Bitter Cold and Crazy Hot St Louis: More Monday

I exited the Dental Health Theater and again experienced a world of bitter cold. I hunched downtown to a tourist information center. I hoped to learn about sites that had escaped mention in my guidebooks. That didn't happen. The guidebook writers have left no pamphlet unturned. I was the only customer in the place, so the nice tourist information lady showered me with information faster than I could take it in. Eventually, someone else stumbled in and she went to help him out. I retreated out into the bitter cold and wind.

I scuttled into the MetroLink station where I caught a train to East St Louis, IL, finishing the /[aeilostu]{6,}/ checklist I'd come up with a year before.

I disembarked at the first East St Louis station, just across the Mississippi from St Louis. I found myself on a road surrounded by concrete barriers and parking lots. There were buildings, but they seemed far away. (They weren't really that far away. But it was bitter cold and windy and I didn't feel up for exploring.) I tried to talk myself into walking around a bit, but it just wasn't happening. The closest building was a casino. I didn't want to see a casino. I stood under the (elevated) station, snapped some photos, and went right back to St Louis.

[Photo: Probably not East St Louis' prettiest portrait]

East St Louis, looking back towards St Louis. Brr.

I rode the train back to St Louis, to Union Station. Union Station was once a train station; someone converted it to a mall. They glassed in the platform area and filled it with mall shops. The pretty station building now holds a hotel and some offices. I took some photos of the building lobby before I first noticed a sign telling me that the mall cops would kick out anyone photographing anything. Fortunately, no-one kicked me out. It would have been bitter cold out there.

Back in the mall proper, I ate an OK falafel sandwich at Pita King. I looked up at the metal structure of the old platform roof. It was a mass of girders, corrugated steel, and glass. It kept out the bitter cold. I vaguely wondered why the mall cops wouldn't want people to photograph it. Maybe it wasn't structurally sound and they didn't want anyone looking at it too closely. Or maybe they were just stereotypical over-controlling mall cops.

My gaze drifted down from the roof to the Hooters restaurant, a floor up from my food court. Scantily-clad waitresses were sauntering about, and the restaurant's open architecture allowed food court patrons such as myself to watch. At first, it seemed strange that they'd let passers-by ogle. I wondered if they did this in the same spirit that led the city to give free admission to its museum and zoo. Then I remembered that it was wrong to objectify Hooters waitresses, so I didn't pursue that line of thought.

[Photo collage: Union Station hotel lobby]

This view of the lobby of the Union Station building looks strange because it's actually a few photos pasted together.

Since the mall was enclosed, I was able to walk around without having to brace myself against the cold. So that was relaxing. Until I couldn't force myself to ignore the cheesy knick-knack and t-shirt shops and I stumbled back outside and into the MetroLink station.

I stood a while in the fountain at Kiener Plaza. The fountain wasn't running, perhaps because it was below freezing. But it was down low and out of the wind. You wouldn't think I'd like to pass a minute in an empty fountain in an empty plaza, but you aren't out there in that wind.

[Photo: Empty fountain in empty Kiener Plaza]

In this fountain, no water nor wind flowed.

As I crossed the street from the plaza, a car honked. Its driver flipped me the Euro-insult-"V". The car was behind an SUV, and the SUV was waiting to make a right turn until I got out of its way. I looked up at the traffic signal. It had a pedestrian-walking sign on. So I kept crossing and shrugged at the guy. He yelled something about how I was supposed to give way to right-turning vehicles.

For the rest of my time in St Louis, when I crossed the street, I would wait for right-turning vehicles. That seemed to surprise drivers--they gave me the look that says, "Your misplaced hesitation is slowing everyone down, doofus. You think you're being polite? You are just annoying." In hindsight, I think the guy was just a moron. At the time, I took the euro-"V" as a sign of sophistication, but I've since changed my mind.

There wasn't much to see in the Old Courthouse Museum. I don't recommend it. But it was heated and I spent a long time there. I read about Dred Scott. I read about the courthouse building. There were some turtle design elements, "a representation of of a turtle said to have lived in the courthouse foundation." It's turtles all the way down, of course.

I walked up a few stories and read some interpretive text about the paintings on the dome ceiling. Since I was close to the dome ceiling, it was clear that these paintings were meant to be seen by people far away. They weren't very detailed. I imagined a history of this place: I imagined that the upper floors hadn't originally been opened to tourists. I imagined tourists on the ground floor asking rangers about the dome paintings. I imagined these tourists asking permission to get closer to the paintings. I imagine a ranger saying, "They really aren't that interesting close up." I imagine a tourist saying, "Let me be the judge of that, missy." I imagine generations of tourists walking up to look at these paintings, only to be disappointed.

Or maybe the paintings were brilliant. What did I know about Victorian-era painting? Not much of anything.

I was so unimpressed by the dome paintings that I pointed my camera down at the ground.

Back Into the Cold

I lingered over some dioramas that had been built by some Depression-era acronymically-identified organization, trying to nerve myself up for another walk through the bitter cold and wind. I stayed overlong in the courthouse gift shop, trying to tell myself that I was accustomed to low temperatures, that I found this weather "bracing." Eventually, I whimpered my way out the East door.

I cursed the fates. I cursed my inability to handle this weather. I cursed. I may have raged.
[Photo: Covered conveyor belt]

There, framed in the arch, was a lovely covered conveyor belt. It was on the East St Louis side of the Mississippi. If only I'd braved the bitter cold and walked past a couple of parking lots and the Casino Queen, I would have been right next to it. I got myself under control. I liked to photograph covered conveyor belts, but it wasn't the driving force in my life. Right now, the driving force in my life was getting in out of the bitter cold and the wind.

