Lafayette Square – Bike Racing Under the Lights at Night

It’s the weekend and a holiday weekend at that. Labor Day weekend is always a big bicycling weekend for us. The annual Gateway Cup races our ongoing all weekend and next weekend is our MS-150 charity ride. So we end up riding a lot, trying to get some last minute training in and watch other better faster riders go past us. Friday night the races kicked-off around Lafayette Square. Fellow Team Kaldi’s riders Tom and Audrey held a meet up on their front lawn to watch the races. The racers circle Lafayette Park, which is the city’s oldest public park. The neighborhood is one of the oldest in Saint Louis and is home to many nineteen century row houses. The neighborhood also has many shops and restaurants. We dined at a new restaurant, just off the square, Tripel Brasserie, a Belgium restaurant. Tripel is a term used in the Low Countries to describe strong pale ales. I had steak tartar. Only they didn’t cook it? Anne had tuna niçoise, think tuna salad. We were joined by Kaldi’s teammates, Captain Don, DJ, Chris, Sandy and Dennis. It was too hot to enjoy the races for long. The high was 102 °F, a new record. Every time the peloton passed us by there was a moment or two of respite, from the breeze of the hundred riders traveling at twenty MPH. We also bumped in to the Fords from school. It turns out that they vacation at the Brimley State Park. Anne invited them to the cabin next summer.

We launched relatively early this morning, trying to beat today’s heat. We only went as far as Café Ventana, another bike friendly eatery near SLU. Thoughts of continuing on to the river to see the new Stan Musial bridge wilted under the building heat. It’s another hot one. We stopped off at the art museum and Anne got her first chance to see the new wing. By the time we returned to our cool dry basement, a certain measure of crankiness had seeped into our little peloton. This heat wave is supposed to start breaking starting tomorrow.