Friday, July 31, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Forty Six |
 |
| 7/31/09 |
| From Loveland, CO |
| To Larime, WY |
| 87.6 miles |
| 8.5 avg mph |
I hate the days when we have to pedal for more than 10 hours, especially when the day includes rain, headwinds, and darkness, not to mention a lack of bathrooms, a flat tire, and a frostbite scare.
The day started out well enough. Ten miles into the ride we reached Fort Collins, a pleasant town with nice parks and architecture. In keeping with the rest of Colorado, the town went above and beyond for cyclists: we got our own lane and our own crossing button.
I don't really have an explanation for the bee hive shed, but it was cool too.
Unfortunately, Fort Collins was the last bastion of civilization for a very long time. The open land was calming but lonely, and we were fighting a headwind that periodically threw handfuls of cold rain into our faces. The weather continued to worsen as we toiled along, miles away from shelter, and eventually the wet, the cold, and the need for a bathroom drove me into one of the tunnels under the highway meant for cows. I had to jump over barbed wire and scramble down a steep, rocky hill just to get to it, and then I discovered how awkward it can be to go to the bathroom outdoors for the first time (remember, I'm not a camper) but at least it was dry under there. Kyle and I talked about staying in the tunnel until the storm passed, but it wasn't clear when that would happen. Instead we reluctantly kept riding, but we always kept track of the distance from the last cow tunnel in case the rain was joined by lightning.
Between Fort Collins and our final destination we saw one open business. One. That's one open business, of any kind, the entire day. I was there and I still find it hard to comprehend. It was a gas station and convenience store that was known as Ted's Place when it opened in 1922, and it still thrives as a last stop for tourists on their way to do outdoorsy wilderness activities of one kind or another.
We bid Ted's Place adieu and returned to the rolling, rocky hills, unblotted by anything but the occasional antelope. The land was as empty as the plains of Kansas, but at least the scenery held more variety.
In my current contemplative state that solitary cow worried me for hours. How had it gotten to those empty hills all on its own? Where was its herd and its owner, and would they ever be reunited?
Regardless of their aesthetics, wide open spaces are frustrating when all you want are a roof, a bathroom, and lunch. But then we discovered something even worse: buildings that advertise all of those things but are closed. First we saw a giant restaurant and general store, but when we made our way to its doors we discovered that it had recently closed down, and the only things stirring in the area were a horse and its owner, who informed us that the only open business for miles around was the ski resort restaurant, miles and miles out of our way straight up a mountain, which we decided to skip.
Our next disappointment was a combination Post Office and Cafe. Well, that's what the signs said, but it had clearly not been operational for a while.
Further down the road was our favorite sign in the world, but below it was our least favorite sign in the world, so we were forced to ride on once again.
I did not, however, have to go to the bathroom in a tunnel or out in the elements again. Instead I took advantage of (what I hoped was) an honest-to-goodness working outhouse.
It belongs to a small church that serves what I assume is a small and widespread group of believers. Services are held just once a month, and in lieu of a parking lot there is a field that includes places to tie up horses. I really wish our visit had coincided with a service or just someone being there (unless they had a problem with me using the outhouse). I'd love to learn more about the few people who live out here, but I doubt we'll get the chance.
We already felt like we were in wild, western, wide open Wyoming, but we didn't actually cross over until early evening.
The last thing Colorado left us with was a group of wild horses:
And the first thing Wyoming greeted us with was a violent storm. It had been raining on and off all day, but just after we passed the border it started to really and truly downpour, and the horizon was lit up by lightning strikes. We circled back and took cover in a highway maintenance shed.
We clearly weren't the first to do so, since there was a fire pit, a few cans, and a glowstick.
We waited, and watched the storm, and called home, and took random photos, and waited some more.
Forty minutes later the sun was setting and the rain had begun to abate, so we ventured out of our shelter and onto the downhill that we'd earned with a grueling climb earlier. Soon the land flattened out again, and we watched the sunset reflecting off the wet road as we weaved around construction cones on our way to Larime.
It ended up being a much longer ride to Larime than we'd ever anticipated. The rain began again, combining with the night to chill us to the bone. Then a hunk of metal caught our tire and ripped a hole in it. Instead of screaming and throwing ourselves to the ground, which was our first inclination, Kyle wrestled with the tire and tube as I struggled to retrieve tools and a spare tube without being able to see well or stop my hands from shaking. With more difficulty than usual Kyle managed to get the new tube on, then rigged up a patch on the tire using a dollar bill. We climbed back on the bike and rode on (and on and on and on), even more freezing, stressed, and miserable than we were before. When we finally spotted lights on the horizon we celebrated, but they became the most depressing aspect of the trip yet. They never seemed to get any closer, as if the headwind was pushing us backwards and we would be pedaling fruitlessly all night long.
Somewhere along the way I lost feeling in my toes, and then the numbness spread upwards until it reached my ankles and I felt like I was pedaling with blocks. All of the mental tricks I'd used during other miserable rides were insufficient for this. I don't think I cried, though I wanted to; I think I just went blank and kept pedaling because there was nothing else to do.
A century later when we reached town our ordeal still wasn't over. We stopped at the first hotel we saw, a Ramada; the guy behind the desk was great (though I don't know what a fabulous NYC artist type was doing in middle of nowhere Wyoming) but didn't have any first floor rooms available. We wanted to avoid carrying the bike up any stairs if possible, so we decided to check with the Motel 6 right behind the Ramada, not realizing that we'd have to ride a long loop around both of them because the parking lots were separated by open land that had turned into a swamp. The only room left at the Motel 6 hadn't been cleared for habitation, and when the receptionist let us check it we could smell why. She was nice enough to call the Ramada back for us and secure a room, however; at this point I would have carried the bike up seven floors to get to a warm shower. We decided to walk the bike through the muddy shortcut this time, and arrived in the Ramada lobby looking like we needed a drink, according to our friend behind the desk who gave us two complimentary tickets for the hotel bar.
We carried the bike upstairs and ordered pizza from whatever restaurant happened to advertise on the room key. Kyle was eager to use the drink tickets so he headed back downstairs, but I was more interested in showering and crawling under a pile of blankets until the food arrived. The hot water felt unbelievably wonderful everywhere but my feet, which stung painfully as they came back to life. I looked down at them and had to choke back a scream: my feet were completely blue. It looked like the day after a sprained ankle, when all the blood collects. I started to panic, wondering if it meant that I was close to frostbite. I finished my shower and ran to the bed, piling on every blanket in the room and trying to massage my feet back to their normal color. When Kyle came in I showed him my feet, now a mixture of pink and purple, but he looked fairly unconcerned and just laughed when I regarded them with panic. Apparently Kyle was very familiar with blue feet -- and the fact that they return to normal after 20 minutes or so -- thanks to all his winters in upstate New York. I felt rather sheepish, but I'm still pretty sure colorful feet are a bad sign.
We got to sleep somewhere around midnight, stuffed with pizza, back to our normal color, and finally something close to warm. I don't really want to think about what awaits us tomorrow. Wyoming hasn't exactly been welcoming so far, and I have a feeling it won't get any easier.
| posted at: 02:13 |
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Friday, July 31, 2009
Glad that we had covered an additional ten miles the previous night, we decided to spent a little bit of time exploring Ft Collins, the next city down the road. It was a fairly flat ride, and we moved quickly. As we explored Ft Collins we were immediately impressed by the bike infastructure. They even had specially positioned buttons for cyclists to use.
We stopped for a while at the library, hoping to use the bathroom and explore. A good library is high on the list of requirements for wherever we decide to live. After waiting twenty minutes we realized that we didn't actually have the time and got back on the bike. We found a gas station, stopped for the bathroom and supplies, and got back on the road.
But just down the road we found an outdoor supply store. Knowing there wouldn't be much in the area we were traveling today, we stopped to see if we could find anything that was light, but would also keep us dry and maybe a little warm. After perusing most of their equipment, we decided on a Tube Tent
. It's very thin, and it doesn't even have poles, but its very light. We also grabbed thin emergency bags and a trowel
, just in case.
We followed US-287 through some very scenic, if barren terrain.
Our first stop was at Ted's Place, a little gas station and jumping off point for back country trekking.
Ted's place really was the middle of nowhere, and it was actually the most populated place we'd be in until the end of the day.
The hills we passed were jagged, with occasional cuts in them. It almost felt like the Wild West.
No, really. It was empty.
At Livermore we spotted a gas station at a distance and raced to it, excited to have found somewhere with some food and a bathroom. But when we got there we found the gas station long since closed. We stopped at a the Post Office, hopeful maybe they'd let us use their bathroom or tell us about a secret location where we could buy lunch, but the only open location was a ski resort over ten miles away and on top of a hill.
Saw an awesome creek going going underground.
Perhaps as was to be expected, the weather turned bad mid afternoon.
Worse, wind picked up significantly. We couldn't move, lucky to be traveling five or six miles an hour.
After struggling for several hours, we passed a church on our way to Virginia Dale. It met once a month. There was a hitching area for horses. There was a (We think) functioning outhouse.
Virginia Dale was rather underwhelming.
Soon the terrain got more rugged, shifting to broken up rock.
We then saw the best thing in the world: a rest area sign. It was shortly followed by a sign that said in big, black letters on a bright orange background: CLOSED. We nearly cried. It was cold. Windy. We struggled to make any progress at all. Virginia Dale marked the Rubicon for us. If we turned back it would take longer to get back to Fort Collins than it would for us to just press on to Laramie.
When we reached the Wyoming border we had a very, very short celebration.
We rode on, almost a quarter mile before we started to see lightning on the horizon on three sides. We turned around just as the rain started, making it to shelter at a highway barn. Judging from the fire pit on the ground and the markings on the wall, we were not the first to take shelter there.
It was pouring outside, and getting cold. Jillian and I both put on as much clothing as we had, wrapping up in our tights, wool socks, and as many shirts as we could muster. As the rain got worse, we stared long and hard at the emergency tube tent. I found anchors on the walls where we could attach the ropes. We took inventory of our food. But then the rain seemed to slow, and it started to seem like it might break, at least for a while. I called home for a weather update. The best my father could tell us was that it looked bad to our south, but that if we rode north we might be able to stay out of the weather. We climbed back on and continued our ride uphill into Wyoming.
US-287 climbs to over 8000 feet a couple of miles north of the Colorado border. We'd started at 5200. The good news is that we'd be dropping over 800 before we got to Laramie. We enjoyed a fast downhill over wide open terrain. Jillian took some shots of the sunset.
Soon construction started, and we were stuck weaving in and out of barrels. We rapidly flatted, due to a nasty piece of wire. In the rapidly failing sunlight and cold I changed the tire. I put a new tube in, but noticed damage on the inside of the tire. We ended up using a dollar bill as a boot.
By the time I finished changing the tire I was starting to freeze. Jillian wasn't much better. We climbed back on the bike and rode, looking and hoping for any kind of shelter on the way. Then it started to rain.
We froze. There was no light, only a drizzle and a cold wind. For miles we didn't see any buildings at all, we were lucky to even see the road surface. Miles later, far off in the distance we could just barely make out lights. We stared at them, still pedaling. The lights didn't look like buildings. They were shaped like weird triangles, with lights out at odd angles. There were no lights all the way to the horizon, just that weird pattern of lights in the center.
Over time they grew in size. With the cold, they started looking like some weird ice station. Since the Wyoming basin is so empty and flat, we could see forever. When we did arrive, we were frozen solid. We estimated temperatures were in the low fifties, since the whole previous week lows had been in the 40s throughout Wyoming. Sometime late, we pulled in the first hotel we came across, a Ramada Inn.
Inside we met the very openly gay hotel clerk, who was a surprising first person to meet in Wyoming. He was very helpful, but there weren't any first floor rooms. He directed us to the Motel 6 down the street. We rode back out into the cold.
At the Motel 6 we talked to a delightful young woman who let us know that there were actually no rooms at all, except for an under construction smoking room. We took a look, but between the lack of a bathroom counter top and the overpowering stench of smoke we decided to move on. The Motel 6 clerk called the Ramada Inn back, who agreed to hold a room for us until we rode back. We did, again in the cold.
Back at the Ramada Inn, we got a second floor room, and Jillian and I started the process of carrying all of our stuff upstairs. We ordered some pizza, which was the only thing available so late at night. I took advantage of the two free drink tickets and went to the hotel bar. Jillian tried to take a shower.
When I returned to the room I found Jillian shivering in bed. While in the shower she'd found that her feet were purple, and started to freak out a little. With my knowledge of very cold NY winters I calmed her down a bit, just in time for a pizza to arrive, which we promptly devoured. We weren't able to get to sleep until nearly one in the morning, which was much too late to get any sleep at all.
Today was a horrible day.
| posted at: 01:20 |
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Forty Five |
 |
| 7/30/09 |
| From Aurora, CO |
| To Loveland, CO |
| 90.6 miles |
| 10.3 avg mph |
This morning we said goodbye to Dave and Pickle's house, to Aurora, and to relaxation.
We were eager to ride the extensive network of paved trails, which took us over bridges, through parks full of friendly people, and alongside the mountains.
In the more populated areas we could use the multi-use paths, which were essentially wide sidewalks that pedestrians were expected to share with cyclists. Once again, I love Colorado right now.
We passed nature's condos -- a prairie dog community and a wall of stones populated by various furry creatures -- before spotting a colorful community under construction where we'd like to live ourselves.
A large part of the apartments' appeal was their location right in between Denver and Boulder. We'd heard great things about Boulder, so at the last minute we decided to visit it instead of going through Cheyenne. To get there, however, we had to deal with hastily written directions (I would be reading the cue sheet and suddenly every turn would be followed by a question mark) and bad weather. At first it was just a light mist that barely bothered us, in fact I was enjoying the riding more than usual. Just as I was about to comment on how much fun I was having, we hit a downhill and were pummelled by a cold and stinging rain. By the time we reached developed land we were soaked and shivering, so we ducked into a Panera to warm up with soup and giant cups of hot cocoa.
We met an older female cyclist there who was also braving the rain, and we rode out of the Panera with her for a short time. As we approached downtown Boulder, we could already see why it was known as a cyclist's paradise. Not only were there bike routes everywhere, but they were humorously named, marked with signs, and divided into lanes. We were in absolute awe.
Everywhere we looked, we saw more signs that we should move to Boulder: a real estate company called Pedal Properties that led house tours on bicycles, a combination fitness and rock climbing gym, ultimate frisbee dominating the cover of Boulder magazine, more coffee shops than I could count, and an expansive pedestrian mall that outshone the one in Charlottesville.
Oh, and those brightly dressed figures in the first photo? Kids dressed in 80s garb giving out free hugs. It was still dreary and wet out, but we wandered around with huge grins on our faces as we imagined how amazing it would be to live in Boulder. Kyle even had me take a picture of a map showing nearby private schools where I could apply to teach. We are completely, utterly, irreparably Boulder-obsessed and we spent less than an hour there. I'm honestly not sure that coastal Oregon will be able to top it.
After we left Boulder, which we obviously did very reluctantly, we were greeted with an end to the rain and a bright rainbow to boot.
