that I realized that I had already dined at the U-City version of Dewey’s several times before.