Tag Archives: Biking

Achtung Liebert!

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Good Friday was a bad day at work. I came in to find that my computers were down. The computer room was 85 degrees, the machines had shut themselves down and there were three men in the room, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix things. They soon got the Liebert AC unit back online and the room cooled quickly. Their main problem was getting power back to the computers. It’s not like turning on a light bulb. This problem took all morning to fix, but by noon everything was up and running again.

Then around three I saw one of the IT guys, the computer had just paged him, there was another problem. The computer room was again warmer than it should be. It was eventually decided that the two Liebert units in the room were warring with each other. One of them thought that it was too warm and was trying to cool the room. The other one thought that it was too cold and was actually heating the room. This second unit was winning. It was eventually decided to turnoff the heater. We’ll have to wait and see what Monday brings.

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

Friday night was date night, we did dinner and a show. Dinner was at Big Sky Café, one of our faves and the show was the Rep’s last main stage production of this season, Double Indemnity. The following is the Rep’s synopsis of this play:

It is possible to commit the perfect crime? The beautiful and seductive Phyllis Nirlinger is willing to try. Aided by smitten insurance agent Walter Huff, Phyllis sets out to murder her husband and collect on a giant insurance claim. Caught in the femme fatale’s sinister web of guilt and betrayal, Huff finds himself on a deadly journey that may be more than he bargained for. Based on James M. Cain’s 1930s noir thriller, Double Indemnity is a dark and treacherous view of the power of greed and desire.

How do you feel about some sex marriage? 😉

To my mind, with all of the hubbub this week about the sanctity of marriage, Phyllis and people like her do more to torpedo that institution than all the Supreme Court decrees ever will. In the play, she takes the rap as the evil temptress, but Walter seems just as culpable. Since he also narrates, the audience is left with a more sympathetic view of him compared to her.

The play’s title comes from an important clause in the husband’s insurance policy. The insurance company offers a double payout or double indemnity for train accidents. This is a marketing ploy by the insurance company. It sounds good to the client, but since train accidents are very rare, it won’t cost the insurance company much money to write into the policy.

We went for a bike ride on Saturday. This is only the third time since her bike accident last fall that Anne has been on the bike. Except for an errant sweet gum ball, Anne’ s ride was as smooth as silk. We did happen upon an accident scene, car versus bike. It was where the bike path crosses Clayton Avenue. There were four or five police cars there and one not particularly late-model Caddy. One of the cop cars had a bicycle sticking out of its trunk. We didn’t see any cyclist, but since Barnes Hospital is just on the other side of Kingshighway, he or she might have already been carted away by then. I don’t think that there will ever be any double indemnity insurance involving bicycling, because it can be so dangerous.

Forest (Fire) Park

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Brush Fire
After the Fire
Where There Is Smoke There’s Fire
Controlled Burn
Prairie Fire


Anne and I went back to work today. Anne had spring break last week, while I took vacation. We went up to Chicago for the first half of the week, but got back home late Wednesday evening. Thursday morning dawned all too early for me to drag myself into work, but Anne made it to election judge training that day. When Friday rolled around it didn’t seem worthwhile to go into work for just one day, besides the weather was gorgeous that day, sunny with a balmy high in the seventies. I’ll probably regret taking these two vacation days come summer, but I really did enjoy the time off.

Of the four days last week in Saint Louis, I got out on my bicycle on three of them. Yesterday, was just too cold and grey to muster the initiative to go riding. Friday was certainly the pick day. The park was mobbed with visitors. There was also an event. Wind, moisture and the alignment of the stars finally coincided to allow the long-planned control burn of the prairie grass north of Steinberg Rink. Originally planned for January, weather had not permitted this event until last week. I happened upon it, while the operation was under full swing. Normally, the parks service is content to mow the park’s prairies, but lately they’ve felt the need to burn. Burning helps to eradicate invasive species. They had tried this operation last year in the Deer Lake section of the part, but wind caused them to shut down the operation prematurely. This year the weather was more cooperative and the parks service was more successful.