We flew down a highway with a generous bike lane, and once again I felt glad to be on the bike and exhilirated by the ride. It's amazing what time off and a slight tailwind can do for your cycling spirits.
In Longmont we stopped at a bike shop; it was nice to do so by choice and not necessity. We admired the newest beauties in the Trek line and bought a water bottle to replace the one that I had partially broken a while back but stubbornly continued to use. We also discovered another reason to move to the area: a weekly community bike ride involving costumes and other frivolity.
In the small towns beyond Longmont, we encountered a series of interesting sights:
School's Out For... forever, hopefully. Or they need a better maintenance crew.
Raptor Sighting!
Bibles + Wigs = Genius. Why did no one ever think of this combination before?
We reached Loveland by early evening, not bad for a 90 mile day. The Super 8 was completely booked, so we ended up at a Quality Inn with stained towels and a raging party outside our room. Not ideal, certainly, but I'm still overwhelmed with love for this part of Colorado, so I'll let it slide.
| posted at: 02:12 |
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Finally back on the road.
We weren't actually sure where we were going to end up today. A few miles north of Pickle and Dave's we'd need to make a decision about if we were going through Boulder or Cheyenne.
Once again we started early, mostly to avoid the traffic on Havana Street. We rode nearly straight north for 4 miles until Havana Street abruptly disappeared. What looked like a big construction project was in our way, forcing us to explore a detour for a while. We added an extra mile looking around, in the rather dim, wet, cold morning.
At mile six, we had to make our decision. Further north would take us to US-85. West would take us along the Sand Creek Greenway and then to Boulder. I still didn't have an opinion, not sure I wanted to ride in the cold so soon. Jillian was sure. She wanted to ride to Boulder, which we'd always heard was awesome.
We turned down the Sand Creek Greenway, which was as advertised: sandy. But it rapidly got better, eventually even turning into pavement. The trails were actually pretty awesome, with wide bridges and lines on the pavement. The only thing they were lacking was any signage at all. It was actually an incredible pain to figure out which turns to make.
We followed the trails of Denver for some time, occasionally stopping and digging out the GPS in order to figure out how which direction to turn. The trails were sometimes on sidewalks, sometimes on dedicated paths, sometimes on the road, at once in a mall parking lot. Just over twenty miles in, we stopped at a McDonalds to warm up and get some food. We also noticed how sore we were, even five days off the bike was enough to make us feel slow.
Just over twenty-six miles in and after crossing the Boulder-Denver turnpike we saw a pretty awesome mixed use development.
We're not usually fans of big developments, but this one almost seemed to have some personality. Bike paths nearby, not far away from the highway, and far enough away from Denver that it didn't feel like the city. A little close to the metropolitan airport. From there we just kept climbing up a long hill. We were a couple hundred feet above the city below when it started raining. We didn't know what to do but ride on, but when we turned and the speed picked up the rain simply started to hurt. The big raindrops felt like hail.
Fortunately, at the bottom of the hill we found a Panera. Soon we had big, warm hot chocolates.
It took a lot of effort, but we were eventually able to drag ourselves back outside and ride the last few miles to Boulder. Boulder had amazing, amazing bike paths.
We navigated to downtown via the Broadway Boogie path, following the Bison signs. The University of Colorado looked awesome, but what really grabbed us was Pearl Street. Pearl Street is Boulder's pedestrian mall, with lots of fun shops and restaurants.
We did a lap, admiring the scenery and the buildings, then walked the length of the mall. We enjoyed the 80s themed free hug group.
It was hard to drag ourselves away from Boulder, but we needed to move a lot farther north before nightfall. We had a fast ride along the Diagonal highway on the way to Longmont, enjoying the ample bike lanes even on a major highway. Due to the wind, we were able to arrive in Longmont faster than originally planned. Longmont was one of the places we thought about spending the night, but we had arrived so early we weren't sure what to do. We decided to stop at a bike shop and see if we could find a new water bottle for Jillian.
Because Jillian's water bottle sits in a velcro strapped cage right between her legs, it's very easy for her legs to scrape against the bottle. If the bottle isn't built just right it can make a very painful ride. We didn't find anything though.
We found US-287 and headed north, having a fairly quiet ride right until dusk to make it to Loveland. In Loveland we found our way to a cluster of hotels. We found the price at the Super 8 a little high and instead opted for a room at the Quality Inn. We had dinner at a little place next door called Three Margaritas. It wasn't too long before we went to bed, rather happy that we'd gotten back on the road at last. As nice as it always feels to sit for a while, forward motion always feels better.
| posted at: 01:20 |
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
We reached Denver safely - though very late at night - on Thursday and had several days to hang out with Dave and Pickle and to get some work done while we waited for our bike to be repaired. While Kyle updated the route on the website and mapped out the rest of our travels, Jillian uploaded and organized photos. Days 1-13 now include photos from the big camera and more Days/Sets with photos from both cameras are being added. There are also new entries from Jillian and hopefully Kyle will be able to post later today; as always you can click on our photos above to read them.
We plan to set off on the bike tomorrow. Getting to Oregon will require a number of 100+ mile days, so posting may be even spottier than usual, but we'll do our best.
| posted at: 18:29 |
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
We kind of didn't leave today.
We'd spent so much time last night trying to plan everything that we'd gone to bed much too late to be worth anything today. We got up, gave Ryan a call to let him know that we'd be leaving a day later (and that we'd be watching the bird for one more day), and then got back to work blogging and planning. I spent a large portion of the day very carefully making cue cards that had routes for every possible choice, and spent even more time researching approximately what hotels would cost.
Tomorrow.
| posted at: 02:13 |
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty Three |
 |
| 7/28/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
We were off to see the wizard, the one who would put our Hase Pino back together. The bike shop hadn't actually called us to say that it was done, but we were tired of waiting around the house so we grabbed Pickle and Dave's mountain bikes and rode them to downtown Englewood. To get there we took a network of trails, most of which were paved; I love this state.
We had a rough start before we got to the trails, however, when we discovered how bad we are at communicating when we're on two separate bikes instead of one. Several times I didn't understand Kyle's directions or he didn't give them quickly enough and it took time to adjust and not get frustrated with each other. I enjoyed the freedom of riding upright and being able to race each other, but I'll be glad to get our tandem back.
We weren't going to get it back right away, however; we reached the bike shop only to discover that it was still closed. We spotted the oh-so-appropriate Spicy Pickle sub shop across the street and decided to have lunch there while we waited. It was very cheery and everything was delicious except, ironically, for the spicy pickle, which was a little too hot for me.
By the time we were done the bike shop was open and to our surprise they were expecting us. They had finished up the bike and called us while we were on our way over. Recumbent Bikes & Trikes was all kinds of cool, from the bike rack to the window display to the four-person bikes suspended from the ceiling.
The owners and workers were great. They told us stories -- about everything from using newspaper as jersey insulation to couples who should really not be on a tandem together -- from all the different rides they'd done themselves or supported from their impressively stocked van. I really wish we could hire them to come with us the rest of the way.
We couldn't take all of the bikes back with us at once, though we did briefly consider whether I could hold the mountain bikes and roll them along beside the tandem. We decided that we weren't quite that talented, so we rode the mountain bikes back and then asked Ryan to drive us back to the bike shop so that we could get the tandem and ride it home. It took a lot of traveling and coordinating, but we were finally back on our bike, and it felt great. We got goofy, as we so often do: I misunderstood something Kyle said and thought that ambulances sometimes used the bike paths, and when Kyle made fun of how preposterous that was, I imagined that we were on a half-sized ambulance that wreaked havoc on the trails and had a theme song along with a siren. Watch out for Jilly's Ambulance.
When we got back it was early evening and there was still so much packing and planning to do. We were hoping to leave tomorrow, bright and early, but when we were still working steadily on everything after midnight we realized it just wasn't going to happen. Instead we'll spend one more day in Aurora, which could be the last break we take until we finish our long, hard push to the coast.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Today we started to wonder just where in the world our bike was. So we thought maybe we'd head over to the bike shop and see what was up. And, since we'd spent most of yesterday and the day before inside, we thought we'd try out Denver's fantastic network of bike trails, using Dave and Pickle's bikes.
After heading up to Expo Park and checking out the frisbee golf course (we didn't have a chance to play), we followed the canal trail most of the way across town to the bike shop, arriving a little after noon. It was a little bit different to be riding on individual bikes for once.
When we got to the shop, we were pleased to find out that they'd actually been trying to get in touch with us much of the morning. The bike was apparently pretty close to ready. The rear wheel rim had actually cracked in three places. The cassette was getting completely replaced. All of our chain needed to be replaced. We were going to get a new freehub. It would end up being close to $600 in repairs. But we could be on the road again in the morning. We hopped back in the bikes and went to the Spicy Pickle for lunch.
We headed back to Dave and Pickle's, enjoying the trails of Denver. Once there, we called Ryan up, who gave us a ride back to the bike shop so that we could ride the Pino all the way back to Pickle and Dave's. Riding back the second time was a bit more fun. For one, we knew where we were going. Second, the Pino felt like it could fly. Everything actually worked. Shifting, coasting, the brakes. On the way back we were having some legitimate conversation about emergencies that might arise on the bike paths when Jillian got confused and started thinking I was talking about ambulances driving down the bike paths. Thus we started the Jillian ambulance service, which consisted of a little mini truck that flew down the bike pathways, running over pedestrians in order to rescue people. It wasn't long before we had a song.
We stopped at a grocery store outside Dave and Pickle's to pick up some dinner and snacks in case we did decide to ride on. Our usual plan is for one of us to go in while the other waits with the bike. Jillian went inside and I called home to keep them appraised of our plans. I also gave every bit of small change (pennies, nickels, and dimes) to a woman who got all but violent telling me how hard life was as a woman and begging at the same time. It was a little bizarre.
Back at Pickle and Dave's we were in high spirits again. I sat down and looked for places we could cut miles.
Our first change was to switch our destination from Portland to Florence. It would mean losing those two days riding along the Pacific, but those were extra days, if you really think about it. Savings: about 275 miles.
Second change was to switch the route to move through southern Idaho instead of Montana. Flatter land. Savings: 250 miles.
That was almost a week of time. About as much time as we'd lost in Denver. We'd be losing out on two of the rides we really wanted to do, but we'd at least get to make it. We threw out our plans to reserve a car and drive to Oregon and back and shifted to getting ready. Jillian did some laundry, packed out stuff and tried to get as much blogging done as possible. I rewrote cue cards, updated the route online. Batteries were charged. Chuck
was watched.
We also thought about modifying our first day out of Denver. Rather than ride north to Cheyenne we'd ride north through Boulder and Loveland, then turn west at Fort Collins and skip Cheyenne all together. The road would be significantly more barren, but we'd have a somewhat shorter first day to ease back into riding. Plus we'd get to see Boulder.
One of the last things we talked about was shelter. We knew we'd have a very, very long day in Wyoming. For several days we'd been talking about purchasing a tent or having my parents ship us a tent. Ultimately we decided the weight would be too much, and we instead decided to see if we could find something lighter. We went to bed, anxious at the thought of getting up and leaving the house we'd come to rather enjoy. Thank you Dave and Pickle!
| posted at: 01:19 |
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Monday, July 27, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty Two |
 |
| 7/26/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
I have a confession to make.
I've never truly considered quitting, packing up, flying back, and ending the trip entirely. Not in Pennsylvania, when my new shoes were tearing up my achilles tendons. Not in Maryland, when a large part of Kyle wanted to stop and offered multiple arguments for doing so. Not in Indiana, when we had a long talk about just how empty and impossible Wyoming would be. Never...until this week.
The bike is still being repaired and we can't be sure about when we'll get it back. We hadn't planned to spend so many days here, and now we're running out of time for the rest of the trip. We're currently on Day 42. Thanks to work, Kyle must be on a plane by Day 64, and we'd really like some time to explore Oregon before that happens. Can we really make it to the coast in twenty days or less?
We spent much of yesterday and today searching googlemaps and hotel sites, trying to figure out if it was possible, and talking seriously to each other, trying to figure out if we wanted it to be possible. I never wanted to quit before because there was never a good enough reason to do so. I'm a stubborn, driven person, and I thought we should be able to push through all of the small stuff and even the not so small stuff to accomplish what we set out to do, and what we promised everyone else we were going to do, whether they believed us or not. But now there's a chance that we'll be stopped by forces outside our control. If it becomes physically impossible to make it across, no one could blame us for quitting, not even ourselves. Right?
We tried to get used to the idea of ending the trip early. And as we discussed alternative plans, we started to feel relieved, even excited. We could ship the broken bike back home and not have to worry about it anymore. We could spend more time in Aurora, see Pickle and Dave when they got back, and then return to the realm of the blue demon horse and fly home to enjoy the rest of our summer. Our downtime in Aurora has reminded us just how nice it is to relax in one place without any pressing responsibilities. Or we could rent a car and drive to Oregon and have plenty of time to tour it, something we'll barely get to do even if do we make it there by bike. And if we wanted to, we could fly into Denver next summer with our bike and finish the rest of the trip. That would almost be the same, right? I didn't want to admit it, but that plan started to sound more and more appealing, and I started to come to terms with abandoning the trip here and now. Of course I would always rather finish what we'd started, but I started to believe that if the bike was beyond a quick repair it wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
But we couldn't completely come to grips with it, not so long as there was a chance we'd be getting the bike back soon. No matter how nice a relaxing, bike-free August sounded, the part of us that was still dedicated to finishing this trip the right way kept looking at maps and planning out a route. It would take a number of very long days, sometimes several in a row, but it was doable if we didn't run into any other major setbacks. We would also have to be a little insane. (Check.) It's going to take a lot out of us, and we still can't be sure that we'll have time to make it all the way across, but we've pursued this dream so far already that we both feel like it would be just as crazy not to go for it. Somehow after two days of talking, planning, and vacillating, we found ourselves recommitting to this crazy endeavor all over again.
Here we come, West, whether you and we like it or not
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Sunday, July 26, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty One |
| |
| 7/25/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
The bike repairs are going to keep us in Aurora for another day or two, but unfortunately our timing doesn't coincide with Pickle and Dave's. They're off on a trip to Mexico that they've had planned for a while. Fortunately they're letting us stay in their home for as long as we need, but this morning was our last chance to hang out with them. After breakfast and a flurry of last minute packing we took them off to the airport.
As we exited the highway, a blue horse with burning eyes reared up out of the grass.
On the one hand I think it's pretty stunning, on the other hand, I wonder who on earth would want to face a demonic equine with glow-in-the-dark eyes on their way to board a plane. Then Dave explained the highly disturbing story behind the already disturbing statue: its original creator, Luis Jimenez, was killed when part of the horse fell and crushed him during construction. I'm a bit afraid to even put its photo up.
Having escaped the airport and the blue mustang, Kyle and I spent the rest of the day doing nothing exciting. We blogged, we googlemapped, we played with Don Quixote, we tried out the Snuggie cult craze, we lounged.
