Family Visit

There are tons of party leftovers stuffed in the 'fridge right now, and I feel rather compelled to consume them as quickly as possible. Luckily I'll be heading out to DC for a few days on Sunday, so I'll only have another day or so to stuff myself. The morning ride was pretty nice with just three of us, but I was certainly glad it will be the last levee ride in the dark for a while. It sounds like the Corps will start tearing up sections of the river levee late next summer, so it may be a long time after that before we have the whole bike path back. They made a special note in their press release to mention that they don't have funding authority to replace the bike path that they will tear up in order to raise those sections of the levee. Actually, that amounts to doing the cyclists a big favor because the bike path issue has definitely gotten everyone's attention. Anyway, I was feeling a lot better this morning on the bike, but am definitely getting into the "easy winter ride" mindset.



So, since today happens to be All Souls Day, I decided to hop on the bike during lunch to visit the relatives in St. Louis #2 cemetery. It's generally a dangerous place to be, and indeed I was the only (live) person there today. I hadn't seen the old family tomb in a good 25 years, so it took me a while to find it. I think the image I had in my mind was of the tomb in St. Louis #3. Anyway, I did eventually find it and was happy to see that it was in pretty good shape. There are many tombs in the old cemeteries that have been vandalized or have started to collapse. My main goal was to snap a couple of photos, and in retrospect I wish I'd stayed longer and taken some more, but being in that particular cemetery, along, next door to the housing project, just doesn't make me want to hang around very long. The amazing thing is to count the number of people who were buried in that same tomb which I assume could accommodate only three coffins at a time. With these old family tombs, when someone would die they would open the tomb, remove the remains of the previous occupant, drop them down into a special little vault in the bottom, and make it ready for the next person. I think I counted about fifteen in this one.