I made my way to the base of the Arch. I looked around for impressionable little boys. I thought I might dare one to put his tongue on the Arch. But there weren't any around. It was a school day. It was bitter cold. Nobody was stupid enough to be out here except me. I went into the basement under the Arch, passed my backpack through an X-ray, walked through a metal detector, let a ranger snap my picture, and I was in.

Bryan later said that there was normally a line to ride up to the top of the Arch. During the height of the tourist season, sometimes people had to buy tickets a day ahead of time. This was not the tourist season. There was a recession going on. And it was bitter cold. I walked up to the ticket window and bought an elevator ticket. There was no line for the elevator.

The elevators surprised me. A while back I'd read someone else's St Louis travelog. They had traveled with kids. The author had mentioned their horror upon realizing that the ride up to the top would take a few minutes: minutes of being trapped in an elevator with their kids. That had sounded unpleasant. But the reality must have been worse: these elevators were tiny. I clonked my head on the ceiling of mine as I got in. There were seats--not so that the passengers could rest, but because there was no room to stand. I couldn't imagine riding in one of those elevator cars with someone I didn't know. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

Here's an elevator car they had on display. Too bad there weren't any tourists around for size comparison. You can compare it to that normal-height orange handrail next to it.

I collaged together some photos of me inside a clothes dryer. No! I jest. It's not a clothes dryer! It's an elevator.

In the top of the arch, I enjoyed the view of the Mississippi River and Cargill covered conveyor belt. I might not have been so happy if the top had been a seething mass of tourists, though.

Boarding the elevator to go back down, I clonked my head on the roof of the elevator car again.

And then I was out of the Arch and back in the bitter cold. I walked by the river, but not for very long. I noticed that the river tour company wasn't running tours. (Things printed a few months ago said that they'd be doing tours seven days a week all year; when I called up, they said they were just doing weekends until summer. The tourist business was rough all over.)

I walked back towards civilization. I wanted to catch the train, but I didn't even make it all the way there before my teeth were chattering. I stopped in at the Old Cathedral. It was old, but there wasn't much to look at. I checked out the Old Cathedral Museum in the basement. Maybe if I wanted to look at creepy old Catholic things, this would have been wildly exciting. Eventually, I convinced myself that I was warmed up. I exited and made my way to a MetroLink station.

I rode and walked to the SLU campus, and hooked up with Bryan so that we could attend a lecture presented by the SLU Math and Computer Science Club. Oh yes I did. There were signs up: "Polyominoes & Tilings By Dr. Darrin Speegle. It is very easy to cover an 8x8 chessboard with 32 dominoes, each domino covering exactly two of the squares on the board. But, what if we cut off two of the corners--can we cover the remaining 62 squares of the chessboard with 31 dominoes? What if we had "triominoes"--which squares can you remove and still cover the remaining 63 squares with 21 triominoes?"

Not of all of these puzzles were solvable. While half of the fun of math is doing stuff, the other half is proving which things are impossible. Even in those cases where you could solve the puzzle, you really wanted to figure out why you could solve it.

Professor Speegle let the lecture attendees--a motley assortment of students and professors--struggle for a while. Occasionally someone would call out a heckle or ask for clarification. I'd failed to faultlessly tile the 4x10, successfully tiled the 5x10, and was squeezing my brain to figure out why one would be possible but not the other. I never did, at least not before he told us the answers.

(You can't 1x6ly tile an 8x9, but I don't remember why not.
You can't 1x4ly tile a 10x10 even if you're allowed wraparounds. There are (at least) two ways to 1x6ly tile a 10x15 board with wraparound. No-one's really sure of the general rule for finding which wraparound tilings are possible, though people have pointed out some rules.
You can't faultlessly tile the 4x10 because... on the 4x10, each grid line must be blocked by two dominoes. (If you place one domino, and look at the line it blocks, you'll see that there's an odd number of empty squares on each side of the line. Since you can't tile an odd number of spaces with dominoes, you'll need to place another domino straddling that line.) On the 4x10, there's 3x9=27 grid lines to block, requiring 27x2=54 dominoes, more than you can fit on the board.)

After the lecture, Bryan and Professor Ford stuck around to talk about the wraparound tilings. Professor F. was looking at this on the blackboard and noted that m+n was (a+b)². He didn't think about it. He just looked at what was up there and spotted a way to put it together. Not only can mathematicians keep weird thoughts like "abelian group" in their heads, they're way better at algebra than you or I.

Bryan and I headed back to the house, stopping off at Tomatillo Taqueria to pick up some burritos. (The veggies in the veggie burrito were crunchier than I expected. Maybe next time I'll just go for the rice and bean burrito.)

Elissa got back home late. She was taking a class on teaching remedial math. The local school system forced her to take a bunch of teaching classes to make sure that any differences in math between New York City and St Louis don't affect her teaching. Last semester, she'd taken a class on teaching math. Teaching math is a lot like teaching remedial math, so much of this class is repeats for her. I asked if it was like taking a remedial class in teaching math, but she didn't hit me or anything.

Creighton and SIU were playing basketball on St Louis. We contemplated heading downtown to the local sports arena to watch. But it was still bitter cold out. We stayed home and watched it on TV instead. But the house was still cold. Bryan pointed out that there seemed to be something wrong with the thermostat. The heater wasn't even turning on. I went down to play with the thermostat during half-time. Trying to figure out what the buttons did, I cycled it between modes: from WARM to OFF to COOL to WARM. Suddenly, the heater turned on. I wondered if this was like Ctrl-Alt-Del for thermostats. As the house warmed up and the burrito digested, I got sleepier and sleepier.