Tomorrow is looking like more of the same, so don't expect a long, exciting, photo-filled entry. Pickle was kind enough to leave us with a list of tourist sites, but we don't have our bike, neither of us is very comfortable driving Pickle's very persnickety car, and honestly we both just want to not move for a little while. Hopefully we'll be picking up the bike tomorrow or the next day, however, so we can get back on the road again, whether we like it or not.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Sunday, July 26, 2009
Today started bright and early with a trip to take Pickle and Dave to the airport. The Denver airport has a particular sculpture out front.
Blue Mustang is a scary sculpture. The eyes glow red at night. Worst of all, a section of the statue fell on the sculptor, Luis Jimenez, killing him.
When we got back to Pickle's, Jillian got to work blogging on Cooper. I took advantage of Dave and Pickle's computer to do some route planning.
We may have also played some Wii Fit.
We were discovering a problem. I needed to return to school on August 24th, less than a month away. We still had 2000 miles to go. We weren't sure that was possible, especially if we had serious mechanical problems again. We spent a long time down in the basement, debating if we could do this at all.
We may have also watched some Chuck.
We finished the day not sure. But I did map the route north in to Wyoming. Right now the plan is to go to Cheyanne, head west to Rawlins, and follow the ACA route the rest of the way. We're really looking forward to two things. First, the ride along the Pacific Coast. Beautiful ocean to our West, with regular little towns on the route. We're also very much looking forward to the ride along the river in Idaho. We'd lose almost 3000 feet in just over 100 miles.
It was a little cold in Pickle's basement, so we rooted around for some blankets. We found Snuggies
! Once we had initiated ourselves into the Cult of the Snuggie, we let Don out for a little while.
Don, of course pooped on everything.
| posted at: 01:19 |
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty |
 |
| 7/25/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
Today we went up the highest paved road in North America, which winds its way up Mount Evans.
Local wildlife included mountain goats and marmots, both very cute.
At the summit we wandered through the unlucky Crest House, which was built for a wife who died young and was eventually destroyed in a propane explosion.
We rode to the summit in a car, but plenty of people were riding up on bicycles (including some really badass Russians). Usually I would have felt a mixture of jealousy and shame that I wasn't there with them, but there is no way I would want to ride such a steep and treacherous path in today's weather, which included a hail storm and a thick fog.
The dismal weather meant we had to eat our picnic lunches in the car: giant, delicious subs from Lenny's, their favorite sub shop. Then we wound our way through the fog down the steep, sharply turning road without any guardrails. It was exceptionally nerve-wracking, especially for someone who is used to bike speeds, but we made it down safely.
And on the way home we got to see this awesome UFO house.
Fortunately the weather sort of cleared up by the evening, when we were due to attend a Rockies game. You know what is awesome about the Rockies? Well, I'm about to tell you.
1. Tickets are dirt cheap and available at grocery stores. Our tickets were $7.00 each, regular price.
2. Fans are allowed to bring in their own food. Most minor league parks don't even allow that!
3. Coors Field has a delicious tradition: fans are encouraged to consume vast quantities of pistachios and leave the shells on the ground. I'm already a verifiable, certifiable pistachio addict, so I was in heaven.
4. They have all of the little entertainments and diversions that most MLB ballparks have, plus center field fountains go off for every home run.
A big part of me wants to move to Denver, buy what I assume are inexpensive season tickets, and become a hardcore Rockies fan (except for when they play the Braves). I'm not used to rooting for the home team (Phillies? No thank you) so rooting for the Rockies and watching them beat the Giants 8-2 was icing on the cake. Or pistachios on the ground. Or something. In any case, it was a fantastic way to spend an evening, and even Kyle was glad that we went.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
Today was set to be our first day in a while as real tourists. First stop? Mount Evans
Mt Evans is the highest paved road in North America, a staggering 14,264 feet above sea level. Dave and Pickle were worried about our getting altitude sickness, but were optimistic that our weeks of acclimating to Denver's 5000 foot elevation would help. We loaded extra clothing and water into the car (dehydration exacerbates altitude sickness symptoms) and set off.
From the interstate, we saw something that resembled a UFO.
We started at just about 7,600 feet. At 10,000 feet we turned onto Mt Evans Rd and started the real climb. At 12,800 feet we stopped at Summit Lake to take pictures.
Dave and Pickle were like mountain goats, and flew all over the rocks.
Jillian and I were a little slower, not really having proper footwear and for the first time noticing a distinct shortness of breath.
The first lake behind us was just over a thousand feet below us.
We also noticed a little kid having serious trouble with the altitude, and throwing up near the bathroom. After making sure she was getting some attention, we got back in the car and drove upward.
Another 1400 feet higher up, we pulled into the parking lot. It was very foggy and windy. We took shelter at the ruins of the Crest House.
The ruins had been a gift shop and restaurant for some time, and at one time had been the highest building in the world. It had caught fire in a propane explosion and burned down.
We also caught sight of a Marmot.
We actually saw quite a few cyclists climbing this road, which we thought was very impressive. Never were able to snap a picture, though.
Just as we were about to climb the last few steps to the top of the summit a park ranger came out to let us know lightning was in the area. We retreated to the car, just in time for hail.
After the hail had cleared off, we started back down the mountain, spotting cyclists who had apparently climbed through the hail.
On the ride back down we decided that if we weren't going to be able to finish our actual trip to Oregon, we'd settle for riding the tandem up to the top of Mt Evans, even if it took us all day.
We returned to Denver just in time to go to a Rockies game. The seats were less than $10 a piece, making this the least expensive fun activity we'd done all trip. They even let us bring our own snacks into the stadium, meaning Jillian spent the entire game downing pistachio nuts.
Then it was back to Dave and Pickle's house, since they needed to get some sleep for their plane trip the next morning. Dave and Pickle were leaving for Guatemala in the morning and we were lucky we'd been able to make it to Denver before they left. We'd be dropping them off at the airport and then house sitting for a while while the bike was broken. At the same time it was a sad reminder that we hadn't made it to Pickle's house nearly as fast as we wanted.
| posted at: 01:19 |
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Friday, July 24, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Nine |
| |
| 7/24/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
The Hase Pino is out of our hands and at the bike shop. It looks like we'll have to be without it for several days at least, because there is a lot to fix and some of it requires parts to be shipped in. We're eventually going to have take a serious look at our schedule to figure out how to make up the time, but for now we're just enjoying the break.
We wanted to visit Dave at his museum job, but that plan fell through when he got out early. Instead, we enjoyed downtime at the house, admiring the incredible work they've done on pretty much every surface of their home, playing on their Wii Fit for hours (because, you know, we haven't been getting enough exercise lately) and laughing at the antics of their pet bird, Don Quixote.
He helped Pickle make us a delicious breakfast.
He flew around the house, periodically landing on our heads and other round objects.
And he demonstrated his bobbing, cooing mating dance. He seems especially attracted to hands and feet.
At night we had dinner and drinks on the back porch with Ryan and Adrienne, who are also Gettysburg alums and part of the reason that Dave and Pickle moved out here. It was really great to get to know them (they were at Gettysburg before my time) and their infant daughter, whom they are already training to be a left handed sports star. Dave built a fire and we concluded the relaxing night together roasting s'mores and watching the flames.
| posted at: 02:10 |
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Friday, July 24, 2009
Since we'd finally arrived in Denver, it was time to take the bike in for some real help. Pickle had done quite a bit of research for us, and with her help we were able to select Recumbent Bikes, Trikes, and Tandems in Englewood. But first we had to be introduced to Don Quixote.
Don Quixote helped Pickle make breakfast.
Pickle and I had a terrible time finding the bike shop, which had the wrong address listed in Google (its actually on Broadway). When we eventually got there I was ecstatic to discover that the owners were familiar with our bike! Plus they were tandem riders themselves. We dropped the bike off and they promised to call soon with an estimate.
On our return to Pickle and Dave's, we played the Wii Fit. For a long time. It said we were very old.
Our friends Ryan and Adrienne joined the four of us for dinner on the back patio. Afterward, we made some marshmallows over a fire before turning into bed.
| posted at: 01:19 |
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Eight |
 |
| 7/23/09 |
| From Colorado Springs, CO |
| To Aurora, CO |
| 93.8 miles |
| 10.4 avg mph |
We were apprehensive to do any more riding on dirt, but the bike trail we took promised to turn into pavement after a few miles, and thankfully it did.
It became a nice, shaded ride that led us to the America the Beautiful Park, featuring a giant, rotating sculpture and fountain.
After using the park bathroom, which had no stall doors, freezing metal seats, and a spastic autoflush (I've had worse) we got going again. A detour around some construction allowed us to see more of Colorado Springs, including a railroad depot and the university; gotta love a city that not only has bike paths, but has well-planned bike detours too. Back on the Pikes Peak Greenway, we passed a BMX park, a random suit of armor, and a solar-powered bird house, or so I insisted to Kyle at the time.
The best stop along the way was a bike shop that was more than ready for the Tour de France.
Of course they had a television showing coverage of the Tour, so I camped out in front of it quite happily while Kyle wandered the store fruitlessly looking for tubes in the right size. I was watching a replay of earlier events, but I hadn't checked the results the night before so it didn't make a difference to me... Until a woman came up and told me how it ended. Barely a hello before informing me "he finishes fourth in this stage." Is this woman an idiot in general or just about sports? I really wish I had told her off instead of just nodding my head in disbelief until she went away. Luckily, the other woman I met there, a seasoned recumbent rider, was really nice and normal and wanted to talk about touring cycling, not the race I was watching. I also learned more about the major races for female cyclists thanks to old posters for Tour Feminin. I really need to get up to speed on these things.
Fueled by delicious Cliff Mojo bars, we headed back to the trail, which became increasingly difficult to navigate. We had to ride, or occasionally carry the bike, up steep hills with logs across them to stop erosion. It got a little crazy. Eventually we pulled off the trail at the only nearby lunch option: a McDonalds that was having a lot of problems. The AC was broken, the floor under the soda machine was flooded, and the bathroom was apparently subpar; I actually thought it was super nice, but everyone else in there was whining about it. I did, however, have a problem with the bathrooms at our next stop: a park where the flush toilets were dangerously clogged up and the porta-potty was literally filled to the brim. It was indescribably disgusting. The park views almost made up for it (but not quite).
Mountains and trees! I finally feel like we're in Colorado and not Coloransus.
It was clear that we were riding through desirable land, the realm of the extremely affluent who can afford to build mansions on acres of undeveloped land and who golf together at a driving range with stunning views and a downhill advantage.
When we got to Lakespur we stopped at a country store with astonishly overpriced can goods, a charming outdoor dining area, and absolutely scrumptious rootbeer freezes.
We then had to decide whether to take the interstate or hilly backroads. As much as I love a flat shortcut, the interstate just looked too busy to be safe, so we took the long way. The hills were tiring but surmountable, and it all evened out when we got to coast down a long and luxurious downhill, topping out at 44 miles per hour without trying. We also got to pass a Renaissance Faire (which we initially thought and hoped was another mansion under construction) and a white horse that ran eagerly towards us like something out of a fairy tale.
We also passed a railroad yard, where Kyle decided to stop and count the train cars. I wish I was kidding.
The railroad yard was just outside of the small town of Castle Rock, a name that makes perfect sense as soon as you see the massive natural structure overlooking it.
They also have a roller derby team nearby, as well as a rival team in Denver; I don't think I can sufficiently express my disappointment that we won't be in the area for any of their matches. We got a little lost in downtown Castle Rock, and as always seems to happen getting lost meant climbing extra hills. Eventually we got out and on the open road again, which turned out to be an awful time. With evening came the gnats; insufferable clouds of them came and went in front of our faces, flowing into every orifice. I held my handkerchief over my nose and mouth, which only helped a little since my ears and eyes were fair game, and Kyle was completely at their mercy and couldn't even swat them away. I already had a healthy hatred of insects before this trip, but each day seems to increase it.
We realized that we would never be done before dark, and our main headlight had decided to run out of batteries. Luckily we were back in the bustle of civilization, so we easily found somewhere to buy them. In the Best Buy parking lot we discovered...can you guess?...a flat tire! Add an extra trip into Best Buy when Kyle realized that he'd bought the wrong batteries, and you can imagine that not even a stunning sunset over the mountains could raise our mood much.
We had two routes that would take us into Aurora, the suburb of Denver where our friends Pickle and Dave live. We could take a bike trail or a highway. Usually the choice would be easy, but with memories of the horrible dirt trail out of Pueblo still fresh in our minds, we decided to stick to the highway. Later we discovered that the trail was actually quite nice and paved the whole way, but I don't even want to talk about that frustration right now.
Even if the trail had been dirt, the other route was still a terrible decision. It was a true highway, six lanes wide and very busy, and to make it worse, we got lost a few times along the way. We clung to the shoulder, fearing for our lives as cars whizzed by, and trying to make our way to the sidewalk whenever possible, legal or not. I'm not comfortable riding at night to begin with, even with periodic streetlights and gaudy neon advertisements lighting the way, and here we were in the midst of fast, heavy traffic, blindly trusting the Garmin's confusing directions. We finally made it onto calmer roads, but whenever we stopped panicking we just realized how exhausted and irritable we were. If we had been in any state to appreciate anything, the nightlife and cleverly illuminated street signs of Parker would have impressed us, but we just desperately wanted to find the right section of Aurora. I was riding with the Garmin on my lap and started a delirious countdown when their house finally, finally showed up on the map.
Pickle was outside to welcome us in even though were were hours later than expected; she said she had been peeking her head out periodically, hoping we would be coming at that moment... or the next...or the next...and happened to catch us. Dave (aka Batman) had cooked up a heap of delicious pasta and meatballs that we cheerfully devoured. It was amazing, almost as amazing as sinking into the guest bed and knowing that for the next few days we would be off the bike and in good hands. A true break, at last.
| posted at: 02:10 |
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
Like all good days, we started with a delicious hot breakfast at La Quinta. We had some time to reflect. Today we'd finally be reaching Denver. Denver was a huge goal for us, and an important milestone. Denver was the last major airport on our route before Portland, making it the last place to quit. It was also Pickle and Dave's house, who were willing to grant us a place to crash for as long as we needed. We'd been thinking about Denver non stop all the way across the mid west, and believe us when we say there isn't much else to think about across the mid west.
We loaded the bike up in the back of the hotel and set off for a nearby park with a Front Range Trail-head. We hadn't originally planned on this route, but once we were on the trail, we were sure we'd made the right decision.
The trail seemed to work its way right through downtown, following the creek that runs through town. The bike path was wide, with big bridges to carry us over the creek when necessary. There were bathrooms at regular intervals. There was shade! It was awesome. Eventually we found ourselves at the same park we'd gotten lost at the night before. We arrived just in time to watch park services workers turn on the fountain, causing it to slowly rotate.
While we were at the park, we stopped to use the bathroom at what might be the most depressing bathroom in the world. No doors, just stainless steel, cold, cold fixtures. It was a nice park, though.
We left, following clearly marked bike paths north, intending to follow the Front Range trail most of the way to Denver. On our way out of the park, we ran into a detour. Impressively, it was clearly marked with signs. We were starting to fall in love with Colorado.
