Wind chill?

As is my custom, as I donned my costume for today's ride I checked in with the 24 hour cable weather station provided by one of the local over the air channels. Among the readings included on their current conditions page today was wind chill. I believe that the legitimacy of wind chill in ambient air temperatures above freezing is suspect, to say the least. Still, the number they gave was an interesting snapshot of today's weather. The number was 35.

Legitimate or not, conditions which will allow someone to calculate a wind chill of 35 are sufficiently daunting to very significantly, even on a Sunday, suppress the number of other recreational users to be found in the great out of doors. Today was quite chilly and extremely windy.

Conditions were very much like yesterday and I again headed off towards the southwest. Today I rode all the way to the Stone Arch Bridge. I was vaguely aware of this, but today I reinforced for myself that the Stone Arch Bridge is not some mere National Historic Landmark, it is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.The Falls of Saint Anthony are visible for perspective through the bridge railing. A side note, I am aware because of having worked for the Great Northern Railroad long, long ago when the Stone Arch was a Great Northern Railroad bridge that the bridge then did not have a railing. Trains don't need no stinking railing and when only trains used the bridge there wasn't one.

On the way back I rode past this really nice old stone church. Unlike some of the other Minnesota churches featured here recently, this one IS made of stone. It is the University Lutheran Church of Hope. It is located just off the University campus in Dinkytown.I have also learned that Lutherans seem to place a higher priority than other denominations on labeling their churches with year of construction. The other church I noticed with a dated cornerstone was Roseville Lutheran.

The cornerstone on the Church of Hope reveals that the congregation is not going to be able to willy-nilly select some new, more modern and hip, with-it sort of name. Church of Hope is engraved on the cornerstone. The cornerstone is a bit hard to see in the photo, it is there on the corner obscured by ivy. In fact, I couldn't make out the date from the sidewalk in front of the stone. I had to step up there and pull some of the ivy loose to read what the engraving says.

"University Lutheran Church of Hope, 1908" Well now, that's a pretty old church, over a century. However, it is not nearly as old as this one:That's L'église de la Madeleine or more formally, L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine. The church was consecrated in 1842. The decision to build the church was made by Napoleon intending that a temple be built to celebrate the glory of his army. The church is located just off the Champs Elysee near the Place de la Concorde.