Tag Archives: Trailnet

Strawberry Fields Forever

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Girl, Don't Even Think It

Girl, Don’t Even Think It

Another day in the sun means another Trailnet bike ride. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Leaving the environs of the Lou, we loaded the bikes onto the back of the car and trundled across the Mississippi to the Land of Lincoln; also know as the land of chip and seal, think rough chatter-bump pavement. Our objective for the day was the little burg of St. Jacob, which was holding its annual strawberry festival. Trailnet with its Berry Bicycle Ride brings hundreds of hungry cyclists into this tiny town boosting its festival’s attendance numbers and fundraising dollars.

Lately, Anne and I have been doing more of Trailnet’s Community rides, like yesterday’s The Art of Riding. These community rides are newer, smaller, shorter and free. They also generally occur close enough to home that we don’t have to transport ourselves and our bikes by car. The Berry ride is a little different. It is one of Trailnet’s Bicycle Fun Club events. It is a venerable ride and like most Fun Club rides attracts a large crowd. Trailnet is celebrating its 25th anniversary and the strawberry ride has been around since the beginning.

The Bicycle Fun Club was the creation of Tom Yarbrough, who helped found this style of group rides in Saint Louis during the late 1970s, when he was the manager of the Richmond Heights Touring Cyclist store. Later, Tom created the Fun Club under the Trailnet umbrella and continued some of his more offbeat rides, as an offshoot to the more conventional bike rides that Trailnet was already operating. I rode Tom’s last RAGBRAI and Tour of Herman. Tom passed away from lung cancer shortly afterwards. Trailnet continues to popularize the Bicycle Fun Club. It makes for a fond fun remembrance.

That’s enough rolling down memory lane; let’s get back to today’s ride. We got there early enough to see some Kaldi team members already riding out. We got registered ourselves and set off. Things were going well until Anne decided to stop and take off her Dancing Crane cap that she was wearing under her bicycle helmet. She neglected to unclip and ended up doing the captain and went down with the ship. The bike landed derailleur side up, so it was OK. Anne got a few scrapes, so she was mostly OK. No really, she’s OK and no she didn’t crash just to supply me blog fodder, bloody blog fodder I might say.

We decided then to cut our losses and elected to take the short route back, instead of any of the other longer ones. We were rewarded for this decision at the finish with strawberry shortcake à la mode, no long lines to wait for same and the company of many venerable Kaldi friends, not necessarily in that order. While we were enjoying our repast, a country-western band performed many much-loved standards. At one point they took a break and delivered some tragic news, “We regret to announce the passing of the youth, from the body of our dear friend […] on his fiftieth birthday.” Ah yes fifty, I remember it well.

Bicycling as Performance Art

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Gathered Around the Mirrored Sphere at the Kemper
Two Tweed Cyclists
Five Tweed Riders at the Pulitzer
Three Tweed Riders


Today Anne and I participated in our first organized bicycle ride of the season. This was one of Trailnet’s community rides, the Art and Tweed Ride. Trailnet sponsors two types of rides, their Fun Club rides, which are all about the miles and going fast and lots of spandex. Their first Fun Club ride is tomorrow and we’ll try to make that one too. Their community rides are different. First, they are free. They are also smaller and more off beat and they usually also include a theme. Today’s ride had two themes, both of them art related. We toured five art museums, the list is below. We also performed art, by donning costumes made of wool and tweed, and dressed in the finest of knickers and caps we rode about town, inspired by English society. We wore spandex, but kept it under wraps.

  • Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
  • Saint Louis Art Museum
  • Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis
  • The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
  • World Chess Hall of Fame

The ride began and ended at the Kemper, where we were treated to a tour of the Georges Braque exhibit, which ends this month. Braque was a contemporary and friend of Picasso and a fellow Cubist painter. He has never been as famous as Picasso. Picasso is on exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute, while the Kemper is Washington University’s art museum. Braque was never as flamboyant as Picasso and he stayed married. He also died much earlier, during World War II.

Our next stop was the slammer, the Saint Louis Art Museum. We climbed art hill and were met at the bicycle racks by our guide. We never actually made it into this art museum. Maybe they were worried about sweaty bicyclist stinking up their museum. Don’t they know that wool absorbs sweat? The real reason was that we did not have time to go in. Instead we were led outside to its new wing, which is scheduled to open in June. The new wing will be dedicated to contemporary art and of course, free to all.

The Pulitzer and the Contemporary Art Museum adjoin each other, so I’ll count these two as one long stop. The main exhibit at the Pulitzer was the PROGRESS of LOVE, by Tamara H. Schenkenberg. This extensive exhibit revolves around a single letter, a breakup letter. It looked interesting, but we only had twenty minutes there, so it was hard to take it all in. The exhibit at the Contemporary was Jeremy Deller’s Joy in People. This show was a collected works piece, very British and very political, pro-Labor, anti-Tory. As an aside, we all know that Margaret Thatcher died this week. She was instrumental in the closing of many British mines. This was a big theme in Deller’s show. Every Saturday night BBC plays the highest selling song that week in Britain. This week’s winning song is Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, from the Wizard of Oz.