When we got to the north side of town, we found a bike shop and stopped in to grab tubes and investigate the wares. Colorado Springs is the headquarters of USA Cycling, and we wanted to see a bike shop in a town that loves cycling. It was a pretty awesome bike shop.
In the front of the store, they had a tv playing replays of the Tour de France from last night. A woman watching the tv was kind enough to ruin the outcome for both of us, though separately. Unfortunately, they had no tubes for us, but we enjoyed awesome cycling themed toilet paper, met a recumbent tour rider, and ate a few yummy Clif Bars.
North of town, the trail switched back to dirt. We weren't very happy about getting back on dirt, but we were willing to do it if we knew we were going to be on well taken care of trails instead of the awful road we'd been on yesterday. When we reached the Air Force Academy campus, things got even worse.
The Air Force Academy does not maintain their paths to the same extent the city of Colorado Springs does. The paths started to feel like mountain biking paths, with erosion control logs across the paths and steep hills. It was probably a mistake to take a fully loaded tandem with trailer down the path, but we just barely made it.
This path had some beautiful views on it, but we were mostly excited by the bathroom we found just past campus. The path was empty, and we had a nice view ahead of us. But we couldn't take advantage of it. The sudden dirt path slowed us down considerably. We took a short break before hopping back on and trying to ride to Monument.
Monument was a small town, but it had a McDonalds, providing us with a chance to get some food. Somehow the people at the Monument McDonalds were the rudest people we'd ever met. The air conditioning was broken and there was some flooding on the floor. Every patron there was flipping out and complaining. We ate and left in a hurry, since these people were unlike all the other Colorado people we'd met.
North of Monument we came to Palmer Lake, where the trail ended abruptly. Here we realized just how far up we'd come. Our current elevation was over 7000 feet, whereas our elevation in Colorado Springs had been 6000, and we'd been at only 4600 in Pueblo. We tried to use the bathrooms at the park here, but found both the port a potty and the park bathrooms were overflowing. The houses that overlooked the lake were beautiful. Aside from the bathroom situation, the park was awesome.
We were able to get back on Spruce Mountain Rd, which was fortunately paved. We took that all the way to the town of Lakespur. The ride felt awesome, with long sweeping hills with mountain views and no traffic. The only thing that took away from it was the tremendous homes going up all over.
At Lakespur we found a little gas station where we could get some root beer floats and cool down. While items were ridiculously overpriced, the floats were good and we were able to get a bit of rest. We chatted with patrons for a while, before deciding we had to get moving again.
From here we had two choices. We could either turn uphill, or we could go down and try to hop on the highway. According to the maps we had, the road we were traveling would end at the highway. Still preferring to not ride the highway, we turned up hill. After about fifty yards, we turned around and rode downhill toward the highway. After looking at the amount of traffic, we spun around again and climbed the hill, passing the Colorado Renaissance Fairgrounds.
After passing through a nice neighborhood, with houses tucked into the trees, as well as a golf course, we rode along a frontage road to Castle Rock.
After waiting for a train to pass (I was counting cars), we rode into Castle Rock and stopped for more cold drinks. It wasn't long before we noticed how late it was getting. We had some trouble getting out of town, getting just a little bit lost. We climbed a few hundred feet on a terrible road with almost no shoulders at all.
In Franktown, we turned north onto CO-83. As we got further on 83, we had to make a decision about getting back on to trails. We'd seen maps that said there were trails running most of the way to Pickle and Dave's. But we also hadn't forgotten the trails in Colorado Springs. Since it was getting dark, we decided to stay on the road. We were promptly assaulted by bugs. Jillian covered her face, I just held my lips tightly closed and tried not to breathe.
Further on we saw a fantastic sunset.
This was also the last light we saw. Just as the road changed to four lanes, the sun dipped below the horizon. We turned into a Best Buy in Parker to buy some batteries. While there, not surprisingly, we flatted. I also purchased the wrong batteries, making us go in again and wasting precious time.
Parker seemed like a fun little town, but we had no chance to explore. Further on, we reached I-225 and realized we suddenly needed to deal with a six lane highway. After a mad, crazy sprint across a bridge we got off the highway and dead reckoned across some sidewalks. After a little bit of help from the Garmin, we got back on course. Perhaps by luck, we were suddenly in quiet neighborhoods and able to navigate to Pickle and Dave's in Aurora.
Since we were quite late, Dave and Pickle were rather happy to see us. They served us piles of spaghetti and meatballs. Despite being exhausted, I stayed up for a quite a while, catching up with Pickle. Jillian went to bed in a hurry.
| posted at: 01:19 |
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Seven |
 |
| 7/22/09 |
| From Pueblo, CO |
| To Colorado Springs, CO |
| 43 miles |
| 10.5 avg mph |
Since our bike wasn't going to be ready right away, we relished sleeping in and watching part of an NCIS marathon. We were planning to have a short day anyway, just 40 miles to Colorado Springs; our destination beyond it, Denver, was about 130 miles away from Pueblo, and we only travel that far in one day when we're riding a tailwind out of Kansas. When Kyle picked up the bike from the shop, they told him about the two routes we could take to Colorado Springs. One was a busy highway, the other a dirt road with great views. We decided on the latter; we'd much rather see the country than more highway, and the open views would make roughing it worth it, right?
Wrong. This afternoon was probably the worst ride we've had so far. The heat was intense, the road became a mess of deep ruts and scattered rocks, the only signs of civilization were angry "No Trespassing" warnings, and a veritable army of bugs attacked us constantly. They were so bad that we couldn't stop for anything, not for the food that I desperately wanted, and not even to change the tire that went flat (like we needed any more problems). Instead, every few miles Kyle would hop off and reinflate it as quickly as possible so that we could get moving again before the bugs completely ate us alive. Coloransas continues to kill us with its hot, buggy, monotonous misery. The only positive moment was being passed twice by a strange Union Jack dune buggy type vehicle; as you can tell I don't really know how to describe it and I didn't get a very good photo, but trust me, it was pretty cool.
(Note that he's even driving on the British side of the road in order to pass us.) As you can see, the second time it passed us was after we made it onto a real road. We wanted to get down and kiss the pavement, but we had to wait until we reached an actual town and left most of the bugs behind. Then we were finally able to eat a snack and change the tire outside of the town library.
We spotted signs for a water attraction and decided to check it out since we were still horribly hot. It turned out to be a kiddie splash area that wasn't very accessible, but then we spotted something just as good: an icecream truck. Chasing an icecream truck around a neighborhood is actually pretty fun, and finally catching it is even better.
But just as I was enjoying my orange creamsicle, Kyle discovered another flat tire. Arrrrrrgggg. Our "short" day felt like it would never end.
As we finally approached Colorado Springs, we discovered a network of bike trails. Usually we would have loved to explore them, but after the afternoon we'd had we just wanted to take the main road into town and find a hotel room. We got very excited when we saw a LaQuinta; it had a higher price tag than we were used to seeing, but after checking a few other hotels we realized that the problem was CO Springs, not La Quinta, so we got to stay in our favorite once again.
When we were all showered and human again, we got to tour Colorado Springs with our friend Pickle (or Karen, as those who don't know her ultimate frisbee nickname call her). She'll be hosting us in Denver, but wanted to drive over to Colorado Springs a day early so that she could show us around Garden of the Gods, a park with impressive red rock and a long history. It was rainy and cloudy but we still had a great time wandering around and taking photos, and when the weather cleared up we were greeted with a rainbow.
After Garden of the Gods, we had a late dinner at a laidback bar downtown. When we went to put in our orders we found ourselves behind an ultimate frisbee team, so we used our frisbee nicknames too, which amused the guy at the window who tried very hard to come up with a song by Devo (Kyle's nickname) other than Whip It (he couldn't). As we waited for our food, we watched a kid's rodeo on TV (main event: sheep riding) and talked about our respective teaching experiences. After stuffing ourselves we headed back to the hotel and sent a few of our belongings back to Denver with Pickle. We can't wait to get there tomorrow!
| posted at: 02:07 |
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Since we had to wait for the bike shop to open, we were forced to enjoy the hot breakfast at La Quinta. Not that we minded, really. I ended up walking back to the bike shop while Jillian caught up on blogging and note keeping (knowing that we were going to end up weeks or months behind on blogging, Jillian has been keeping a little black notebook full of notes on everything that happens every day).
I got to Bob's Bicycles not long after they opened, where I chatted with a third employee, who was actually working on the bike. Apparently they'd discovered they didn't have the parts to fix our freehub (turns out bottom bracket wasn't the issue), but the girl who'd been working last night stayed late ripping apart ours to see if there was a problem she could fix. Apparently we'd destroyed a number of the bearings. After removing them, we were down to about five, but she thought it'd be enough to make it to Colorado Springs, where we might have better luck finding parts. They had not been able to fix our brakes, since they'd never seen that model brake before and didn't have the needed equipment. He was in the process of playing with the shifting, but apparently the real problem was that the little arm on the back derailleur had gotten locked into the cassette. After a slight readjustment, we were all fixed.
I also took some time to ask for directions to Colorado Springs. It's only about 30 miles from city line to city line, but there's only one paved road: I-25. While it's legal to ride the interstate many places in Colorado, we had been told we'd be taking our lives into our own hands. The helpful people at the shop helped us work out an alternate route, which they thought would have clean enough dirt that we could ride.
When it was time to pay, they only asked for a little less than $30. $30, to tear apart our freehub, readjust a derailleur, provide advice, and look at our brakes. It felt like a steal. We love Bob's Bicycles.
I rode the bike alone back to La Quinta, where Jillian helped me load up the trailer. We had an awesome ride over to near the University, where we turned north. When Jerry Murphy Road turned to Overton Road, we were apprehensive at the loss of pavement. But the dirt was smooth, there were no cars, and the scenery was fairly gorgeous, if desert.
Just as I was really starting to look forward to getting to Colorado Springs and calling Pickle to play tourist with, the dirt started getting bumpy. In Pennsylvania, where I used to ride on dirt roads regularly, road maintenance consisted of running a bulldozer the length of the road once in a while and smoothing things out. Here, it consisted of sending a truck full of dirt to sprinkle fresh dirt on the road in annoying bumpy paths. Suddenly, instead of smooth dirt it felt like we were riding on continuous speed bumps. And since it was fresh dirt, it we got too close to the edge we'd lose traction and stop moving.
Then the bugs started.
These weren't just gnats or mosquitoes. These were something else entirely. They were larger, and they felt like they liked to bite. Suddenly we had to spend all of our time swatting bugs and trying desperately to navigate the loose soil.
This went on for the next three hours. We abandoned our plan of a picnic lunch by the roadside. We abandoned our desire to ever do this trip again. We were ready to abandon the bike, but there was nothing we could do but ride steady (harder meant the tires slipped more) and hope it would end eventually.
Finally we reached a paved road. We promptly flatted.
We can not tell you how much we wanted to just pull over and quit. Fly home. But there were no options. After thinking about what they bugs would do to us while we changed a tire, we pumped it up and hoped for the best. Since it was on a the trailer, which had fairly thick tire walls, I was hopeful.
For the next four miles, every quarter mile or so we'd need to pull over and pump up the tire enough to get going again. It was a pain, but we needed some forward motion in order to avoid feeling like we were never going to make it.
When we arrived in Fountain, we stopped at the library for much needed bathrooms and air conditioning. I set about changing our pesky trailer tire, although I was never able to find anything in the tire wall. When we set off again, we made it only a half mile before we spotted a little park with signs for a water park. We took the short detour. Although the water park was clearly designed for small children, we saw something even more important: an ice cream truck.
We rode as hard as we could, and eventually were able to chase him down. Jillian got Ice Cream. I got a coke. They were cold. So very fantastically cold.
After ice cream, we tried to get going, only to flat again. This time in the rear tire. At least this time we had shade and no bugs.
The ride along US-85/87 wasn't much fun, with small shoulders, lots of traffic, and road construction. But right before we crossed I-25 we saw signs for the Front Range Trail, which we could have taken from Fountain instead. Although we could have ridden it farther north, we opted to stay on the road in order to get to the hotel as quickly as possible. We weren't sure which to stay at, but Jillian hiked between a few lobbies and discovered that the La Quinta had the best price. We should have known.
When we got to the hotel we gave Pickle a call, who got in the car and drove down to see us. Although it was raining when she arrived, it had cleared up enough that she took us on a tour of The Garden of the Gods, an incredible city park in Colorado Springs.
Apparently the rock is very old, much older than the Rockies, and over time its worn down into incredible shapes.
At one time the land was owned by a family, who charged money to have your picture taken near some of the rocks. They eventually decided to donate the land to the city, on the condition it be kept open to the public.
Remember that you can click on any of the pictures to go to the appropriate Flickr set. You should.
After getting momentarily lost trying to get out of the dark, we traveled west to Manitou Springs, which had a bunch of awesome little stores and restaurants. After looking around for a while we settled on this awesome bar. There were no servers. You ordered food directly from the kitchen. The three of us were actually in line behind an entire Ultimate Frisbee team, which was amazing. Since they all gave frisbee nicknames on their orders, I gave mine as well (Devo). The guy taking the order attempted to come up with a song other than Whip It to sing when he called out my order, but alas, he failed. Still, it was a good time.
Pickle drove us back to our hotel, exhausted as always. As much as I wanted to crash into bed, we had a bit of trouble finding our way to the hotel. Instead we wound up down town, passing a park with a weird crazy fountain. But we eventually got there, and Pickle took the orange duffel bag off our hands. We bid her farewell, promising we'd see her tomorrow night in Aurora, and went quickly to sleep.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Six |
 |
| 7/21/09 |
| From La Hunta, CO |
| To Pueblo, CO |
| 73.8 miles |
| 13.2 avg mph |
Kyle decided he wasn't up to eating a cinnabun the size of his head, so we skipped the place from last night and had breakfast at The Barista Coffee House instead, which was a perfect way to start our morning.
We then went back to the pharmacy with the Amish romances, and things went much more smoothly this time. Outside, I started talking to a woman who was in town for her daughter's gymnastics competition, and whose car had been severely damaged by that hail storm we barely escaped in Garden City. Our final stop before getting on the road was at a Walmart, where I purchased a hankerchief to cover the deep sun damage I'd gotten from Garden City. I figured it was also part of my indoctrination into the West; when Kyle's mom saw a photo she said I looked ready to rob a stagecoach. I was just trying to fit in with everyone we saw: the strange bathtub cowboy we discovered in downtown La Hunta...
one very aggressive bean mascot...
and a real cowgirl (I hate that term, but you know what I mean) whom we passed on the road to Rocky Ford. Kyle insisted that her dead partner was in the sack on the second horse.
In Fowler I got another excuse to release my inner cowgirl (or whatever). We asked a local for a lunch recommendation as we pedaled by, and she sent us down the road to the Tamarack Grill, which had an adjoining livestock yard.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to order meat with the source so close, but as I should have suspected the menu didn't give us much choice. So I had a delicious hamburger with a side of waffle fries and guilt.
