Anne at the Tower Grove Farmers Market

As if there is any question, Anne won. What a day! We began with a bicycle ride through Forest Park and then Tower Grove Park. Tower Grove’s farmers market was going great guns. I wish that Alice and Chris could see it now. When we took them through it before, it was only the beginning of the season and it hadn’t really got going yet then. Today, there were wall-to-wall vendors, food trucks lining the front drive and the fountain was running. Meaning that any child that could, would get themselves soaked. Kids frolicking in this ancient fountain made this morning stop seem quite magical. It was more than hot enough for a swim today.

Après ride, we did a charity event for the school district’s house, Joe’s Place. This event, was one part trivia night, one part scavenger hunt and one part tests of skills. Overall, we didn’t do that well, but we had our moment and we had fun too. Mainly, we scavenged from one venue to the next, mostly bars. Each stop had its trivia questions and its test of skill and each spot was hosted by one of the many shops in Maplewood. The highlight stop was at the tea room, where Anne successfully guessed the name of all four tea samples that we tasted. Nelson was the judge there and he was frankly amazed. No one else had done that yet. I was less successful with the beer flight tastings, but it goes further. There were two throwing games. On the first one, only one teammate could toss and I threw and only scored one point, still tying for second at the time. On the second venue both of us could toss and Anne beat me there too, at better than 2:1. To add insult to injury, I had to do the dog biscuit challenge. The idea of this game was to maneuver a dog cookie from your forehead into your mouth. I failed, but few teams succeeded. We were team #35 and when I participated only three other teams had been successful. Still, it was all a lot of fun.