Series continues after all

NOTICE: Please disregard all previous announcements about the end of the series.

Today might have been the nicest day so far this year. There was a day or two in April that were pretty spectacular but they lacked some credibility as being clearly out of season. Today was a really nice day in May, and lo and behold, it IS May.

The two hour ride today took a little over two hours. So I was slower than yesterday but even so it was one of the fastest rides of the year. And today I didn't feel as much like I had put myself through a wringer as I felt yesterday. This has been remarked upon plenty and it is starting to prove out again: Riding in cold weather is hard, hard work. It is so much easier when conditions are like they are today.

I rode the Capital loop. There was a bit of a snag as the annual AIDS walk had closed the River Road. Fortunately I only wanted to ride one block on the River Road and apparently it was only closed for cars anyway. I was sitting there next to the police car at the barricades thinking about an alternate route when two bicycles went past me and the barricades and onto the route. I glanced at the officer and he clearly did not care. So I rode my one block on the River Road down to this monument.That's the 36 foot tall monument erected in 1922 by the Daughters of American Revolution in memory of the Ramsey County Civil War dead.

I have tried to get this photograph numerous times in the past mostly while riding over there after work. After work I was always confronted with the problem of the setting sun in the sky behind the monument. Today was better.

It is a pretty nice old monument to war veterans. But . . .

This is la Colonne de Vendôme, located in Place Vendôme, Paris.The column is 44 METERS high. The core is stone with an outer layer of bronze. The usual story is that Napoleon captured 1,250 cannons at the Battle of Austerliz in 1805 and that the cannons were melted down to create the bronze exterior layer of the column. Some sources dispute the number of cannons involved, asserting the Austrian army's loss of cannons at Austerlitz was actually more likely in the range of 130-180. 1,250 makes a better story. The column was constructed between 1806 and 1810 and originally topped by a statue of Napoleon. During the time when Napoleon was out of power the statue was removed and replaced by other figures but in the passage of time eventually Napoleon was restored to the top of the column. The white awnings on the left side of the picture are the entrance to the Ritz Hotel. Not just any Ritz Hotel, mind you, THE Ritz Hotel.

Or how about this one, a return to the something in front of something motif?That's the Obelisque, more properly the Obélisque de Luxor, in the Place de la Concorde, Paris. The Place de la Concorde was known during the Revolution as the Place de la Revolution and was the site of the guillotine.

And I have one more, this is Colonne de Juillet (the July Column) in the Place de la Bastille.The Bastille prison is long gone and what remains is this monument to the Revolution. That building behind and to frame left of the column is the new opera house, Opera Bastille. The new house is the home of the National Opera but it is a trifle too modern looking to my eye, a much inferior structure to the old opera, Opera Garnier.