Cowboy culture is great and all, but the most exciting part of my day had to do with something else entirely. Remember how all I wanted to see in Kansas (other than anything besides grass, locusts, and cows) were fields of giant sunflowers? And remember how Kansas failed miserably on that account? Well, guess what they have across the border in Colorado? Giant freaking sunflowers. I should have known.
When we originally planned this trip, we expected to follow the Adventure Cycling Association TransAmerica route for much of the way, but the more Kyle looked at maps the more he went for routes that diverged from it. Today we were intersecting with it again for a few miles, and we hoped to run into other cross-country travelers. The road was still fairly empty of cyclists, but we did happen on an unofficial ACA stop.
It was a hostel of sorts, where the flooring ranged from dirt to shag. It was run by Larry Taylor (the one in overalls) who seemed to own most of main street, which meant he owned most of town. He was very friendly, let us use his bathroom, and would have let us use the hottub too if we'd had the time. We talked cross-country cycling with him and his friends for a little while; my favorite story was about a guy who crossed the country on a penny-farthing bicycle, which will always astound me, especially when I imagine the giant wheel rolling up the Rockies.
We left Boone on the ACA route, which went from a rough back road to a busy four-lane highway, making us wonder if staying on 50 and skipping the official route would have been better. We did, however, get to see some courageous local wildlife: a colony of prairie dogs had dug their homes less than twenty feet from the bustling highway. They showed no fear of the traffic rushing by, but when we approached they scampered back into their homes.
Once again we found ourselves riding near crazy storm clouds, but we were close enough to our destination to outrun them. We had to take an exit ramp to get into Pueblo, which again seemed a little ridiculous for an official cycling route. As we rode toward the bike shop, we saw two very different sides of Pueblo: the rundown downtown where some teenage boys and their rottweilers scared the crap out of me, and the affluent side dominated by towering Victorians on spacious lawns. We finally found Bob's Bicycles:
We were just glad to find a bike shop -- the first in over 400 miles -- but the people at Bob's Bikes went above and beyond. One drove us to our hotel while the other worked late into the night to make sure our bike would be ready to go the next day. They couldn't fix everything, but they did an amazing job with what they had, so that hopefully we can get to the bigger shops in Denver without any major malfunctions.
To make it even better, we finished the day with dinner at Cracker Barrel and a night at La Quinta -- my two favorite places, and more than worthy of an awkward song and dance.
| posted at: 02:06 |
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
After a delightful stay in our little hotel room, we left to get our ridiculously large cinnabuns.
We immediately thought better of this idea, and opted to ride about town and find something else while we waited for Safeway to open.
First we passed the theater, which had awesome prices on both tickets and food.
Then normal town stopped, and we rode past Kelly's guns.
Since we were still in vacation/seen a movie mode, we stopped at The Barista, the awesome coffee shop in town.
After much time reading magazines and enjoying comfortable seating we finally made our way back out to the Safeway. Fortunately, it was only a few blocks away and Jillian was finally able to get the prescription worked out.
Then it was off to the West for real, with just a little bit less than seventy miles to go before Pueblo. We were really excited to be getting to Pueblo, the magical city with bike shops, hotels, and best of all, a La Quinta. We'd also be reconnecting with the Transamerica trail, which we hoped would let us find more cyclists and simplify navigation.
Outside of town we started seeing sunflower fields. Sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas, so we'd been very excited to see the fabled fields of sunflowers. The best we'd been able to do was a couple in a planter outside of a McDonalds in Dodge City. Jillian stopped for pictures.
Our next stop was in Rocky Ford, at a little gas station. On our way out of town we passed a man on a horse. He was leading another horse, which was carrying a large sack. Naturally, we tried to figure out what was inside the sack. Jillian guessed fruit (Rocky Ford is the Sweet Melon Capital of the world). I guessed a body. You decide.
There isn't really a lot to do in this part of Colorado. I entertained myself with two games. First, I'd study the water works extensively. There were hundreds of miles of concrete pathways with sluice gates in various states. Water was usually moving and it was interesting to see where gravity moved the water and where it was pumped. As I said, not much to look at in this part of the state.
We also counted train cars. Counting one hundred and twenty car long trains takes a good deal of time, and since you can't talk over the sound of the train anyway, it was a good way to kill time. Most of the trains seemed to haul coal.
After another stop in Manzanola, just down the street, we rode on to Fowler, where we asked for advice on where to find lunch. We were directed to the Tamarack Grill, which shared a building with Fowler Livestock.
Food was fantastic. The building also offered wonderful picture opportunities.
We'd purchased the black handkerchief back in Lamar, due to the terrible sunburn Jillian received on her chest while making up miles on a cloudy day in Garden City, KS. My mother wondered if we were going to be robbing stagecoaches next.
Further west we passed through what Google Maps reported was Hamlet, CO, but we failed at finding a sign.
At the junction of CO-209 and US-50 we turned North to go to Boone, which we hoped would have a gas station or something. There was nothing. Except then, on our second pass, we saw a funny looking sign outside a building.
Naturally, we had to stop. There we met Larry Taylor and friends (Larry's on the far right).
This was a kind of crazy stop. We went into the half hostel, half residence, half everything else on the wall, and used the bathroom. The building was kind of being remodeled. It kind of had dirt floors. Interesting place. Apparently Larry's been trying to get listed as a place to stay on the ACA maps for some time, but he's been unsuccessful. He told us stories of the town (and how he's bought most of the buildings, since no one else will), and told us of all the cyclists that have passed through. We signed his guest book, impressed by the number of cyclists we apparently hadn't been seeing. We looked for Rupert's name, but alas, nothing.
Although Larry was willing to let us spend the night, we chose to ride on to Pueblo and try to get in to a bike shop to have some work done. Nor far down the road, US-50 and CO-96 joined up. The shoulders on CO-96 had been awful, and we were hopeful that they'd get better, and causing us to think that maybe the ACA route should travel down US-50 instead of CO-96. But not much farther on the road became a four lane limited access highway. Traffic started moving quickly, we couldn't really talk to each other, and the land looked as barren and desolate as anything we'd ever seen. The prairie dogs were oblivious.
But, even though we were on four lane highway, the signs made it clear that we were one a bike route. Before things got really hairy, we exited for CO-96, following the signs, and rode through town. Although we didn't really get to see downtown, the parts of town that we did see weren't very impressive. Everything felt dry, which we didn't care for. Part of the problem might have been that we were entering our first city since St Louis and simply weren't used to deal with traffic lights or cars.
We found our way north through town, leaving the ACA route again, to Bob's Bicycles, on the corner of Elizabeth and 25th.
We weren't too excited with the way the building looked, but understand how desperate we were. We'd ridden hundreds of miles without being able to coast. That made us hurt, since there wasn't even an opportunity to stand on downhills. Our back brake wasn't working, meaning we had to be really careful about stopping. And then, just as we entered Pueblo, our shifting started to fail, and I couldn't get the bike into some of the gears. We felt like we were just going to fall apart. We went in.
Inside we found the best customer service we ever found at a bike shop. There were two people working inside, both of whom seemed to really know their stuff. We explained what was wrong, and they thought we might be having bottom bracket trouble. Fortunately, they also thought they had parts. Quite grateful, we asked directions to the La Quinta, and they offered to drive us, trailer and all.
Though it felt weird to check in at the La Quinta without our bike (but with a trailer), we were so happy to stop. Although we hadn't figured out how to get there, Colorado Springs was only fifty miles away. Denver felt like it was less than a two day ride away. Plus, we were at a La Quinta with a Cracker Barrel in the parking lot. Could traveling cycling life get better?
That evening brought crazy storms. But we were already at the La Quinta, having outrun the crazy Colorado afternoon weather for the first time ever. We slept like babies.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Monday, July 20, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Five |
 |
| 7/20/09 |
| From Lamar, CO |
| To La Hunta, CO |
| 61.5 miles |
| 11.6 avg mph |
The vast majority of today was miserable.
We started early -- too early -- and it was sunny and hot before we knew it, over 100 degrees for much of the day. Colorado persists in resembling flat, vacant, heat-soaked Kansas, so much so that I refuse to call this part of the country Colorado, insisting that we're stuck in a horrible purgatorial region that I christened Coloransas. The bike problems also refuse to go away. We can only use one brake because the other one gets stuck, and we can't coast at all because as soon as we do a horrible, unidentifiable clanking sound starts. Not that we had plentiful opportunities to brake or coast today, since the terrain is still fairly flat and empty, but we'll need to fix the problems before we reach the Rockies.
For hours we rode through endless alfalfa fields in misery. I was exhausted, Kyle was in pain, and we both felt like our brains were melting. Occasionally we amused ourselves in the usual ways, with accents and songs, but then we would lapse into bored and brooding silence. A ladybug landed on me and rode along with us for a while, but it didn't seem to help. We finally reached a delightful oasis: a charming cafe that served scrumptious smoothies.
But even this relaxation was ruined, by another flat tire. I can't believe flats are becoming a daily occurrence. It's enough to drive a person crazy, and Coloransas has more than enough to drive a person crazy already.
We're also getting used to fleeing bad weather surprises every day. When a few clouds appeared off in the distance, we called Kyle's sister for a weather report, and she said the map was clear in our area. Not five minutes later a massive storm appeared. Soon we were riding beneath an expansive, ominous cloud, rain and lightning visible ahead and to the side of us.
We went into a full sprint and sustained it for the fifteen miles of nothingness it took to reach a rest area. I have to tell you, I'm getting really tired of riding for my life. Feeling a hundred times more secure with concrete cover beside us, we sat on boulders and watched the storm approach before taking cover in our respective bathrooms, partly to avoid a chance stroke of lightning, but mostly because there were fewer bugs in there.
The storm passed quickly, as they seem to do out here, and we were able to ride towards town. We stopped at the Forest Service building and talked to a very nice woman who checked the weather for us and sold me an egret pin. (Remember how I was going to collect pins on this trip? Yeah, I forgot for a while too.) We were really upset to find out that the dinosaur fossils and tracks were too far away for us to visit -- we've started talking about making a car trip out west to pick up all the sites that we're missing, so hopefully we'll make it there someday.
I needed to get a prescription filled and had chosen a pharmacy in La Hunta since I knew we'd be passing through well before it closed. I waited in the long line, passing the time by staring in confusion at a rack of Amish romance novels (you heard me right), only to find out that my medicine wasn't ready, and in fact hadn't even been called in. The incredibly unhelpful nurse back in Pennsylvania didn't seem to understand or want to work with the scheduling issues that arise when you're bicycling across the country, so even though I had explained the situation yesterday and given her plenty of notice she hadn't yet phoned it in. When I called the office she was apparently too busy to talk to me, though the receptionist promised it would be in by tomorrow. I started to silently fume, since it meant Kyle and I would have to stay over in La Hunta instead of continuing on to our planned destination. To make it worse, the LaHunta bike shop was closed, so we couldn't make productive use of our time there.
But as we were riding through town in search of a hotel, we found a perfect way to spend our evening: we could finally see the new Harry Potter movie.
We found a hotel and showered in time for a rushed dinner before the only showing of the movie started. We settled on soup and mozzarella sticks at a cafe down the street from the theater. What we ate was nothing to write home about, but the service was great and we were captivated by the bottles of grape-raisin soda and the cinna-buns that were the size of human heads. Kyle plans to tackle one for breakfast tomorrow.
What a difference an enjoyable evening makes. Here we are after the long day, before showers and Harry Potter. (You can also sort of see the deep burn patch on my chest from the day that we didn't have sunscreen.)
And here we are after our evening out, so much happier. The new Harry Potter would have been a good movie regardless, but after spending our days staring at fields and cows and not seeing any summer movies, it seemed like mindblowingly awesome entertainment. It was an excellent end to a rather awful day, and we'll take any reason to smile we can get.
| posted at: 01:29 |
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Monday, July 20, 2009
We were back on the road early again. We were hoping to make it to La Junta early today so that we could pick up a prescription. Unfortunately, it got to be very hot very quickly. And just as bad, the brakes were acting funny and we still couldn't coast at all. Plus, I was hurting. It felt like we hadn't taken a real rest day in a long time, and everything was sore. Jillian was simply tired and sleepy.
There wasn't anything wrong with the ride, it was just... boring. In Hasty, CO we stopped for cold drinks at a convenience store. It wasn't much of a stop, but with the thermometer reading over 90 in the shade, anything was appreciated.
After another 15, boring, slow miles we arrived in Las Animas. Boring, aside from the fact that we had no back brakes all day. They'd been uncooperative for a while now. Sometimes when we hit the brakes, the back ones would simply fail to open back up all the way. It felt like things were back in Pennsylvania, when we were riding the tire against the frame all the time. Rather than pry them apart all the timem, we decided to simply stop using them. Fortunately, we were somewhere rather flat. But remember, now we have no back brake, can't coast, and the chain is starting to be stretched too far. We were desperate for an excuse to stop. We stopped at a Coffee Shop.
On our way out, we flatted again. Flats were getting infuriating.
West of Las Animas a way, we started seeing rain in the distance.
We called my sister for a weather report. She said the weather report for the area looked clear. Five minutes later, a powerful storm arrived. We took shelter in a rest area, which was fortunately very close nearby.
Jillian wasn't pleased.
Once the storm had passed, we rode on to La Junta. Although the shoulder in the above picture looked fine, it actually disappeared right outside La Junta. We also started to feel like we were very high up... just in time for the storm to come back. This time we could even make out lightning on the horizon. Again we rode as hard as we could, careful to check for cars before crossing bridges and cresting hills.
On our way into town (desperate for shelter) we talked with the Forest Service, who told us about the dinosaur tracks not too far away, as well as gave us information about the weather. We rode a little further into town and went to a Safeway where Jillian tried to sort the prescription issues out (this is tricky, since her insurance had changed over but we didn't have the cards yet, and the provider had been purchased). Since the Safeway claimed to be able to fix the prescription in the morning (it was well past closing time for whomever they had to call back east), we got a night at a motel downtown.
We had not had a very good day.
Except then we got dinner at an awesome diner with head sized cinnabuns. Then we finally saw Harry Potter! The theater wasn't that busy and the tickets were even priced normally. Snacks were a dollar each!
Then we were a happy couple.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Sunday, July 19, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Four |
 |
| 7/19/09 |
| From Garden City, KS |
| To Lamar, CO |
| 113.7 miles |
| 11.3 avg mph |
The best motivation for riding more than 100 miles in one day? Finally getting out of Kansas.
We started before sunrise, sharing the road with what we're pretty sure was a coyote. We spent a few minutes at a truck stop to watch the sun crest the horizon, pose with a sunflower mural (since we're having such difficulty finding real ones), and chuckle knowingly at the fact that there were tourism brochures for every region of Kansas except for the Southeast.
After miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing much (you know the drill), we finally reached a tourist attraction: the famous Sante Fe trail ruts. The Sante Fe Trail was like the Oregon trail, except that the settlers following it either ended up in New Mexico or died of dysentary without a computer game to memorialize them. And here we were, standing near original ruts made by their wagons! Woohoo!
