Today is the one year anniversary of Anne’s bicycle accident. Last year on this day, she crashed her bike just a few houses from home and broke her pinky. Like last year, this morning started out with the MRH high school pancake breakfast. This time though we didn’t bicycle to it, but drove instead, not wanting to tempt the fates. We ended up closing the breakfast this year. Today was such a gorgeous day that we needed to get out on our bikes after all. We threw caution to the wind, threw our legs over the bar and then launched ourselves towards Forest Park.

We were pedaling by the Grand Basin when we first heard a loud-speaker blaring and then noticed a bunch of people on Art Hill. The speaker was entreating people to come up there and join them. When I heard him announce that if you showed up on a bicycle that it would be free, I was sold (Anne donated). As it turned out Barrel Roll Man and Nurses for Newborns had organized this charity event. Their motto was, “Rolling for the babies!” In addition to raising money, its purpose was to break the Guinness World Record for the most people doing either somersaults or barrel rolls at the same time, or something like that. So, we signed up for the event and then participated in it. Check out the video. It is a hoot, if I do say so myself.

We rode on taking pictures of the fall colors and generally enjoying what turned out to be an excellent day. We rode on to Humphrey’s, a bar adjoining SLU, had a beer and a snack and then headed for home. Humphrey’s was a major sponsor of the event, and was offering 50% off selected beverages and appetizers. Going there instead one of our usual haunts allowed us the opportunity to see parts of the CWE that I had not seen.

We set a new world record with 889 people. I guess that makes us World Champions. It’s not quite as great as winning the World Series, but it was certainly more participatory. Afterwards, I bumped into one of our bike buddies at the grocery store. As I was going on and on exclaiming about these events, I could almost detect a mental, if not physical eye roll. Still, it was fun and it came from out of the blue.