Monday, October 27, 2014

Bike Tour of Historic Bellefontaine Cemetery 10-18-2014

Hey there, hi there, ho there!

About a week ago, I went on a lovely tour of Bellefontaine Cemetery in North St. Louis, hosted by the amazing Harold Karabell. Bellefontaine is the non-denominational cemetery right next door to Calvary Cemetery, which we toured with Harold & Friends last June (and which I posted about here, in July).

This was a similarly-neat tour. I will confess, I am not in the least bit Catholic in my religious beliefs or practices, but I love high church imagery as an art form, and found the headstones and mausoleums of Calvary a bit more impressive. Still and yet, there were some gorgeous parts of Bellefontaine, and the history of the people buried within its gates (like Calvary) is pretty impressive. We saw the grave sites of the Burroughs Family (including William S.), the Lemp and Busch family mausoleums, and even toured the Wainwright (of the famous downtown government building) mausoleum, which was so ornate and still and lovely (the photo below of the ironwork window looking out on the cemetery is from inside the Wainwright mausoleum).











Harold's tours are just amazing things. The man is a two-wheeled encyclopedia of knowledge, and is such a treasure to the bike and local community. I have attended three of his tours this summer and fall, and I really enjoyed them all. The link to the Calvary tour is at the top of this post, and you can read about the tour of the historic Carondelet neighborhood here. I missed several, too (silly calendar), but look forward to connecting with my bike friends on future tours next year (the tour season is winding down, along with Daylight Savings Time).

Things may quiet down a bit on the blog (as if they could get much quieter) through the winter, but I'll continue to post interesting things as they come up, and I may try bike-commuting more earnestly next year. This year was a bit of a bust for that. I attribute a fair amount of it to increased "bike-lash" which is a natural growing pain communities feel as cycling becomes more visible (and often, more inconvenient to drivers) - it's a byproduct of more folks getting on their bicycles and of clashes over what should happen to our existing infrastructure, a debate about which I fear I'm growing weary, and don't want to represent when I'm alone on my bicycle very often. I'm not as excited about that, and I have been riding and writing less as a result. But it is what it is and that's where I am right now. I will see how I feel after things thaw and the sun stops setting so early next spring.

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