Wait a minute, you may ask, your biggest "tourist attraction" of the day consisted of a rusty fence and a footpath leading to barely visible depressions in some hills? Yes, yes indeed. Once again, welcome to Kansas.
The ruts did give us a chance to think about the amazing boldness and resiliency of those original settlers. We at least know that eventually these lonely, wide open spaces will be replaced by the established comforts of civilization, but the earliest settlers were headed off into the dangerous unknown to start their lives and their towns from scratch. What must they have thought, seeing these expanses for the first time?
If their experience was anything like ours today, they may have thought that the plagues of Pharoah's Egypt were about to rain down on them, starting with the locusts. Ok, maybe the insects were just supersized cicadas or grasshoppers, which is admittedly what they looked like individually:
But I will always think of them as locusts, a plague by the thousands. They emerged in droves from the plants lining the road, coating the shoulder with their milling, mating, leaping bodies. In swift and impossibly high jumps they moved back and forth from field to road, and it was hard not to scream every time one landed on us. The unlucky or uncoordinated found their leaps and their lives cut short by the front tire, which left a trail of smashed and decapitated bodies behind it. Their unsettling infestation lasted for hours and we started to yearn for the uneventful boredom of Kansas that we knew before.
We were thrilled to finally encounter other people: a couple from Oklahoma had stopped their car by the Mountain Time sign and were kind enough to take our photo in front of it. Crossing a time zone line doesn't actually gain us an extra hour, since we're governed by the sun rather than the clock, but progress markers are always welcome.
Farther down the road, several wall murals and a sort of Abe Lincoln cowboy welcomed us to the town of Syracuse.
It was home to what locals told us was "the slowest restaurant in Kansas." Of course they didn't tell us that until after we had sat down, ordered lunch, and waited a very long time for it to appear.
After the long delay we were eager to get back on the road, especially since we were only 15 miles from the border. We started an enthusiastic countdown, cheering and taking a picture at every mile marker. (I didn't bother to post them since a little green number in front of the same boring brush isn't very photogenic). The last interesting things we saw in Kansas were a telephone pole replacement project and a group of curious horses that ran up to their fence to see us.
I was happy to see that four-legged Kansans were as friendly as two-legged ones, but I was even happier to see this sign:
The friendly people of Kansas might be enough to convince me to "Come Again," but it will never, ever, ever be by bicycle.
A few feet up the road was a "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" sign, which we couldn't resist pairing with a sign of our own:
Unfortunately, the world didn't miraculously get better on the other side of the state line, in fact if anything it got worse. Our surroundings still looked like Kansas, but the people weren't as nice, in fact the first ones we met -- two convenience store employees -- were downright bitchy. I don't think I'll be able to handle it if Colorado makes me miss Kansas.
We were happy to roll into Lamar, our destination for the day, especially since it was still light out and we could get under cover before this intimidating cloud started to unleash any rain:
We pulled into a rest area so that Kyle could research hotels while I took photos of a statue and a sample windmill part.
And then we discovered that we had a flat tire, again. It was caused by a metal staple of uncertain origins, again.
Flat tires are inevitable, but having three in as many days is annoyingly above average. When the tire was ready to go again, we rode into town to check out our motel options. Along with seeing another Turkey Hill symbol, this one on a Loaf 'N Jug, we spotted the Holiday Motel, which looked nice enough and advertised "clean rooms" for $45. A quick call to my mom confirmed that online reviews were mostly good, so we inquired about getting a room. The owner personally walked us to the room to let us see how clean it was before we paid, which was pretty impressive. According to the newspaper article in the office, he's a community leader who buys rundown local properties, revamps and revitalizes them, and eventually sells them to other local business people. He's improving the town a few buildings at a time, and the Holiday Motel is one of them. Colorado is looking better already.
| posted at: 01:22 |
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Sunday, July 19, 2009
Today, unfortunately, was going to be a long day. Unfortuantely, there aren't a whole lot of towns between Garden City and Lamar, so we were stuck. We opted for an early start.
We made our way out of Garden City before the sun was even up, and stopped at a gas station on the edge of town. We waited a few minutes for the sun to rise.
This, being Kansas, didn't really provide us with a lot of interesting scenary. We passed a large chicken factory. Really, disturbingly large.
We did have an opportunity to walk some Sante Fe Trail ruts.
The ruts were a little hard to see.
Today was the first day we really noticed that we were climbing. It wasn't necessarily perceptible, but it felt like we were doing a little bit of climbing all of the time. At least the scenery was beautiful.
Somehow the colorful grasses also meant that we were surrounded by thousands of crickets.
The crickets jumped at us all the time. It wasn't a problem for me, since I sit pretty high up, but they kept leaping right at Jillian.
The terrain felt desert like, as we entered Mountain Time and got another set of tourists to take our photo.
We stopped in Syracuse to get some lunch. Unfortunately, we chose what could arguably be the slowest restaurant in all of Kansas. The food was good, but we were there a lot longer than we'd intended.
Eventually we saw the sign we'd been waiting for forever.
We took the obligatory photo.
We stopped at a little rest stop outside of Holly, where we were promptly attacked by a bunch of mosquitoes.
We stopped at another gas station in Grenada, where I called home for another weather report. Storms were coming, and we could see them on the horizon.Since the weather seemed like it was all going to be north of our road, we rode on.
We made it almost all the way to Lamar before the storm arrived. Huge clouds were visible on the horizon with rain everywhere. Without any cover, and being only a couple of miles from town, we sprinted as hard as we could toward town. We actually rode under the giant cloud you see in this picture.
However, while trying to leave the visitor center we flatted. Once again on a small piece of metal.
Then we started our quest for a hotel. We didn't want to travel far, because of the tires. We passed the Holiday Motel, which had an almost too good to be true rate. However, the owner seemed to be very invested in improving bad businesses in Lamar, and had recently remodeled the motel. He let us take a look at the room first, and we were sold.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Saturday, July 18, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Three |
 |
| 7/18/09 |
| From Garden City, KS |
| To Garden City, KS via Ingalls, KS |
| 66.1 miles |
| 14.5 avg mph |
Even broken spokes and hail storms have a silver lining: without them we never would have met Rupert at the hotel this morning. He's also bicycling across the country, and is the first person we've met who is making the trip in the same direction we are.
Rupert has lived in Denmark for many years now, but he was born in England and you couldn't ask for someone more perfectly British at first glance: when we met him he was drinking tea and checking cricket scores, and within ten minutes he had said "rubbish" several times. Along with touring this country for the first time, he's putting on impromptu concerts along the way to raise money and awareness for MS, which is even cooler than the fact that he's an English/sports/music/woodworking teacher. He has a blog too, most of which is in English.
Rupert was headed to northern California on a route rather similar to ours, but having to make up the miles from yesterday will keep us a day behind him. Fortunately, we were able to ride together for a few miles through town. We traded dog stories, and in a rather offhand manner he described the time he was struck by lightning while riding. It was really nice to share the road with someone new, but too soon we had to part ways. Rupert headed onward to the west coast while we were stuck riding over sixty miles to end up exactly where we started. I'm sure we'll feel like better people when we make up the miles that Jon carried us yesterday, but still...Sigh.
I believe I've expressed how uneventful Kansan scenery tends to be; imagine having to ride by it twice in one day. I can count on one hand the interesting sites outside of town (unless I have to count each one twice).
There was a farm that raised pheasants for hunters to shoot (Jon explained it to us yesterday).
Also a disturbingly massive feed yard for cattle (can you tell that this area isn't a place for vegetarians?):
And a sign about eight man football, which I'd never heard of but which makes sense if you think about how small school populations must be out here.
We weren't going to be out for very long today, but because of a serious mistake I became worried about every minute. It was supposed to be very overcast all day, so I didn't put on any sunscreen right away. Unfortunately the weather reports lied, and within an hour it was positively blazing. When I went to put on sunscreen I realized that I couldn't -- it was back in the hotel room, where we had left most of our belongings so that we could travel light. Clearly I've built up a solid base tan already, but I still wonder exactly how damaged my skin will be after our roundtrip today.
After we passed Ingalls, we rode several additional miles until we reached a rusting train car that I remembered passing on the bike yesterday. I don't know what it was doing on a hill and not on the railroad tracks, but thank goodness it existed so that we knew we could turn around and head back. The scenery was even more boring the second time around, but we finally made it into town and past its major landmarks: a giant brewery that I thought smelled hideous (I'm not a beer drinker) and a street sign that necessitated a cute photograph.
Thanks to the relatively short distance and light luggage, we made it back in time for a late lunch. We returned to Lonestar, where the bartender made us amazing frozen lemonades that more than made up for her surliness. Back at the hotel Kyle had to fix the flat tire that we'd gotten in the parking lot -- so infuriating -- before he could ride it to the bike shop to see if they could true the wheel and look at cassette and the other problems we've been having. Meanwhile I showered, blogged, and tried to figure out how I was going to get a prescription filled without my new insurance card or a definite idea of when we would reach a given pharmacy.
Kyle returned for dinner at IHOP, including an incredibly friendly waiter who made me a stellar ice cream sundae. It was a good end to a short but annoying day. We look forward to tomorrow, when the miles we ride will actually get us somewhere.
| posted at: 01:22 |
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Saturday, July 18, 2009
Today was a depressing day. We weren't going to go anywhere.
While we were getting breakfast we ran into a British touring cyclist, who was drinking some tea and checking cricket scores.
Rupert was touring the country and trying to keep off the TransAmerica route just to see some different things. He followed us for a few miles until he split to go west and we turned to go east to redo a few miles.
Before we left, we reserved another night at the Best Value Inn, so that we could leave most of our gear in the room and travel a little lighter. We took a leisurely day and took lots of pictures of whatever scenery we could come by.
We saw a Pheasant Farm.
Some sunflower fields...
And the largest feed farm we'd ever seen. There was even a scenic view pull over to look out at all the cattle.
Eventually we made it to Ingalls, home of the 1984 Ingalls 8 man football team.
Not much longer we reached where we'd be stranded the day before. Then we simply turned around and rode back. There was almost nothing to see.
It was beautiful, though. Long, vast plains with low hills. Except for the scary storms on the horizon, I enjoyed the view. Jillian wasn't as much a fan.
On our way back into town we stopped for a disgustingly cute photo.
Then we grabbed some dinner at IHOP before doing some laundry and going to bed.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Friday, July 17, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Two |
 |
| 7/17/09 |
| From Dodge City, KS |
| To Ingalls, KS and Garden City, KS |
| 30.1 miles |
| 10.0 avg mph |
This morning we went on a rapid fire tour of Dodge City, a famous wild west town on the old cattle route and the setting for the show Gunsmoke. By rapid fire I mean I took most of the photos while pedaling.
One thing that I couldn't photograph from the bike was the pretend wild west street -- complete with two saloons -- that cost money to tour. Luckily the fence had large gaps that I could shoot through.
We weren't exceedingly impressed with Dodge City, but it was a pleasant jaunt and we enjoyed being an odd spectacle that distracted tourists from all of the wild west flair. I actually got most excited about two businesses that probably didn't make the tourism brochures: I spotted a Wyatt Earp liquor store that reminded me of The Boondock Saints, and wouldn't you know that the McDonalds had the first tall sunflowers that we've seen in all of Kansas.
Less than twenty miles beyond Dodge we reached Cimarron, and our troubles began. First we got a flat tire; not a big deal in the grand scheme of bike problems, but a pain to fix all the same. We changed it at the edge of someone's front yard in the middle of town, where I got very distracted by a large and beautiful mystery bug who showed no fear of me.
With the flat tire fixed, we continued down the road until we reached a gas station, where we discovered a bigger issue: we had a broken spoke. Unlike a completely flat tire, it is possible to ride with a broken spoke, but it's not a great idea; it makes everything unsteady and soon enough other spokes will break or the tire will have a massive blowout. Regardless, we had to ride on: there was nothing helpful around us, but about 35 miles away was Garden City, which miraculously had a bike shop. If we could just make it there we would be fine.
We made our wobbly way down the road, crossing our fingers and counting the miles. Suddenly a loud shot rang out: in a second our tire was decimated, and we were stranded.
We sighed and got out our phones, planning to call an Enterprise shop that we'd seen on the Garmin. If their slogan was true, they would pick us up and we could drive to Garden City, still 30 miles away. We didn't count on Enterprise being out of vehicles, however. As we were discussing our other options -- which included walking several miles to the town that we could see in the distance, Ingalls, which was probably too small to be of any help -- a state trooper drove up and pulled over beside us. Based on how few cars were on the road, we couldn't believe our good fortune, but it actually wasn't luck that brought him to us. His wife had spotted us earlier and had called him to let him know that a strange tandem bicycle was on the road that he might want to drive out to see. He was expecting to find us cheerily riding along, not beside the road in need of rescue, but he was very eager to help. While he was calling around trying to figure out how to transport the bike and us, a guy in a pickup truck drove up and asked us if he could help out in any way. A few minutes later we had the bike shop address from the trooper and we and the bike were in Jon's truck, headed to Garden City. Sometimes I really do love Kansas.
Jon is in the construction business, so he and Kyle chatted about Leed certification, the relative merits of different concrete mixtures, and other things that I vaguely understood. His latest job was rebuilding a nearby town that was almost completely destroyed by tornadoes, so he also gave us some insight on reading the rapidly changing weather patterns and getting under cover whenever the sky turns green. Without those town-destroying tornadoes, however, most local construction workers wouldn't have any work right now; Jon said that while most issues and trends that start on the coasts fade considerably before they reach the middle of the country, the current economic crisis was a brutal exception. Jon also offered a response for the question that rattles around my head whenever I meet one of these wonderful Kansans: What on earth made you want to live here? Jon talked about the merits of being left alone in "fly over country," including never feeling crowded (after riding through New Jersey I guess I can understand) and never having to deal with real traffic: a bad commute is when he has to drive 65 mph instead of 70, or when there's more than one traffic light in his way.
Not only did Jon get us to Garden City, he also saved us a good deal of money there. Instead of taking us to the regular bike shop, he stopped at his friend Earl's tinker shop.
Inside was a crazy hodgepodge that resembled a garage sale, but Earl knew what he was doing and had treasures in those boxes and piles that he was willing to part with for almost nothing. He went outside with us to look at the wheel, and then dug out four spokes that would fit and sold them to us for a dollar. Amazing.
Jon insisted that we do the repairs back at his house, where he had a workbench and all manner of tools. Kyle was ecstatic to work on the bike in a proper space with proper equipment, instead of making do on the side of the road or in a cramped hotel room. Changing out a spoke is a tricky business, since it needs to be tightened exactly so that the wheel is balanced, or "true." Bike shops have truing stands for the purpose, but Kyle was eventually able to get it close enough to work. Jon was kind enough to invite us to the dinner he and his wife would be cooking in a few hours, but we were going to try to get in some more riding before dark, so we sadly had to turn him down. We said goodbye to our hero and got back on the road.
THANK YOU JON!
