ALL FLIGHTS CANCELED

This is just behind the view in yesterday’s picture. The river is high for this time of year. A heliport on a barge sits in the Mississippi. You can take a sightseeing flight around the Arch and the city. The helicopter must have fled to safety before the big storms blew through, which you can now see moving out. No more flights today.                        

THURSDAY ARCH SERIES

Taken at the end of our ride with Ellie on one of the Mississippi River tour boats. The two that are usually around are called the Tom Sawyer and the Becky Thacher. We were pulling up to the dock. The helicopter the kid and I rode on last month made a perfectly timed appearance.      

TODAY'S STARTING LINEUP IS - NOBODY

Helicopter view down into Busch Stadium, where the St. Louis Cardinals play. In a normal year, we would be a third of the way through the season. Something may start in July before empty stadiums. The leagues and divisions may be re-arranged so that teams only play others closest to them, minimizing travel. How the players will be protected on the field, in the dugout and in the locker room is uncertain. It is all being negotiated between the owners and players. I guess they will make what money they can from TV and the Internet.

Although I'm pretty put off by the crass commercialization of professional sports I still like baseball. I played it a a boy and spent happy hours in the cheap seats in Yankee Stadium (there used to be some). What did SImon and Garfunkle sing? Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our  nation turns its lonely eyes to you...                   

THURSDAY ARCH SERIES

And now for something completely different. The helicopter that carried Ellie and me is about even with the top of the Arch. Color and tone could be better but the scene is heavily backlit. We rarely get to see the shadow of the monument in a recognizable form but it looks like you could pick up two handles, peeling back the ground. (What's under downtown St. Louis? Do we really want to know?)

This was the third time in my 70 years I've been in a helicopter. It is mildly scary but a lot of fun.          

BOB AND ELLIE'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

After recent events around this country, it feels deeply ironic to go back to a life where little has changed except for the masks. But I'm still trying to document life in The Lou from my perspective and so, forward.

Monday's post noted that Ellie and I did something special after her bike ride around the Arch. There has been a tourist helicopter on the riverfront for years, taking visitors on a swoop over the area for a significant fee. Mrs. C and I rode it once some time ago when we received a gift certificate. It was a blast.

As the kid and I passed by I thought what the heck. As my son in Michigan says, YOLO, you only live once. We went in the office, melted a bit of my credit card and were escorted on board.

Ellie didn't have a drop of fear. Once we got up and across the Mississippi, I asked her how she liked it. Her answer was something like YIPPIE!   

WATER'S STILL HIGH

These photos are from a week ago, before the air show started. It's not dramatic by our standards but the Mississippi is still in flood, although dropping. The triangle in the lower right of the first picture is the bottom of the Arch's grand staircase. Just beyond, a street and walkway are still under water. Same street in the second picture below the fence. No helicopter flights in the show.               

  

Apocalypse Now

That was my first thought on seeing this section of the graffiti-permitted flood wall. I found it a little uncomfortable, like an attack was coming up out of the Mississippi. (We actually had a mock version of that once. It was enough.)  

Artica, a very out-there arts festival held in our industrial wastelands, starts today. (Example.) Heading over there shortly. 

Black Helicopters

It's part of a wacko paranoid fantasy system in the United States: the federal government or the United nations or the Trilateral Commission or something will sweep the country, arrest freedom-loving citizens, confiscate their firearms and impose a new world order. It is well-known that they will arrive in black helicopters. This one, however, takes tourists for rides around the St. Louis riverfront.

Long travel day today, reaching our destination by an absurdly indirect route. I'll bend over backwards, though, for free frequent flyer air tickets, especially with an upgrade. Very late tonight we will lay down our heads in a city where ships may safely come to rest.

Another Set Of Golden Arches

When someone talks about Golden Arches in this country the reference is usually to McDonald's. (Yuck.)  At the river's edge in The Lou we're talking about Eads Bridge. It's complex. The levee goes under the front arches, the street through the next two (second and third from the right in this picture), and then an elevated train trestle through the last. Just off the left of the frame the track enters a tunnel under the Arch grounds.

Eads Bridge is 140 years old and needs continuing maintenance. The entire underside is covered with scaffolding these days. 

By the way, for those of you who liked Sunday's post, the photo below shows there are other ways to get from St. Louis to the moon. Taken from my office window late yesterday afternoon.

       

Thursday Arch Series

Another fisheye shot. Again, I like the shapes and symmetries the distortion creates.

Arch photos are usually posted by themselves but I threw in a lagniappe today. (One of my favorite words, from Cajun usage.) Brad, Servant of The Lord, seen here several times, still stand on guard under the Arch. I think he's been down there on weekends a couple of years now. Behind, the riverfront tourist helicopter loads more passengers. We did it once. It was a blast.         

Thursday Arch Series

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Of course I got some Arch pix from the helicopter. The light was so dull. I wasn't flying the aircraft (much to everyone's benefit) so I couldn't set up an angle I'd prefer. Still, a few were okay. I chose this image for today's post because I thought it was the most dramatic, the most unusual view for us groundlings. I may use others on the next couple of Thursdays.

It's very hard to comprehend from this photo, but remember that the Arch is exactly as wide as it is tall.

