Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Bikes, Bridges and BiState


From the 4th to the 7th, I was in St. Louis for the Governors Conference on Housing. I took my bike along hoping to squeeze in some riding, and I am really glad I did.  

The first day I just cruised around downtown near my hotel. ST. Louis has a nice bike route system with plenty of signs and logos painted on the street. It made it easy to get around and see the sites.  With accidents and detours on I-70, it took me six hours to get to St. Louis, so I really needed to stretch and loosen up.

We didn’t start until 9:00 the next day, so I was up early and headed to the river to find the River Front Trail. This runs down by the river (obviously) and ties in with other trails to the North and West of St. Louis.  Unfortunately, I was only riding for around 30 minutes when I noticed this giant black cloud blowing in out of Illinois.  I headed back to the hotel with the Witches theme from the Wizard of Oz playing in my head. (ta da de da de da   da duuuummmmmm.)

Thursday I had a gap in my schedule, so I took an afternoon ride. Fantastic!  The McKinley bridge crosses over into Illinois and keeps going, but I stopped at the Illinois line. Then, following the signs, I rode over to Soulard, the old market district.  Then back to the River Front Trail and back to the hotel. A good twenty miles in a little under two hours. Pretty happy with that.

I took some really cool pictures which I have somehow managed to lose. As I may have mentioned, I’m not a techy.  It was pretty cool taking my morning ride with a National Monument on one side, and the Mississippi river on the other.  One thing about the trail though; a lot of it, you are inside the flood wall.  When the apocalyptic meteor hits and the river jumps up about 10 feet, you do NOT want to be on the wrong side of that wall! Otherwise, a really great ride and a good experience. I recommend it to anyone heading to St. Louis.

More later.

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