Category Archives: Team Kaldis

Bridge Birthday Bash

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Dandelions at Night

Dandelions at Night

Saturday night, we made it to the botanical gardens for the second iteration of the Chinese lantern festival. I liked these dandelion sculptures when I first saw them during the day, but they are positively glowing at night. We both took plenty of photographs at the festival, so expect to see more of them.

Today was another big bike riding day, with Trailnet’s Bridge Birthday Bash, held at the old Chain of Rocks Bridge. We did the long route for 53 miles. I am finally beginning to believe that we will be able to do our big Michigan bicycle ride this summer, without dying. The Mississippi River is in full flood, but we crossed it, twice. A number of the trails along the river were flooded, but we were able to detour around them. It rained and we got wet, but we persevered. At ten minutes to three, we were the last two riders to finish, but we finished and Anne is happy, so I’m happy too. It’s just that my butt isn’t very happy right now, but it will get over it.

I Smell Bacon!

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Sea Urchin Shell

Sea Urchin Shell

Raymore-Peculiar School District is looking for a teacher. Raymore is way too far away for Anne to seriously consider, but with a name like that it certainly gets noticed. You know that the kids there must be calling the school district, “Way More Peculiar!” I mean I would, wouldn’t you?

Last night, we attended a Team Kaldi’s potluck at Captains Stew and Nancy’s house, which is really quite gorgeous, I must say. This was a planning potluck and two representatives from the MS Society were there to field our questions. This year’s MS-150 is being moved from its longtime residence in Columbia, MO, to Godfrey, IL. The county fair grounds in Columbia was closing, so we were forced to leave. This September’s ride will be based out of Lewis and Clark Community College, which is now situated on the grounds of what was once a hundred year old private girls school. Big new plusses include real showers and a pool. In the minus column though, are some of the camping and tent logistics that still need to be refined, but I’m confident that all will be worked out in time.

Another aspect of last night’s party were the walking wounded. Both Stew and Nancy are still recovering from their tandem crash in this year’s Texas Hill Country ride. They are both recovering, but I think that their bike is toast. But, guest Tim took first place. He had just crashed within the week and had great road rash, a lot of it on his face. On his left side he is still a rather handsome young man, but on his right, he looks like the Batman villain, Two-Face.

The Gang of Six

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Carmines Gang of Six Header

Carmines Gang of Six Header

This photo shows brothers Jim and John, me, Anne, DJ and Don at Carmines restaurant near Times Square. We had just this day ridden the 5 boroughs ride. It had rained all day, the bike traffic had been horrible. After all, the ride included Jim and John, me, Anne, DJ and Don and 40,000 of our closest NYC friends. To top it off, Anne had contracted one of her kid crud colds, at the height of the SARS scare. This was back in 2009. It was fun visiting NYC and doing the ride enabled us to see more of NYC then we would have been able to see otherwise. This dinner turned out to be a surprise birthday party for Anne. This is another one of the hundreds of one day only headers that I am only now resurrecting.

Chance Meeting in the Park

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Captain Don, DJ and Anne

Captain Don, DJ and Anne

A chance meeting with Captain Don and DJ turned a rather ho-hum ride in the park into something more exciting. And yes all four of us were wearing the latest Team Kaldi’s jersey, including me, your intrepid photographer. They had ridden to the Arch and reported back that the Arch grounds are hopelessly torn up. We had just circled the park and were headed around again, when they crossed-our-T at Pine. Crossing-the-T is a naval term. They were easy to spot, with their matching jerseys, but after vainly trying to hail them, we gave chase and rode down the unsuspecting pair. We ended up riding back to the De Mun Kaldi’s with them, where we enjoyed caffeinated beverages on the patio. We even got our 10% Kaldi’s jersey discount. Don decided to ride home alone. We accompanied him as far as our house and then bade him farewell. It was almost too much serendipity, even for such a delightful Sunday afternoon.

White Chrysanthemum

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White Chrysanthemum

White Chrysanthemum

We went to the art museum Friday night, to see the new George Caleb Bingham show there, which is free on Friday. More on that later. The pictured flower is from another show there, a special this weekend only flower arranging show at the Slammer, Art in Bloom. Afterwards we went to the Olympia for gyros and saganaki flaming cheese, OPAH!

On Saturday morning we started another one of our epic de-cluttering adventures, what other people do as a lifestyle choice we do as slash and burn urban renewal. We are having our living room and dining room re-plastered. So everything in those rooms must go. Today was our first crack at it. Yes, that pun was intended. It got up into the high sixties today, I pumped up the tires and we went biking for the first time in I cannot remember. It was great!

Tonight is all about Trailnet’s annual chili party, Bikes, Beans and Brews. This year’s event was held at a new venue, at T-Rex, downtown on Washington. It is an embryonic business incubator that has a fifth floor, which served as are party’s environment. The most notorious business in this incubator is Invisible Girlfriend / Boyfriend. This tech startup offers a service that allows the subscriber to have a fake online relationship. It made quite the news splash earlier this year, “Ma, I have a girlfriend now, now get off my back.” I was unaware until tonight that this business was based here in Saint Louis.

We took MetroLink to the party. We hooked-up with some other party goers on the way downtown and made sure to leave the party with them too. We made quite the ‘biker gang’, but I don’t think that any of this behavior would have been necessary before Ferguson.

Knit Wit

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Anne in a Brimmer

Anne in a Brimmer

Anne had been one very busy knitter this year. She has knit fourteen hats, including four Jayne’s hats (from the Firefly TV series), plus two cowls and a scarf. Seven of the hats she made under contract. She knitted each of a those hats in return for MS-150 donations. FOX, none of those were Jayne’s hats! At the rate she is going, with all the hats that she has already knitted, she will have a very large amount of donated money to pledge this year to help fight Multiple Sclerosis. The brimmed hat she is seen styling here was one of those contract hats. She has promised to write a blog post about all of her knitting, so not wanting to steal all of her thunder, I better cut it off here.