It's late Wednesday night at a Kansas City airport hotel as I write this. We drove here from St. Louis this afternoon. Up and out in the morning to get son Andy on an early flight from Chicago, then west into Kansas for Thanksgiving with Carolyn's family. Prairie pix to follow.

Local Attractions

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A couple of quick helicopter pix. As I write this Tuesday night I need to get the post up and start packing. Driving as far as Kansas City today, picking up son Andy when he flies to KC from Chicago early tomorrow morning, then west to Marysville, Kansas, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my wife's family. Her mother, Elvira Kruse, turns 93 this weekend.

So anyway - above, St. Louis Union Station. It was once one of the great junctions of the American railway system. It's been rehabbed and has a stunningly beautiful Marriott Hotel in the headhouse, the front part (views of the lobby here and here). The old train shed behind now covers shops and restaurants.

Below, the Edward Jones Dome. A local financial services company bought the naming rights to the venue where the miserable St. Louis Rams play football. Just to the right of that is the convention center. They are contiguous if you need a whole lot of floor space.

Hope to have an Arch picture from the the air tomorrow (hope I have time to write a post in KC tonight). Then we'll have the prairies of Kansas.

Eye on STL

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Okay, so we're not like a major urban destination but we have our charms and our merits. This is a broad view of downtown from the helicopter looking southeast. You can see just a bit of the Arch behind a tall building at the horizon toward the left. My office is in the building just to the right of that, whose flat top just touches the horizon. The large building in the center foreground with the white circular whatever on top is the wacky City Museum - note the yellow school bus hanging off the right corner of the roof.

That's our pilot Brian in the lower picture. He used to make his living as a truck driver. Somewhere back in the 90s he took a helicopter ride and got hooked. He started taking lessons and look at him now. He thinks it's an improvement.

Earth, Air, Water and Helicopter

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The Mighty Mississippi from the air. The top picture is just after liftoff, looking south. The pinkish strip down the center is the cobblestone levee, dating from the 19th Century. The river is very low. When the water is up, like in this picture from last May, the street uphill to the right can be completely covered. The highest I've seen it is about two-thirds up the floodwall to the right of the street. That's a lot of water.

The bottom picture is looking north, upriver. The graceful Eads Bridge crosses the river, followed by the prosaic McKinley Bridge. Note all the barges pulled over to the riverbanks behind the bridges. The Mississippi south of St. Louis has such a gentle descent that there are no locks and dams. The first is a few miles to the north of us. It was closed for dredging at the time, stopping all the river traffic.

Helicopter Ride!

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Ace son and heir to the St. Louis daily Photo fortune Andy gave me and Carolyn a fabulous Christmas present last year, a certificate for a helicopter ride around downtown. So, eleven months later, we finally got around to using it (it was about to expire). You had to book two weeks ahead and we got a gray day but wowie zowie was it a lot of fun.

Needless to say, I took hundreds of snaps, some of which will appear here in the coming days. This view is to the east from roughly over 18th Street. On the right, I 64 crosses the Mississippi. Center foreground is the trompe l'oeil facade of the Sheraton Hotel. You can dimly see Busch Stadium behind it and a foot of the Arch in the upper left.

Thanks to Gateway Helicopter Tours for providing a great experience.

Life On The Mississippi

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That's the name of a memoir published in 1883 by Mark Twain. It describes his career as a young man working his way from deckhand to boat captain on the ever-shifting waters of the Mississippi. It also includes his observations during a pleasure trip on the river from St. Louis to New Orleans after he became a famous writer.

Twain might be shocked by what he would find today. There are still many miles of woods and farmland flanking the river but there is also much industry and urban growth. What would the man born as Samuel Clemens think about helipads and huge copper smelters?

By the way, Nathalie, you're right. While work has been a giant time sucker, this week's real distraction is the World Series. The Cardinals came from behind time after time last night to take Game 6 in extra innings. The decisive seventh game takes place tonight. My camera and I will be there.

The Smell Of Napalm In The Morning

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There's something about the photos I'm posting this week that reminds me of images of the Vietnam War - helicopters coming out of the low sun, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. But the main event of these, um, festivities is this afternoon. I hope for good weather and light, followed by details tomorrow.

There is so much to shoot in The Lou this weekend: this stuff, a mass public water balloon fight on Cherokee Street Saturday and the best photo-op of the year, the Pridefest Parade on Sunday. Stay tuned.

Looks like an evacuation by helicopter on Downtown St. Louis 365.

Cheapo Helicopter Rides

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I really don't want to pay the lowest possible price for a helicopter ride. Or eye surgery, tax advice and DSLR lenses. These are important, risky matters. However, St. Louis Helicopter Tours offers a quickie up and down along the riverfront for $29 from their heliport on the Mississippi under the Arch. They have longer rides at higher prices. Why haven't I ever done this? I should get off my rear and go one their long rides this weekend, but only if they can guarantee a front seat. My cameras would be blazing. Would you like to see the photographic results of that?

WHAT I'M DOING FOR MY OWN GOOD: getting back to the gym more often. It felt much harder to go during the summer. If it wasn't for earphones and loud, fast music, I might never get there at all.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series.