Ode to Joy

Knights That Say Nerf

Knights That Say Nerf

Tonight, I was driving home from Schnucks. I had the windows open and Prairie Home Companion on the radio. It was becoming a beautiful evening at the end of a beautiful day. The Goshen College Chamber Choir was singing Beethoven’s Fourth Movement, from his Symphony No. 9, the Ode to Joy. I became enraptured by the music and kept cranking up the volume, trying to match my increasing sense of joy, with more sound. As I zoomed home, I felt benighted, bringing joy and culture to the masses, but it probably just sounded like “boom-bam-boom-boom…” to them, like everyone else’s too loud car stereo does. Still, it was a nice way to cap off a perfect day.

Our original plan was to do Trailnet’s “The Art of Riding” tour, which launched from Crown Candy Kitchen at ten, but we were a little slow off the mark this morning and didn’t launch until 12:34 or 1, 2, 3, 4. We ended up just riding in the park instead. Our first stop was with the knights that say Nerf. They graciously posed for me and then on cue, charged the camera. We circled the park, taking lots of pictures of the many birds that we saw there. After that, we ran into a wagon train. Pictured is the lead wagon. I asked the wagon master what was the parade all about and got the answer, “Derby Day”. Four horse-drawn wagons full of men in straw hats and women in colorful floppy ones passed us by. I’m not sure where their parade was heading, but my money was on the Microbrew festival that was being held over by the Muny. I wonder how many of them bet on the favorite, American Pharaoh, to win. Lunch was up next. We ate at a new to us place called the Kitchen Sink. It is located just north of the park on Union and is one of the Post’s 100 best restaurants. We split a sandwich, a BLT topped with salmon sauce that is called “The LP”. I don’t know why it is called that, but it was good. It came with homemade chips and a beer batter cheese sauce for dipping. We topped the meal off with a slice of blueberry cheesecake and then headed for home.

Derby Day

Derby Day

2015 Tweed Ride

We did the tweed ride. This is a ride where everyone hides their spandex and wears dry clean only cycle wear. In 2013, the emphasis was on art, this time it was all about history, in particular the local history of the Tower Grove South neighborhood. Michael from WashU was our visiting professor. The ride began and ended at the London Tea Room on Morgan Ford. Anne and I will definitely have to go back there. The actual ride was only five miles, but with five stops it still lasted a while. The photos show a few of the forty-some participants.

Trailnet’s Bike Swap Meet

Pee Wee Herman's Bicycle

Pee Wee Herman’s Bicycle

Breaking news folks, winter happens in January! The news media is in apoplectic overload as storm Juno simultaneously bears down upon both the Big Apple and Bean Town. Gone are all of the archaic terminology that was once used to sensationalize winter weather. The polar vortex is like so last year. #Snowmageddon? Please! This year’s new term of art to describe imminent meteorological disaster is bombogenesis, an extreme storm formation, often characterized by a sudden barometric pressure drop of 24 millibars in a 24 hour period. It even sounds scary!

On Sunday, Anne and I once again traveled across the river in order to attend Trailnet’s Bike Swap Meet. Being the guy who has everything, at least bike related, I didn’t buy anything, but Anne got some more bike clothes. We also got some ideas for mini-bicycling vacations this year. One that sounded rather interesting was the Tri-State tour. It starts in Indiana and ends in Wisconsin and travels the length of Chicago’s waterfront, 85 miles in one day. It should be pretty flat and hopefully with a tailwind too.

Pictured is a reproduction of The Best Bike in the Whole World, the Pee-Wee Herman bicycle that was prominently featured in his movie, Pee-Wee’s Great Adventure. In his movie the eccentric man-child, Pee-Wee Herman, embarks on the big adventure of his life and travels across the US, as he sets out to find his beloved bike, when it was stolen in broad daylight. Previously, I’ve blogged about this bike and the Dan Zettwoch poster of it that I purchased at Art Crank / Cranks-Giving. Follow the above link to view the poster. It will annotate all of the gadgets that are on the bike. Since it has lots of detail in it, I’ve posted this photograph at a larger than normal size, so click on it to see it all. This was my favorite bicycle at this year’s bike swap meet.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?

Part of Anne's 15 Minutes of Fame

Part of Anne’s 15 Minutes of Fame

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An’ if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know
– The Clash

It turns out that this old Clash song summed up my day. In the end, I stayed, at least for today. I’m scheduled to go tomorrow. I have two twelve-hour shifts scheduled, one for Saturday and the other for Sunday. The good news is that I should still be able to meet Jay and Carl for the Mariners-Tigers baseball game on Saturday night. I’ll miss batting practice though and have to pickup my ticket at will call. Niner-niner, wilco, over and out.

Today’s photo was snarfed off of Facebook. It shows Anne leading the pack at last year’s art museum ride. Trailnet had taken it and posted it to announce this year’s ride. Maybe she’ll reprise her role in this roll and participate again in this ride this weekend? This was last year’s tweed ride, but now it is too warm to ride and wear wool. I would participate, but I can’t, otherwise I would.

Wait! What About the Lawn?

Rolling Past the Corn Fields

Rolling Past the Corn Fields

I really have no good excuse for not mowing the lawn this weekend. I know why I didn’t mow the lawn. It was because I was out bicycling with my baby all weekend, but that’s not a good excuse. The weather has been so cool and comfortable that I can’t claim that it was too hot to mow the lawn and then go out and ride all day. If it had been hot, then that would have been fine. You can’t mow the lawn when it’s too hot. It’s just not healthy. Now I’ll have to find time after work this week to mow the lawn. Otherwise, I’ll be the shame of the block, the guy with a biker’s lawn.

There we are the two of us, unabashedly biking down the road and we’re happy too. Today we were in Illinois, rehearsing for our auditions in Sauget as Chip and Seal Dancers. At times some quick footwork was called for as we danced along the rough farm roads on our pedals. What drew us across the Father of Waters into the Land of Lincoln? Why the 30th annual Saint Jacob’s Strawberry Festival and its complementary Trailnet Berry Ride. Après ride Anne and I was wondering if we could have been at the first Strawberry Festival. Any ride then would have been organized by Touring Cyclist and not Trailnet. In May of 1984 Anne would have still been without child and we were doing a lot of the Touring Cyclist rides then. We were biking a lot with Bob and Nink then. We’ll have to ask them if they remember any better than us.

According to a farm report that I heard last week 70% of the Illinois corn crop has been planted. You couldn’t tell that looking at the background fields in the above photo. In-between corn fields, planted or not, we rode past the occasional palatial estate. There was one that was by far the most ostentatious. It had a cobblestone (not cut) gate house, a roadside decorative pond, with accompanying cobblestone cabana. But what really set the place off I could only glimpse through the shielding trees. At first I thought that it was a lighthouse, but what purpose a lighthouse could serve in central Illinois I would not dare to venture. Rounding the corner, we got a better view of the back of the property, which included a cobblestone control tower. Notice below the landing lights in the photograph. However, this ‘runway’ was rather narrow and had a rather close tree line along one side, not ideal landing conditions. I suspect that this estate is the dream of some retired air force general, from Scott AFB.

Stone-Ground Corn Field Control Tower

Stone-Ground Corn Field Control Tower