We didn't get very far before realizing that staying outside might be a very bad idea. The sky had begun to look very foreboding, and after all our discussion of severe weather we wanted to be on the safe side. We rode to an America's Best Value Inn and used their guest computer to check a weather map, and it didn't look good. We gave in and rented a room for the night, and a good thing too: twenty minutes later it was hailing outside.
Clearly, someone forgot to remind Kansas that IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER. I mean, really, Kansas? Hail?
The hail prevented us from returning to Jon's house and taking him up on his dinner offer after all, but it wasn't a long storm so we eventually made it across the street to Lonestar. Over meat, potatoes, and delicious lemonades, we planned our next move. Both of us felt like we had to ride back to where our tire had blown and make up the miles that Jon had driven us. We just wouldn't feel right knowing that we had ridden our bicycle all the way across the country except for one thirty mile stretch in the middle. We were also both worried that the other person would disagree and argue about how crazy it would be to go backwards, so we were incredibly relieved to find that we were on the same page! We decided that our best bet was to book the hotel room for another night and spend tomorrow just making up the miles, which would be a little over 60 miles round trip and hopefully give us the afternoon and evening off.
For the past few days I've been creating verses of a song called "That's the Magic of Kansas," which chronicles all of the strange and undesirable aspects of the state.
"Ride for hours and the scenery stays the same / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas."
"Fifty long miles between small towns / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas." (Don't forget your jazz hands!)
And now, "Freak hail storms in the middle of summer / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas."
And while I stand by my dislike for many aspects of the area, today reinforced what we've found to be the true magic of Kansas: the fact that its people are as amazingly friendly and generous as everyone claims they are. Maybe they have to be kind and community-oriented in order to survive in a place with such wide open spaces, low population, and hostile weather; I don't know. But I will always maintain that Kansas has, hands down, the best people in the world.
I just don't understand how they handle the rest of life out here...
| posted at: 01:21 |
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Friday, July 17, 2009
The plan today was to make it all the way to Lakin, KS, an easy 75 miles that would leave us perfectly positioned to hop into Colorado tomorrow. Unfortunately, it didn't work out.
The day started with a tour of Dodge City.
We didn't really have time to actually see anything, but we did check out the sights from the outside.
We also saw Boot Hill.
Then we were off. Not long after we arrived in Cimarron, where we stopped at a grocery store for a late breakfast. Before leaving town, we flatted. I repaired the flat on the sidewalk, while Jillian took some pictures of a funny looking bug.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just a regular flat. The spoke had snapped at the hub. I tried lining the rim with a dollar bill, to keep it from bumping into the tube.
A few miles past Cimarron, we flatted again. I was feeling very frustrated at the time. Jillian took some photos of horses.
Riding with a broken spoke was painful. The wheel wants to go out of true, making everything bumpy. The bike starts to feel like its going to fall apart.
We desperately needed to find a bike shop. I spent a little bit of time pouting and checking the Garmin to see how much further we needed to limp to get to, well, anything.
I'd just starting to try to fix the bike again when a Kansas State Trooper pulled over, and put his lights on. It turns out that he was a bit of a cyclist himself and that his wife had called him earlier to let him know there was a rather funny looking bicycle on the road. He put his lights on for us, so that the cars would give us some space.
But never doubt Kansan Hospitality. A nice man named Jon stopped by with his truck to offer us a ride in to town.
Jon drove us in to town and brought us to his friend's store, the Tinker Shop.
It didn't seem like much, but inside we found the helpful owner, who dug up a few old spokes in the basement and sold them to us for $1. Jon then drove us back to his place, so that we could do the repairs.
We left Jon's, thinking that maybe we'd ride back to Ingalis and do the miles we were missing. Fortunately, both of us really just wanted to rest and shower. We headed over to America's Best Value Inn and got a room. While Jillian was taking a shower I heard some interesting noise outside.
Hail!
We were so very glad we hadn't decided to try to make up those miles. We walked over to a Lonestar for dinner. A couple of delicious frozen strawberry lemonades later and we went straight to bed.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty One |
| 7/16/09 |
| From Hutchinson, KS |
| To Dodge City, KS |
| 139.3 miles! |
| 14.6 avg mph |
Anyone from PA recognize this symbol?
That's right, it's the Turkey Hill symbol, but on a store that is not a Turkey Hill. And this isn't the first time I've seen something like this out west. Apparently Turkey Hill is buying out other convenience stores but changing their symbols and not their names (or vice versa)? I'm not quite sure, but it means that I can drink delicious lemonade that tastes like home.
I literally don't remember anything of note happening until we reached the next gas station hours later, where we chatted with the very friendly cashier. Then it was back on US 50 again for a long stretch of nothing before our next chance to rest.
I hope you weren't expecting anything more exciting. This is Kansas, remember. The highest and (sadly) most interesting points on the landscape were grain elevators, so we used them to play the guess-the-distance-to-that-landmark game again. But we also had our eye on a much more important distance marker: the exact halfway point of our trip, or as near as we could estimate it based on our planned route to Oregon. Conveniently, this midpoint was right near a rest stop with shaded picnic benches. We celebrated with a happy dance (the video exists on a memory card somewhere, but I think it can stay there for now) and a very melted and messy Snickers bar.
Fittingly, our midpoint occurred just before Kinsley, a town equidistant from New York City and San Francisco known as Midway USA.
We didn't make it to the Sod Museum advertised there, but we did see some of Kinsley. We felt we had entered a ghost town, actually, since it was eerily empty and silent for late afternoon. We suspected that everyone was at the fair that was advertised all over, but we were never able to find it. The only business that seemed to be open was the town's only grocery store, which had about six short aisles. Inside, the cashiers and customers were discussing the craziest things they'd ever done, so Kyle shared our current insane endeavor while he picked up apples and bagels for our afternoon snack. Meanwhile, I was outside talking to a man who grew up riding a bicycle everywhere but who hadn't been able to ride one since he lost his leg in a horrible motorcycle accident. I told him about all of the alternative bikes I'd seen that might work for him, and about the racers who pedal faster with their arms than I can with my legs. Hopefully he can find himself a bicycle and rediscover the joy of riding without an engine.
We had considered staying the night in Kinsley, but it was still fairly early, the wind was with us, and the outside of the only motel in town had absolutely nothing to draw us in. It was an easy decision to ride onward. Soon we passed a windmill farm, and hoped it was a sign that the winds in the area were strong and steady and would continue to help us.
With an anxious eye on the storms brewing to the south, we decided to push the whole way to Dodge City, an incredible feat even with the wind to our backs. I was highly motivated, however, by the promise of a La Quinta hotel room, in fact I sang rhyming odes to La Quinta most of the way there. We made it to the hotel around sunset, even though we were forced to detour around an extensive construction project. I couldn't believe the odometer: before this trip I had never ridden more than 80 miles in a day, and today we were just shy of 140.
The universe seemed eager to reward our efforts. When we asked the woman at the front desk for a first floor room so that we wouldn't have to carry the bicycle upstairs, she informed us that the only first floor room available was an executive suite... and that she would be happy to upgrade us to it for free! For the price of a standard King room we got one with much more size and swankiness (and an extra flat screen TV, just in case). More happy dances ensued.
The outside of the La Quinta, complete with a relaxing fountain, was nice as well.
Though I wasn't so sure about the Suicide Suite on the highest floor. (I only kid, La Quinta. You know I adore you, even with your dangerous doors to nowhere.)
Next to the hotel was a family restaurant with a wild west theme (what else?) where we had heaping plates of reasonably good pasta. Tomorrow morning we'll get to see the rest of famous Dodge City, or as much as we can take in quickly and for free. Yee Haw.
| posted at: 01:20 |
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
When travling to Pueblo from Hutchinson, most cyclists take the recommended route through Nickerson and Larned. We decided that route looked a little too sparsely populated and instead decided to follow US-50 straight west. We left Hutchinson without a hotel reservation, so we could be flexible on the distance. If possible, we'd try to make it to Kinsley, KS.
Before leaving town, we stopped somewhere that most people would think of as a Turkey Hill.
There were actually a number of gas stations across the country that used the Turkey Hill logo, and even sold Turkey Hill products, but did not call themselves Turkey Hill. This all made Jillian think of home.
About twelve miles down the road we made another stop at a gas station. It was necessarily that we always had to stop, it was just that you used every stop you found, since you never knew if the next one was going to be five miles away or fifty miles away. Like most Kansan gas stations, the staff was very friendly and loved to chat with us about our trip.
We rode on, under a vast... nothing.
Once again we found ourselves caught up in some weird weather that afternoon. Without any warning, the wind suddenly picked up and we started wondering if it was going to rain. Fortunately, we found a rest stop quickly and got off the road to call my mother. She gave us a weather report, which actually looked surprisingly good. After waiting for the wind to die down a bit, we got back on the road.
To keep our minds occupied, we started playing what we called The Horizon Game. In this game, when we crest a little hill we pick something in the distance and both try to guess how far away it is. I got to be pretty good at it, since you could use grain elevators to estimate distance fairly well.
US-50 turned out to be a great ride. After leaving the rest stop the wind switched to a tail wind, and we started moving quickly down the highway. The road had a beautiful 8 foot shoulder with rumble strips carefully positioned next to the white line. This is a lot better than a state like Pennsylvania, which might have rumble strips that stretch across the entire shoulder. There were even towns at regular distances on 50, giving us places to stop for cold drinks.
Around mile 90 we arrived in Kinsley, which bills itself as the midway point between New York and San Francisco.
Kinsley was deserted. We rode all through town looking for somewhere to get dinner, but everything was closed. We decided to instead just find a bathroom, but we missed the library being open by less than ten minutes (having passed by it once while it was open, but not thinking to stop then). We ended up stopping at a grocery store, where the clerks were debating who'd done the craziest thing. It appears that the local past time is driving to the next town over and streaking down main street. They were confused when I said I was currently in the process of doing the craziest thing I'd ever done.
We rode to the west side of town to check out the only hotel. It was positioned between the highway and some train tracks, and looked a little too sketchy even for us. We debated stopping for a few moments, but decided to ride on to Dodge City, which we assumed would have many tourist oriented hotels. We rode the 35 miles to Dodge City in less than two hours, including stops. The tail wind seemed to effortlessly push us across the Kansas plains. We arrived in Dodge City just as the sun was starting to go down, and pulled into our favorite place in the world: La Quinta.
Unfortunately, there weren't any rooms avaialable for us on the first floor. We inquired about the elevator, but when the clerk saw our bicycle she took pity on us. Instead, we were upgraded from a standard king to an executive king. We love La Quinta.
Of course, we'd gotten in too late to really enjoy the La Quinta, but still. Good water pressure, clean rooms, reasonable rates (though Dodge City is over priced, as it is a tourist town). We went next door to a steak house for dinner then crashed, super excited about having done more than 130 miles in one day, and not even feeling that tired at the end of it. The weather forecast was calling for no real change in the weather, and with tail winds like that we were optimistic we could make Pueblo in another three days. This was important, too. The clanging noise was getting worse, and we had recently reached a point where we didn't feel comfortable coasting on the bike at all. That meant we pedaled non stop on the bike, never taking a break except when we pulled over.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty |
| 7/15/09 |
| Break Day in Hutchinson, KS |
I really love libraries. We spent most of today in a rather nice one, alternating between blogging and reading Lance Armstrong's It's
Not About the Bike
(yes, exactly like we did in Effingham) and it made me incredibly happy. Our lunch at Subway was rather subpar, especially since the All Kansans Are Friendly rule apparently doesn't extend to their employees, but at least the cookies were as delicious as usual.
We were waiting for the bike shop across the street to finish their work, which we thought would include a much needed chain replacement. Unfortunately they informed us that it would make no sense to replace the chain without replacing the cassette (as a ragged cassette like ours would quickly tear up a new chain) and they didn't have the parts for our odd bicycle. We couldn't wait for them to be shipped in, so we had them clean the bike and fix a few minor problems and just hoped for the best. Kyle was also finally able to replace his old helmet with a snazzy new one that made me a bit jealous. I also longingly browsed the cruiser bikes, but I think if I ever bought one I would feel like a traitor.
By the time we finished at the bike shop, the salt mine and most of the museums were closed. So much for our tourist plans. Instead we decided to go out for a nice dinner and a movie, a plan that failed miserably. The movie theater was located in what we eventually dubbed The Worst Mall Ever, complete with theme song. (the only lyrics were "the worst mall ever," but I think it was pretty catchy all the same.) it was nearly impossible to access as a pedestrian, and the inside was incredibly empty and depressing. I say this having seen far too much of it, since we wrongly assumed that we could access the theater from within the mall and wandered all around it before realizing we would have to make a long loop around it outside, and in the rain no less. When we finally made it to the box office, it was packed with people waiting to see the new harry potter, which was the only movie we wanted to see. Even though we had just run the gauntlet to get there we decided that we'd rather see Harry Potter in a theater that was less depressing and less crowded, so we headed back through the rain the way we came to find dinner.
We ended up at Chili's, which turned out to be an even worse decision than touring The Worst Mall Ever. Our waiter was very charming in an awkward sort of way, but we had to wait so long for our food to arrive that we consumed two giant bowls of chips and cheesy dip. Then we had a three course meal deal from a menu that included only absurdly unhealthy options. We were fit to burst by the time the dessert shooters arrived, but they tasted the best of everything we'd had so we couldn't resist finishing them too. I don't know what we were thinking.
The long walk back and the stop at Target for ziplock bags nearly killed me, and when we finally made it back to the hotel room we just collapsed on the bed and groaned for a few hours. I'm betting my first meal at Chili's will also be my last; I just hope we recover by tomorrow. To make matters worse, we noticed on our way in that the hotel had a laundry room that we could have used last night or all day today, but now it would be too late for everything to dry. Very frustrating. But on the other hand we also finally found the switch for the main light; we had gone through yesterday thinking they had just gone overboard on the mood lighting. We felt rather stupid all around as we drifted off to sleep.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Ah... a rest day. After breakfast, our first priority was to find the bike shop.
The bike shop, Harley's, was the first real bike shop we'd seen since St Louis. They said they'd look over the bike and get back to use a few hours later. Since the library was just down the street, we traveled there to wait. We alternated reading It's Not About the Bike, by Lance Armstrong and blogging. I managed to read the entire book, but Jillian only got about 40% through (I blog a lot faster than she does).
The library was helpful in another way. Since Clinton, MO our little camera had been broken. In order to take photos we'd needed to stop the bike to let Jillian out to get her big DSLR. We'd so far been unable to find a camera shop that could repair our little camera, and it was beginning to look like we'd need to wait until Denver. But while sitting at a little table in the library I was able to clean enough to the lens mechanism that the camera miraculously started working again. We were ecstatic.
After lunch at Subway, we returned to the bike shop. There we heard the bad news. Our chain was dying. We could decide to replace it, but we'd likely need to replace the cassette as well. Otherwise the cassette would just chew up the new chain and we'd be replacing it in Colorado anyway. Additionally, there was something wrong with our freewheel that was causing the clanging. New parts might take a week. And there was nothing that could be done about our brakes - no one had seen our type of disc brakes before. I got a new helmet, we had the bike lubed up, and then we rode it back to the Days Inn. A rather depressing stop.
