Or, is that Big Day Family?

Morgan and his crew, and Beck, Sio and I all piled into our vehicles and went to Purina Farms for the morning. Purina has a great facility, and Beck and I have been there a few times for dog shows and dog agility events. Today though, we did travelled the tourist path, and wandered through the exhibits and barns.

They have a magnificent cat house, built inside one of their buildings. That thing is two stories tall, and had about half a dozen cats in it…. including a Maine Coon Cat! Man, I just love the look of those guys. They are soooo big and fluffy. I expect that if we get another cat someday, it might just be a Maine Coon.

We made our way to the barns and got to see and pet most of the animals you’d expect — cows, horses, pigs, rabbits. It’s a neat walk through the barn, and worth doing. At the end of our walk, one of the farmhands brought a cow in for milking, and all the kids got to milk Bessie by hand. Even a big kid — your humble author — took a turn and put a bit of milk in a bucket. Dunno what I was expecting — I’ve never done that before — but it was like grabbing onto the finger of a dishwashing glove that had been filled with some kind of gelatinous substance. A little weird!

Once we finished there, we got a snack, and walked over to a dog agility demonstration. I was expecting a competition of some kind, which this wasn’t, but it was still enjoyable and a good introduction for the kids to agility competition. They got to count “uh-ohs” that the dogs had along the course, and helped with the countdowns during the course.

After a little rest, we geared up for having a bunch of folks over to see the Virginia Days. Mark and Angie, along with their babies, Mindy, Elma and Jules and Helen all came by for Fortel’s pizza and ice cream. I still think Fortel’s has just about the best pizza in town, only behind the Blackthorn Pub.

After a long day and night of playing with various parts of the family, we collapsed into a well-deserved slumber!

21.8mi

This morning I was hoping for a nicer ride than Monday’s. I defintely got a nicer ride, and it was thrilling to feel the sense of success in the saddle again.

This morning was a little warm — about 75 to start, and 85 by the time I finished. It seems like I might ride a bit better when the temp is up just a bit. As I look back, the rides that I’ve enjoyed the most have had me sweating, huffing and puffing. And on those same rides, it seems like I have more range, and can ride farther. Hmmmm…..

Anyway, today’s ride was definitely nice, and I guess the Katy and I kissed and made up after our falling out on Monday.

As a gaggle, we decided this morning to take a tour of the new Busch Stadium. We got to the stadium not long before the tour, and were able to park just outside the third base entrance, facing the statue of Stan the Man — great parking!

The tour was pretty inexpensive, which was a nice thing given that there were eight of us going through it! The tour starts out in the outfield seating area just above the bleachers, and travels through the Redbird Club seating and the Cardinals Club dining area. We even got to go to the broadcast booth and see the view that our announcers have of the field. That’s one heck of a great view!

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but they have the manual scoreboards from the old stadium preserved inside the new one. They are arranged as they when when the last pitch of the last regular season game at the old Busch. There are game scores still in progress, frozen in time, from last season. While part of me thinks that’s pretty cool, there’s something a little morbid about it too. Kinda like someone never changing the room of a deceased family member, those scoreboards harken to a time and a place that are now gone and can’t be recaptured.

Toward the end of the tour, we were allowed on the field — not on the grass! — and got to explore the Cardinals dugout. That was the highlight for me. A few years ago, I got to visit the dugout of the old Busch stadium, so it was someone appropriate to see the new one, too.

In all, that place is phenomenal, with so much history brought from the old stadium, and with a sense that history will be made in the new one. I’ll definitely be taking this tour again!

6.8mi

I figured I’d get a ride in this morning before Morgan and crew arrived. That’d put me on the right schedule for the week, and maybe I could even stretch the ride a bit. Well, that didn’t happen!

I got out on the trail early, way before the heat of the day, and no matter how hard I pedalled, I just couldn’t will myself to get into the ride. It was weird, and the first misfire I’ve had since I started cycling in May. I struggled to Defiance — just three miles down the trail — and limped back to Weldon.

I hope I never see that kind of ride again! I’m not disturbed by it though. I know every day can’t be a 20+mi day for me, and I am bound to have great days and not so good ones. That’s just human nature.

But watch out Katy Trail — I’ll be back!

21.8mi

Finally today, I was able to return to the trail, tackling a more normal ride. Between my little fainting episode last Saturday night and the blown tire from Wednesday night, it’d been eight days since I’d had a good, long ride.

And, boy did I feel it! It was a hard slug through the first half of the ride — usually it’s just the first few miles that I have troubles with. My legs complained and complained. And surprisingly, there was no one on the trail on the way to Augusta from Weldon. It was 60 degrees, a little bit of fog, making for a crisp morning. After the horrible heat from last week, I figured the trail would be packed. Nope. Even on the way back, there were very few folks.

