Thank you, for your kind and sympathetic prayers on my mother’s passing. Anne and I appreciate your support. My family reads this blog, so I’m sure that they have seen the comments made to yesterday’s post. They are not on Facebook, so I’ll pass along those comments. I’m sure that they will appreciate them as much as I have. Keep us in your prayers, and thank you again.

Anne and I spent Saturday afternoon at the Tour de Grove. It was a cold, wet and windy Saturday. Too wet for me to ride, but not for Anne, but more of that later. The Tour de Grove is a relatively new event on the Saint Louis bike scene, at least compared to the more venerable Gateway Cup. Anyway, this is the first time that we have attended. Last year, this tour was held in June and it was 100°, and we begged off then. Unfortunately for the Tour de Grove, for the second year in a row, the weather did not cooperate. The races were criterions; also know as crits or city races. The course was 1.7 miles, long for a crit.

We showed up on the last lap of Kubie’s race and stayed until the pro women’s race. In between were the men, kids and hand cyclists races. I downloaded a cowbell app, you know, to cheer on the racers, but I was sadly disappointed. Even though it was entitled, More Cowbell, I felt that it needed more cowbell.

We had lunch at the HandleBar, self-described as all about beer (local), bicycles, art and a good time. Very eclectic! Their pizza was excellent. The men’s room mirror had a handlebar moustache pasted to the mirror. [iPhone picture]

ArtCrank is a touring, poster art show that coincided with the Tour de Grove. The show involved 30+ posters, each with 30 copies for sale, at $30. These bicycling themed posters made it hard to pick just one. I chose the Pee Wee Herman based, The Best Bike in the Whole World by Dan Zettwoch, for its color and detail. I offer here, either a shout-out to our tandem riding friends, or a pulse on my own morose sensibility, He Never Pedals by Brian Cummings. I wish that I had picked his instead. ArtCrank was at Atomic Cowboy, another barroom in The Grove. We met Chris and Sandy there and shared a beer.

The following paragraph, written in her own words, is Anne’s bike report for Saturday. So, all you amateur prescriptivists out there can feel free to pounce, as if you need my permission, but as to my ramblings, remember this, I have pictures of all of you and I have PhotoShop and I know how to abuse it.

With Mark’s help I installed new tires and tubes on Big Red, aka “The Tank”. Then we went to the Grove and watched fast people ride fast bikes in the rain. Afraid that didn’t really count as biking, and not wanting to break my streak, I rode 1 mile on Big Red in the drizzle. I felt cold and damp and foolish for being so compulsive about trying to ride every day this month. (The next two weekends may break the streak, as we will be out-of-state each weekend.)