You might have missed it, but yesterday here was a great race event in Rapid City. The Extreme Indoor Enduro was held at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. The arena was filled with trees, rocks and logs - all kinds of obstacles similar to what one might find out in the woods. The course was prepared for special four-wheelers to race at breakneck speed. It probably was interesting. But the main event was the opening. Before the main event with the motorized (and noisy) off road vehicles, the crowd was warmed up with heats of 2- to 5-year-olds on their Strider bikes. Striders were developed by Rapid City entrepreneurs. They are small bikes without pedals that teach children as young as 18 months to balance a bike and have a whole lot of human-powered fun. If you haven’t seen a preschooler on a Strider bike, you’ll be amazed at how fast they go. I didn’t make it down to the civic center. Actually, I’m not that interested in the racing 4-wheelers, but it probably was worth the price of admission to watch the preschoolers on their striders.

In other news . . .

The Battle of Enfarinats has concluded in Ibi, Spain. It is an annual festival just after Christmas that is a bit hard for outsiders to understand. The battle takes place between two groups: group of married men called Eis Enfrainats - who take control of the village for one day, pronouncing ridiculous laws and firing those who infringe them - and a group called La Oposicio, whose members try to restore order. The battle soon erupts into the streets where exchanges of firecrackers, flour, and eggs contribute to the general messiness an mayhem. I guess you have to be from Ibi to understand the nuances of the battle. Presumably by now the combatants have all had a chance for a shower and the money collected from the fines has been donated to charity. Order has been restored . . . until next year.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Hogmanay new year celebration in Edinburgh attracted people from more than 60 countries. I suppose there is some attraction to seeing a torchlight parade at night. But to my eyes, the outfits those Scotts wear are ridiculous. I guess I just prefer to wear trousers. And no, I don’t care what they wear underneath their kilts.

The Hubble Space Telescope continues to return amazing images to the earth. One of the newest images is of spiral galaxy ESO 373-8, located some 25 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy began life as a huge ball of slowly roaring gas. Collapsing in upon itself, it spun faster and faster, until a disc started to form. It is appropriate to use the past tense, since it took 25 million years for the light from the galaxy to travel to where the space telescope could capture it and make an image.

And the weather has been making news.

There was enough snow in Mexico last week to prompt the evacuation of the Nevado de Colima National Park in Zapotitan de Vadilo. Three days of snowfall is fairly unusual in Mexico and the sticky stuff piled up more than a foot deep.

It is snowy and cold all across the northern hemisphere, something that shouldn’t be a surprise, but folks around here are bracing for record cold during the first part of the week. A funeral that we plan to attend scheduled for Tuesday in Eagle Butte has been moved to Thursday. Forecasters say that the temperatures should be much warmer by the end of the week.

Folks in Chicago are bracing for record cold after getting mostly dug out from the blizzard that struck the city at the end of last week. The snowfall hit a wide swath from Chicago to the east coast. Arctic cold will follow this week to keep the weather in the headlines across much of the United States.

It isn’t as cold as was predicted for our town this morning, but the temperature is hovering near zero here at the house. I’m sure that the cold will keep some indoors, and I hope that people use common sense and realize that there is danger out there. On the other hand, we’ll be holding church as usual this morning. Although it is a day early, we are celebrating the festival of Epiphany, a great time of fun and games with actors playing the part of the wise men from the east and the “evil” King Herod. There are special treats for the children and fun for all as we celebrate.

Chances are that attendance at church will be light. People are still in a bit of a holiday mood, many attended extra services to celebrate Christmas, and the cold is a special threat to those who are suffering from other health conditions.

Cold didn’t often keep people away from church during the years that we lived and served in North Dakota. In fact, we used to say that 30 below raised church attendance. People didn’t want their neighbors to think that they couldn’t start their pickup trucks. Those who missed church because feeding cattle took longer in the cold weather almost always made it for the coffee hour following worship. Another thing that they say in North Dakota is that 30 below keeps the crime rate low. That’s a good thing, too, because a fair number of those folks who got their cars started in the frigid temperatures would leave them idling outside during the entire worship service. It is a bit hard for me to remember the days before cars had fuel injection, but we used a lot of little bottles of additive to keep moisture in fuel lines from freezing and we had plug-in head bolt heaters on our car. One winter, I kept taking the battery out of the car and bringing it inside the house just to keep it warm enough to power the extra cranking required to get the car going.

So stay warm and take lots of extra clothing when you head out.

But rest assured, church will be open as usual. It’s not THAT cold.

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