The trail was a mess too. There was tree shrapnel all over the trail, fallout from the big storms Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Big tree limbs draped low over the trail, and in places blocked it. Yes, the Katy was hit pretty hard from all the ruckus late in the week.

However, I made, after forcing myself to stick to my guns and get my usual ride in. I think I’ll probably get another ride in tomorrow morning. Morgan and crew are coming to town tomorrow night, and I doubt I’ll be able to get my Wednesday night ride in — although I may be able to get one in Wednesday morning, or Thursday afternoon.

I guess the good news is that I’m back on the trail, and burning up the miles. Today was another milestone — I crossed 500mi of riding since I started this crazy excursion in early May. I’m still eyeing 1000 miles as my target for the year. If the weather’s good, I think I have a good shot at it!

3.5mi

Last night, I changed my first blown tube — yay! It was a struggle, but I won. However, the down side was that noticed a tear in the sidewall of my tire. That’s probably either a contributing factor to my tube blowing, it was collateral damage. Either way, it was a successful operation…. until I noticed the tear. That meant a new tire.

So this morning, I was off to West County Cycles for a new tire. While I was there, I decided to get a floor pump — figured I’d need it for the next time I work on a tire here at the house. Those CO2 cartridges are great, but are a one-time-good-deal. I could certainly see where I’d wanna pump air through a tube I’d repaired, and the CO2 just doesn’t fit the bill.

West County had a bunch of pumps. I went for the one with the longest barrel — I figured that would deliver the most air with the fewest pumps. I also made sure that it had a tire pressure gauge built-in — wanna make sure my tires are the right pressure!

Once I got everything unloaded from the shop, I fitting Sio on my old Huffy Monaco, and hauled us both to Defiance to ride a bit. This was Sio’s first ride with me, and I was thrilled. She kept telling me that she thought she wouldn’t be able to ride even a mile. Well, a mile passed, and then two, and then three. In all, she rode 3.5mi, and probably coulda done more. I didn’t wanna push it though — it was her first excursion with me, after all!

The best thing about the whole ride was her telling me that wanted to ride more with me. That’s a cool thing! Of course the Ted Drewes from the Katy Bike Rental shop wasn’t a bad thing either!

It’s no leg-shaped, fishnet-hosed lamp, but my Katy Trail Challenge shirt arrived today!

click on the image to enlarge

It’s a nice enough t-shirt, with a map of the Katy Trail, and emblazened with the phrase “I conquered the Katy one mile at a time!” I did it in bigger chunks than a mile at a time, but still….!

As if hammering St. Louis with a storm literally from out of nowhere — only about two hours notice — this morning, we had a more traditional severe storm line run through the area. We’d gotten hot again, and that, along with a front moving through spelled trouble again.

By this morning, there were only 300,000 folks without power. After the storm, the number was back to over 500,000 again. Beck’s folks had been without power since Wednesday’s storm, and had just had it return, only to lose it again in the midday storms. There wasn’t quite as much damage in the immediate local area, but it was still a blow to folks who were trying to get the infrastructure back online.

My hat’s off to them, and my heart’s out to those who are having to deal with the fallout from these storms in their lives!

Last night, not long after I got back home from my ride, I noticed the wind was really blowing outside. That seemed weird, as it was pretty calm when I got home. I’d been watching for the Cards game to start, and noticed that it hadn’t yet, which was also weird as it was after the start time. Then I heard the wind strongly gusting outside, looked out and realized we were getting ready to have a really, really bad storm.

I flipped to one of the local channels, and realized that we had a huge gust front moving through from the north, and it was right on top of us. At that time, they were talking about winds in excess of 60mph. This morning, it was reported that winds in the city were clocked above 80mph. All I know is that these were the strongest winds I can remember seeing from our house. The trees in the back yard were bending farther and farther, and I was certain we would lose some. Limbs we lost, but no trunks, and that’s a good thing.

The rain came beating down about ten minuts after the gust front was through, and it was monsoon-like, torrential, with still-strong winds. The sirens began to go off, and the news began telling us that there was rotation in clouds not far from us. The good news was that, if they continued travelling straight south, the worst would remain to the west of us. Nonetheless, we piled the two of us and the dogs off to the basement, where we could watch the storm through the basement windows, and keep the TV on.

This was not the little cell in Rolla that I had seen. The big, bad storm on the Iowa/Missouri border had made a really big right turn, and was marching right through the city.

