Naturey Goodness

It's only my 2nd day in St. Louis and already I've visited many tucked away parts of the town where I grew up. Yesterday I went to a Rams' game at the Jones Dome with Sara, Rob, and a lot of their extended family. It was nice to see some areas of downtown that have been brought back to life with conversion of old buildings to lofts and the addition of some new restaurants.

Today there was a rare 70-degree day in November, so I took advantage of it with a bike ride. My good friend Carrie lives a few houses down from my parents and she graciously loaned me a road bike to keep up my race training.

We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful area of St. Louis. Only a short distance from my house is Grant's Trail. Grant's Trail is a 'rails to trails' park where an old rail line was converted to 8 miles of a scenic bikeway through the heart of South County. The trail runs from Kirkwood at the northwest to Lemay at the southeast. Along the way you pass through residential neighborhoods, clydesdale pastures, industrial parks, county parks, and creeks.

I started out from home where it's about a half mile through our neighborhood to Pardee Rd. to get to the trail. Cars around here are not used to cyclists and there are no bike lanes. Even though I waited for traffic to clear, I instantly had a minivan on my wheel with a driver who didn't understand the universal wave for "you! idiot! go around!"

Upon reaching the trail, I headed southeast and rode to the end where it dead ends at Orlando Gardens. I didn't anticipate the 30 mph headwind the entire way. I assumed it would be a nice tailwind for my way back, but the St. Louis weather didn't cooperate instead shifted directions to provide a 40 mph headwind for my ride back. Awesome!

I passed my trail entry point at Pardee and continued northwest to the other terminus in Kirkwood. I noticed that a lot of people were impatient at the surface street crossings. Some people would glance in either direction and decide to not stop at all, Frogger style. I saw at least 2 near misses in the short time I was out there. I also saw someone run a red light when trail users had the right of way. Unfortunately, I think it's just a matter of time until someone gets worked.

The last bit of my ride was definitely the hardest.... all uphill. My house is at the top of a steep neighborhood and after 17.5 miles, my thighs were slightly unresponsive. That hill defeated me as a child and now as an adult.... but by the end of the week I intend to make it my biotch.

View of an old railroad bridge and miles of empty trail

Park in Kirkwood along the trail

Grant National Historic site -- one of Ulysses S. Grant's homes on several wooded acres and a visitor's center

Clydesdales at Grant's Farm

Moi

Leafy trail. It's beautiful in the spring and summer.

This is your captain speaking

It's never good to hear the captain speaking unless you are taking off or landing.

Yesterday my flight from Orange County to Denver was one of those travel nightmares that you hear about, but try to deny their existence in order to psyche yourself up for traveling.

It started out with a delayed plane at my gate in OC. Turns out that someone who was working in our Irvine office from KC was on that flight, so I chatted with him about the situation. Their flight had a bad parking brake (didn't realize planes needed parking brakes) and so they had been unable to leave for the past 3 hours. Since their plane was taking up the space at the gate, my plane wasn't able to come in. Eventually, a small tow truck arrived to move their plane out of the way. (Topic: Why would a bad parking brake require a tow? Discuss amongst yourselves.)

We were able to take off about an hour later and everything seemed to be going fine. Now to the aforementioned captain's announcement. He says that we can't land in Denver because there is a tornado. On top of the terminal.

We all flipped our 3"x5" LCD screens to the Weather Channel and sure enough.... there was a freakin' twister that appeared to be on the roof of the main terminal. The airport was completely closed. Not only was there a twister, but there was also baseball-sized hail. Six inches of it.

We continued to circle for about an hour before being diverted to Colorado Springs. Our pilot had hoped to wait out the storm, but it was only moving 5 mph. 5 mph! When was the last time you heard of a storm moving that slow?

On the ground in CO Springs, they wouldn't let us off the plane. There were several people whose final destination was CO Springs and therefore appropriately wanted to deplane. The captain said that unfortunately the airport there only has one set of stairs. What? Where is the Bluth Co. stair car when you need it?

Unfortunately, that one set of stairs was in perpetual use letting other passengers off other planes and they weren't able to get to our plane in the entire 2 hours we sat there. I kept waiting for one of those passengers to pop the emergency exit and escape down the slide. I would have if I would have known how crappy of a flight we were about to have from CO Springs to Denver, thanks to the storms.

By the time we landed in Denver (or DIA as the locals call it), my connecting flight was long gone. It was at this time that I set myself into Amazing Race mode. I silently thanked myself for changing seats to the first row earlier that day and sprinted up the ramp. I somehow managed to run directly into the Frontier Airlines customer service center. How is that for luck! I explained my situation to the lady at the desk and at first she seemed disinterested in my desperate plight to get on the next flight out. But when she found that there was only one seat on the last flight out to St. Louis, she was all over it! I've never seen someone type so fast! Why do they really have to type so much anyway? When I book tickets online, it's about 92% mouse and 8% keyboard. Regardless, she got the seat! I felt like I had Charlie's golden ticket.

The rest of the night wasn't as exciting. My second flight ended up delayed due to windshear, but I was just happy to not be sleeping on the floor of the terminal. I ended up getting to St. Louis at midnight, a mere 12 hours after leaving OC.