Our final stop was the Chess Hall of Fame. Here the main exhibit was Bill Smith’s Beyond the Humanities. His works are delicate sculptures that involve lots of thin wire and faint colored lights. They are best viewed in the dark. Most of the tour was watching the show’s signature piece in pitch black darkness, when a crash and the breaking of glass was heard. The museum’s guide quickly switched on the lights and there in the corner, on the floor was one of his other pieces. Whoops! We departed the tour here and went to a new Lebanese restaurant in the CWE for lunch. I declined the hookah and had a beer instead.

Bike to my Lou, my Darlin’

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This is not some slodgy old Saturday post and I don’t mean that magazine. We rode out to face life, grabbed it with both hands and then held on with all our might. Trailnet’s group rides are not scheduled to start for another two weeks, but they did today. This season’s inaugural ride was entitled, “Bike to my Lou”, hence my original title.

“Bike to my Lou” began and ended at the Old Post Office Plaza. We rode the ‘long’ route, which was 16 miles. It was a mass start, no drop ride. It was family friendly. Griffin’s bike messenger/pizza delivery crew led the ride. They were emboldened by police backup. Basically, we ruled the road.

We toured downtown, sweeping to and fro through the city center. We ventured as far south as Soulard and then headed west to Lafayette Park. I saw Audrey in her front yard. Heading north, we made it to Crown Candy and the old north side. Afterwards, we cruised west to Grand, before returning to the start.

One of the advantages of Trailnet’s community rides is that you get to see parts of the city you wouldn’t normally see. In the last twenty years, I’ve only seen Crown Candy on these rides. Saint Stanislaus, the rebel parish, was on our route. One of the messengers pointed out a fallen down building, as a Paul McKee property (near North 20th and Saint Louis Ave.), the so-called ‘savior of the north side’. Between Saint Stanislaus, the Catholic Church and Paul McKee there are some shady land deals going down.

Riding together and staying together offered more opportunity for conversation than the normal Fun Club ride in rural Illinois. Anne and I had our fair share of conversations, but we also overheard a few too. Anne was speaking to a woman, who said that she had never been up in the Arch. The US Park’s ranger on Anne’s other ear gasped in surprise. The woman had to apologize that she had only been in town for two weeks. Passing along the foot of the Arch, a young woman called out to her significant, “I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!” I mentioned that I was listening. She detailed the Alex, “Fatal Attraction” connection to her quote. I increased my cadence. A man asked his other, why had she shed her sweater? She said to better air out the arm pits. I redoubled my effort.

Wiki has this song originating in the early American western expansion. Eastern Protestants frowned on dancing. Skipping became a way to dodge their prohibitions. Wiki has lou as an Americanization of the Scottish word loo, which means love. I like that Saint Luv. We got 38 miles today and I’m beginning to feel them. Here is a great performance of the original song, followed by my lyrics.

Bike, bike, bike to my Lou,
Bike, bike, bike to my Lou,
Bike, bike, bike to my Lou,
Bike to my Lou, my darlin’.

Alvin Ailey Dance Company

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Joanie and I [Anne] saw the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Saturday night. They were, as always, awesome. This photo, swiped from the program, shows the power of the dancers. One of the dances was “Revelations”, their signature piece since 1960. There is some discussion about whether the popularity of this piece prevents other more recent pieces from getting their due, but I’m glad we got the chance to see it again. The Fox Theatre was packed, with people all the way to the highest seats in the balcony. At intermission we saw two little girls in party dresses sharing one of the throne chairs in the hall.  One was black, and one white. So cute, but I didn’t snap their picture, because I didn’t know them.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, recognized by U.S. Congressional resolution as a vital American “Cultural Ambassador to the World,” has performed for over 23 million people in 48 states and in 71 countries on 6 continents, celebrating the African-American cultural experience and the American modern dance tradition. Ailey’s home in New York City is The Joan Weill Center for Dance, the nation’s largest building dedicated to dance.

I in turn went to Trailnet’s annual chili cook-off. Attendance was light compared to past years, but a few members of Team Kaldi’s appeared. Trailnet announced that it will be moving its offices to 10th and Locust, so that it can be part of the new downtown bicycle station being created there. Big Shark Bicycle is also planning to join them with another store located there too. This year’s Bicycle Fun Club calendar was unveiled. There looks to be plenty of new rides, along with some of the old favorites returning. Stew and Nancy were there, so I was able to deliver the latest fruits of Anne’s knitting needles. Anne is seen modeling Nancy’s fingerless mitts. They feature a honeycomb or Pokka-dot pattern. Anne wanted it made known that no yarn was purchased in the making of these mittens. I guess that it just magically appeared?

Sunday afternoon, Anne and I worked in the backyard. Even though the front yard needs some help, I couldn’t muster the gumption to begin there. Besides all of the neighbors were in their backyards and we could speak with them across the fences. It wasn’t as warm on Sunday, as it was on Saturday, but it still felt like Spring. The daffodils are about ready to pop and our neighbor’s crocuses are already in bloom. It has been a hard winter, but it looks like it might be over.