The Barred Owl

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Barred Owl by Dan from Work

Barred Owl by Dan from Work

My friend, Dan at work emailed me a photo of this Barred owl on Sunday morning. I processed it to fit the constraints of this blog, but fundamentally it is his photograph. The bird was squawking in a tree just outside his house in Wildwood. It really is a great shot!

I went for a bicycle ride in the park on Sunday. I perused the Forest Park owl nest, without joy. There will be no double owl header in this post, as I had hoped. There was an ice sculpturing exhibition at Steinberg Rink, but after perusing the dailies, I’ve decided that I should have flashed the subjects, which I regret that I did not. The ice would have really lit up and helped to obscure the odious background.

Belted Kingfisher and Fish

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Belted Kingfisher and Fish

Belted Kingfisher and Fish

Anne and I went bicycling in the park today. This is the second time that she has ridden and the first real ride that she has had since her accident last year. On the was back home, we swung by the owl’s nest, so that Anne could see them, they were nowhere to be seen. I suspect that with today’s wind-shift, Sarah was hunkering down in the nest.

While we were standing around, wondering where the owl was, this kingfisher showed up and hung around long enough to gobble up its freshly caught fish. We saw this bird manifest the same behavior that the woman yesterday described to me. The kingfisher would smack the fish against the tree branch, I guess to stun it. I’ve compiled some of the photos into an animated GIF, to better convey this bird’s dining process. The following sound clip was recorded earlier and is included to let you know what to listen for. Kingfishers have a very distinctive call and are easier to find and track audibly than they are visually.

Biking and Birding

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Sarah, the Great-horned Owl
Bike Wheel Shadow
Red-tailed Hawk


Saturday was an active day. First, Anne and I walked several miles in the morning. It was cold, but brilliantly clear. We stopped at Big Daddy’s Cheesecake for breakfast. We had eggs not cheesecake, so wipe that smirk off your face. On the way home, we shopped for dinner at Schnucks.

We were going to make a pasta dish with a saga cheese sauce. This is a dish that we’ve made for years, but the store was out of saga cheese. The helpful people at the cheese bar suggested a suitable substitute and we were able to amaze them by describing our planned recipe. It is dirt simple:

  • Cut the saga into bits and place in a ceramic bowl.
  • Add minced vegetables and an imperial glop of oil.
  • We’re using red bell pepper, red onion and peas.
  • Place the ceramic bowl with cheese and vegetables on top of the cooking pot for boiling the pasta.
  • Bring the water to a boil and add pasta.
  • Rotini pasta is recommended, because it holds the sauce better than a linguine would.
  • The heat from the boiling water will heat the ceramic bowl and melt the cheese and cook the vegetables.
  • After the pasta is cooked, drain water and mix with cheese and vegetables in the ceramic bowl and serve.

Having done our shopping by foot will make this a car free day. We are just so fricking green. I checked the mail after we got home and there was a solicitation from one of the local Toyota dealers. They made an offer to buy our Prius. They offered $20K. We had paid $26K for it new, almost two years ago. I figure that if this pitch is not just a total scam, which it almost certainly is, they have to be planning on reselling our car for almost list again.

Anne thought that this whole idea was rather stupid, because if we sold the Prius, we would just have to turn around again and buy another car. Then she had an epiphany. What if we bait-and-switched the used car dealer instead of letting them do the same to us? Instead of selling the two-year-old Prius, why not sell them the twenty-year-old Prizm. It’s sort of a Toyota. The first three letters are both the same and instead of a car that would be hard to part with, because it is all about ‘us’, why not a car with some zoom in it? We’ll entertain $20K or best offer. 😉

I went for a bike ride in the park this afternoon. I had done some Internet research and had a pretty good idea of where to find the Forest Park owls. I found one, Sarah, on the nest. I woke her up and she eventually retreated further into the tree trunk. The pictured shot show her kind of half awake. I never could find Charles, but I hear that he is still around. This pair has been nesting in the park for seven years now.

Later I spoke with a woman who was busy looking at something with binoculars. She had seen a kingfisher, who had a fish. It had been beating the fish against the branch. It must have flown off by the time I arrived. Later, I saw the Red-tailed hawk in the same tree as the kingfisher was in. Earlier in the day, during our morning walk, Anne pointed out a mated pair of Red-tails lazily circling high above us.