As the news kept coming in, it was obvious that this was a bad, bad storm, and that we really hadn’t experienced the worst of the weather in Ellsiville. That was reserved for downtown St. Louis, where 50,000 folks were sitting in Busch Stadium waiting for the game to start. To my eye, this stadium doesn’t have the overhangs and shelter that the old Busch did, so I don’t know what they did with all those people as the storm struck down there. BTW, the game finally started around 9.30pm, and the Cards won, breaking a little losing skid to the Braves.

There was a lot of damage. The airport had part of its roof blow off, and into the adjacent interstate. Three semis were blown over on the I-270 bridge. There are buildings downtown that either collapsed or had walls collapse. This was bad stuff. The mayor got on the air last night, and indicated that this was the worst storm to hit the city of St. Louis in recent memory. I’d believe it.

So this morning, reports are that there are half a million homes without power, and folks all over the area are cleaning up. Today, the forecast is for potentially the same kind of weather to hit us again, as the temperature will be 102-104, with a heat index of as much as 120 in the city. Those folks without power are gonna really suffer today. Hopefully, we’ll get some clouds and rain to cool things off, but without the severe winds.

3.0mi

7.0mi

Despite the heat (100 degrees), I planned to ride tonight. I looked at the National Weather Service maps for St. Louis, and saw some real ugly storms 100-150 miles north of town, but they were headed for central Illinois. There was another cluster sitting right on top of Rolla, growing in intensity, but I figured I probably had time to get my ride in.

When Mr. Slate pulled the birdie’s tail, I slid down the back of my brontosaurus and cruised toward the Weldon trailhead. I knew today was gonna be tough, but I figured I’d take it easy, maybe ride ten miles or so, and ride toward the I-64 bridge complex so I’d be in shade most of the way.

Typically, I hate the heat, but there’s something about riding through it that I really get into — especially when shielded from the sun by the canopy of trees. I rode slow at first, building to higher speed as I went along, trying not to push it too much.

While along the trail, I saw probably have a dozen deer, including some itty-bitty fawns. They were all headed toward the boggy water, I guess in need of some relief from the heat.

I hit the bridge complex, and felt great. I was really thinking about going on up to Pitman Hill — about three miles — but decided that if I wanted the extra miles, I could ride to Defiance from the Weldon trailhead. That’d put me not too far away from the truck in case I got exhausted quickly along the way. I turned back toward Weldon.

The ride back was going quick. For some reason, I was keeping a great speed, and felt like I wasn’t working hard at all. All of sudden I heard a sound — pfffffft! It sounded like startled cat hissing at me, and it totally freaked me out. I looked around, but didn’t see anything, although an upset feline could be hiding easily in the trees along the trail. I got a bad feeling about what had just happened, and looked at the front tire — no issues.

I looked at the back tire. Dead as a doornail. Ugh.

Now you’d expect that this would be a great opportunity for me to try out the new tire repair kit, or to replace the tube with the one I bought. Yeah, that’d be the right answer. Except that I had left that gear on my desk at home. Ugh again. I came to the swift realization that I bought a tire repair kit just in the nick of time for when I’d need it, only to not have it with me. D’oh!

At this point, I was three miles from the trailhead, and there was nothing to do but walk the bike back to the trailhead. Toward Weldon I plodded along, pushing Bandit at a measely 3.3mph as opposed to the 14.5mph I was enjoying prior to my tire expiring.

A fellow cyclist stopped to ask if I needed help — that was nice! I declined, as there wasn’t much he could do for me and I was in no distress. He rolled on and I continued down the trail. I passed a guy on one of the trailside benches who quipped, “Nice day to take your bike for a walk!” I got a chuckle out of that, and stopped to talk with him for a minute or two, and then continued on.

The good news was that my bike odometer was working, so I had a good idea how fast I was going, how far there was to go, and could make an educated guess as to when I’d get back to the trailhead, so I was in no hurry, and had no worries. With a mile or so to go, I noticed the sun was no longer beating through the trees, and I could just see that a big cloud had eclipsed it. The shade was glorious, and the air temperature felt like it dropped a little. I figured that this was that little storm I’d seen over Rolla, blowing off some clouds our direction. I had plenty of time to get back to the trailhead before anything would happen.

I walked my bike down the ramp at Weldon, loaded up, examined my tire (couldn’t find anything obvious), and about then the sun came out. Good timing.

Today’s excursion was certainly one of the more interesting ones for me, with just seven miles of riding and three miles of walking. I have a mammoth blister on the heel of my left foot — my riding sandals just weren’t built with hiking on gravel in mind. No biggie, and that won’t keep me from riding on Saturday.

Now I’ve just gotta figure out how to replace the tube in my rear tire….