By the time we were back to the hotel, the local salt mine was already closed. Jillian was very depressed by this, since she'd been hoping to do some real tourist activities for once. We settled on hiking to the mall in order to see the latest Harry Potter. The movie theater was within walking distance at the Hutchinson mall. Unfortunately, this turned out to be The Worst Mall Ever (we wrote a song). Many store fronts were empty, the mall was small, the parking lot had standing water in it, and the theater was there, but it wasn't actually part of the mall. They just shared a wall, which was very confusing and caused us to have to walk through the back of a home improvement store in order to find the actual theater entrance. Even then, we discovered that the lines were long. So we gave up on Harry Potter, and instead went to Chili's house of horrors.
I had never been to a Chilis. Our awkward waiter brought us bowl after bowl of free tortilla chips. We settled on getting the 2 for $20 deal, which included an appetizer, two entrees, and a desert. Before we were even done with the entrees, we started feeling sick. It was too much food. Dessert put us over the top, and we shuffled to Target to purchase new ziplock bags and other supplies. Our stomachs were killing us, and we swore off Chilis forever. Next stop was the hotel, where we crashed on the bed and watched HGTV at length, hoping our stomachs would eventually feel even a little bit better.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Nine |
| 7/14/09 |
| From El Dorado, KS |
| To Hutchinson, KS |
| 80 miles |
| 12 avg mph |
I started the day with a panic attack. We were riding through town, still half asleep, when suddenly a chorus of angry barks broke the early morning calm. Our heads snapped to the right, where a dozen snarling rottweilers were sprinting alongside us. I shrieked before registering that a deteriorating metal fence currently separated my flesh from their teeth, and I stayed in a state of gasping, shaking terror for a good quarter mile until I could finally see that the fence turned a corner and completely enclosed the pack of dogs and whatever they were guarding.
Well, I did want more excitement from Kansas.
True to form, the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Uneventful and blazing hot. Even though the winds have remained in our favor (though unfortunately not as strong as yesterday), I constantly have to fight the fear that we will never escape Kansas. The state's tourism motto is "Kansas: As Big As You Think." (I'm serious; you can google it.) I've never heard a more honest advertisement. Kansas is as big as we expected... and as hot, flat, boring, and empty. We had outrageously negative expectations for Kansas' topography and weather, and it has managed to fulfill if not exceed them all.
We've also had to fight with the bike itself. Over the past few days its machinery has become increasingly stubborn, shaky, and noisy. The brakes stick, the chain is jerky, and a part that we can't identify makes an awful clanging noise from time to time. Fortunately Hutchinson, our destination for the day, has a bike shop, probably the last one before we reach the heart of Colorado.
Making everything worse today was the fact that the town that we expected to hit 12 miles in didn't appear until past the 20 mile mark. Someone, ahem, had apparently read the map incorrectly. (Okay, and someone else hadn't bothered to consult the map at all.) As you might expect, there weren't many towns on our route, and we valued every one of them for their cold drinks and kind people. I was excited to stop at a mechanic/convenience store/restaurant in the middle of nowhere where we were greeted by this guy:
But the happy mood dissipated a bit when the guy behind the counter told us the story of a young couple whose cross-country bicycle trip ended when the Kansan winds blew them into a car and almost killed them. Great.
After another long and depressing stretch we had lunch in the very small town of Whitewater. As we waited for our sandwiches we had a good time reading the local newspaper and chuckling as the locals made fun of the lack of newsworthy happenings in town. Our next major stop was Newton, where we ran into Amanda, Nick, Doug, and John: a group of friends about our age crossing the country the other direction. Like all cross country cyclists passing in the night -- or the middle of the day -- we traded information and advice. Amanda had apparently run out of water earlier in the day, and eventually the heat had driven her to drink from a water source clearly marked non-potable. We wished her stomach luck and made sure to stock up on fluids before heading out of town.
Back on the road it was hotter than ever. We were carrying enough water to avoid Amanda's fate, but my head felt ready to split open and I worried that heatstroke was in my near future. Eventually I just collapsed under a massive tree in someone's front yard (the only tree for miles around, of course) and stayed there until I started to feel stable. Miserable, but stable. When we finally reached the town of Buhler we did everything we could to cool down, from riding through a sprinkler to downing a large milkshake and a 44 oz lemonade each with our dinner at the local diner. We met more friendly people, including a couple who had moved there from Conshohoken PA and a fellow bike guy who gave us his business card in case anything went wrong. It was apparently just a good day for meeting people, starting with the hotel lobby this morning: while eating a meager complimentary breakfast beside a cactus named Pedro Pete, we were approached by a well-traveled woman handing out hotel coupons and a friendly couple from Security, Colorado named Brenda and Mike. Even the people just visiting Kansas are great; if the populated areas were much, much closer together I would actually enjoy this state. Especially places like Buhler, one of those charming Western towns with a sense of legitimacy despite the tourist attractions.
I wanted to wander the Buhler streets a bit, but there were giant storm clouds on the horizon and we needed to get moving. While I would have welcomed cloudy skies and cool rain in lieu of the hot sun, I didn't think we'd be lucky enough to have a brief storm without lightning. Unfortunately, I was right, and we were soon trying to outrun a vicious one. The rain caught up to us quickly but we made it to the outskirts of Hutchinson before the lightning did. Ducking under the awning of an antique and curiosity store apparently specializing in animal skulls, we called Kyle's father to get more information on the storm. It looked too close to call on the weather map, but luckily we spotted a state trooper up the road and decided to ask him for information. He told us that there wasn't really any shelter before Hutchinson proper, but that was only five miles away and he thought we could make it. Fortunately he was right, and the storm stayed south long enough for us to make it safely to the hotel.
More friendly faces awaited us there, in this case the very eager children of the hotel receptionist. They asked us all about the bike and told us all about tornadoes, rodeos, and car races. I couldn't care less about whatever version of Nascar they were talking about, but I would like to see a rodeo while we're out west, and by necessity we're becoming very interested in severe weather patterns. Plus they were pretty cute.
We eventually escaped to our spacious room to shower, and then spent the rest of the evening watching house buying shows from bed, good therapy for those wandering far from home. We also researched some of the local attractions, which include a salt mine and several museums. The visit to the bike shop tomorrow means we have to take a day off, and we can't wait.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Both Jillian and I were very excited about today's ride, as we'd hooking up with the Transamerica trail in Newton. Hopefully that meant we'd start seeing other touring cyclists.
We started today with a kind of sketchy ride through nowhere on our way out of town. The road turned to dirt fairly quickly and we rode along a lot of oil drilling equipment for a little while. At least one house was full of large, loud dogs that didn't seem the least bit friendly. But we eventually made our way to a pleasant ride along KS-196.
We stopped in the little town of Potwin, which had a service stop/convenience store. We took advantage of the opportunity to get some information about the nearby roads (avoid US-50 until west of Hutchinson!), and stock up on candy bars. Reeces Fast Break and Snickers bars might be the reason we hadn't lost much weight yet.
About 7 miles later we stopped again at the little town of Whitewater. After looking around the town a bit, we stopped at a Video Store/Convenience Store for ice cream.
There wasn't much west of Whitewater, not even much of a shoulder. The ride was actually starting to feel a little stressful, since traffic was moving fast and the rolling hills didn't give people much of an opportunity to see a our bike. But we made it ten miles and crossed I-135 without incident.
On the ride North to Newton we were hit by a freak storm. Rain just came out of nowhere at all. Fortunately we were able to make it under the US-50 bridge in time and stay mostly dry. We pushed on to a little Quiznos where we grabbed lunch. While there we had a lengthy conversation with the owner, who was a transplant from back east. On our way out of the Quiznos we ran into the most ridiculous woman ever. She'd also completed a couple of cross country rides, and had grown bored with those. So instead she rode the perimeter of the country clockwise, then took a different trip to do it counter clockwise. Here we were completely exhausted and we're talking to a woman three times our age who regularly does trips five times as long.
Further on in Newton we had our first encounter with touring cyclists. We met two college students who were doing the country west to east, and were waiting for friends at a Chinese restaurant. They invited us to join, but we felt that we had spent too much time in Newton already. After a stop at a Wendy's to use their bathrooms, we rode on in oppressive heat.
Several miles West of Hesston, Jillian started to feel the heat in a bad way. I started looking for a tree that we might take some shelter under. The only one we found was on someone's lawn, but we pulled over and laid down anyway. After a ten minute break, we pressed on, since we now knew we really needed to get out of the heat.
Our break came at Buhler. Buhler had a cute downtown area and a little restaurant. In order to get to the downtown you have to ride through a residential area, which gave us an opportunity to ride through a sprinkler or two and cool down.
At the restaurant, we both proceeded to drink tremendous lemonades and two slushes. Probably a half gallon of liquid each.
Although we were only at the restaurant for about twenty minutes, I knew something was wrong when we came out. The wind had picked up, and there were huge storms brewing to the west. A man stopped by to warn us about the weather and give us his card in case we needed anything, and then we hopped back on the bike and rode hard toward Medora, where we hoped there might be shelter if we needed to wait out the storm.
Unfortunately, Medora wasn't much of a town. The best we could come up with was a little overhang next to a closed antique store. I called home to get a weather report. According to Dad, there were tornado warnings south and west of Hutchinson, and that the storm was gradually moving toward us. He thought that if we rode hard we might be able to make Hutchinson before the storm got really bad.
Down the road a way you could just make out some flashing lights. Thinking that whomever was stopped there would have more accurate information than a weather report, we rode to where a Kansas State Trooper had pulled someone over. We waited while he finished writing a driver a ticket, then quizzed him on the weather. Like every other person we met in Kansas, he was incredibly helpful. He too agreed that if we rode really hard we might make Hutchinson before things got really bad. We rode on.
We started playing the shelter game. Every time we saw anything that looked like it might be shelter (an abandoned house, a large tree, a barn) Jillian would call out our mileage, so that we'd be able to figure out if it was better to press forward to Hutchinson through a storm, or better to turn back around to shelter. We had just made Hutchinson limits when the rain started to come down and the winds picked up. Knowing that the hotels were only a few miles away, we rode through it all, leaning the bike at a rather severe angle at all times in order to stay upright in the wind.
We found our way to a Comfort Inn before stopping and calling my parents again to get hotel information and let them know we'd made it to town safely. In fact, the weather was starting to look clear again. Since the weather was clearing up, rather that go to the first hotel we found (the Comfort Inn), we moved on to the Days Inn, which was a little cheaper. While checking in we had a long conversation with the hotel clerk's children, who were fascinated by our bike. After a conversation with the clerk and the owner, they were even able to find us a first floor room at a cheaper than usual rate, which we appreciated so much we decided to extend our stay to two nights. According to most reports, Hutchinson is the last town with a bike shop until Pueblo, CO 400 miles away. Our brakes were acting funny, and the bike had started making a clanging noise whenever we coasted.
We hiked out to find some food, then returned for a well deserved shower and rest. We were even planning on sleeping in until the tail end of breakfast.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Monday, July 13, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Eight |
| 7/13/09 |
| From Iola, KS |
| To El Dorado, KS |
| 92.4 miles |
| 12.2 avg mph |
On a theoretical level I was excited to be traveling to El Dorado, since it offered various opportunities for me to quote one of my favorite animated movies, The
Road to El Dorado
(see entry title). I found out that around here they pronounce it with a long A, just like back in NevAda, but I could still pretend that I was traveling with Miguel and Tulio.
Unfortunately our day began miserably. We got a late start because we were trying to wait out the rain, but eventually we gave up and ventured out into the wet and the cold. We started arguing about what to do about the weather and when to stop, and for the rest of the morning every conversation we began seemed to end in mutual irritation and silence. We eventually resolved to hit reset on the day and leave our quarreling behind us with the rain, which had been replaced by blazing sunshine. Unfortunately, our surroundings refused to improve with our mood. In fact they refused to change at all. If you'd like to experience our bike ride through Kansas for yourself, hop on a stationary bike, turn up the heat in your house to blistering, and stare at this photograph for about 9 hours straight.
Occasionally a herd of cows would start walking in a long line, and every few hours we'd see a dead armadillo on the side of the road, but that was the extent of the visual variety. We devised new alphabet games: "Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Biking Across Kansas" and "Places That Are Hotter Than Here." We also made bets on how far away a given landmark was (and by landmark I mean one of the Flint hills, since as I may have mentioned there was nothing else to see). Our guesses were short by as many as fifteen miles, so eventually the game became too depressing to play.
Kansas also gave us a new riding rule: Stop under every shade-giving tree available, because it may be the last one available for hours. I think at this point we had a shaded tree *and* a view of walking cows; you can imagine our elation.
What I really wanted to see were the famous giant sunflowers that were supposed to take over miles of fields throughout Kansas. So far this small field of equally small flowers is the best we've seen, but under the circumstances I was pretty excited:
Then it was back to fields and cows and brush and fields and cows and brush and fields and cows and brush and ooooh look some hay bales! and fields and cows and... I would say "you get the idea," but honestly I think it's impossible to convey the extent of the openness and nothingness and the effect that it has on your mental and emotional state, especially when you're watching the prairie and fields pass by in slow motion from the seat of an exhausting bicycle. Any break, especially a building with cold water and a bathroom, was cause for major celebration. We knew that a rest area was on our route today, but I was still overwhelmed with relief when we saw that it was indeed right where the map had promised it would be. As a bonus there was a very nice couple in an RV at the stop, the first people we had talked to since the early morning. Pat and Butch gave us bottles of water and granola bars and enthusiastically asked us all about the bike and the trip. They were headed to El Dorado as well, and even offered to let us stay the night in their RV. We already had a hotel plan -- and figured at a hotel we could take the long showers we needed without using up all of the hot water available -- but really appreciated the offer. As we all get ready to leave, they asked if there was anything else they could do, and I managed to keep from asking them to drive a hundred miles down the road and wait for us so that I could have a bathroom and sun cover when we made it that far.
We expected to see essentially nothing until we reached El Dorado, and for the most part we were right. But then, deep in the midst of hot, boring, barren nothingness, we spotted an oasis. I actually worried that I was hallucinating, but there it was, nothing visible around it for miles and miles: The Lizard Lips Grill and Deli.
As you might have guessed from the sign, this grill and deli was also a gas station, a convenience store, a movie rental place, a license center, a bait and tackle shop, and the county junction. It clearly operated on the general store model: multi-functionality squeezed into a building not much bigger than a two car garage. As we waited for our sandwiches we noticed several interesting signs: an advertisement for peacocks for sale, an intimidating number of "Don't Bother or Complain to The Cook" warnings, and a prominently displayed board listing everyone who had tried to pay with a bad check. I was also distracted for quite some time by a hummingbird just outside the window who refused to stay still for a photo.
It was hard to leave the Lizard Lips oasis, but it became instantly easier when we realized that a strong tail wind was blowing. We jumped on the bike and felt the wind carry us along as the miles sped by. After a while we saw a series of signs with picnic benches on them, and thought that our luck was getting even better since they must mark another unexpected rest stop. Unfortunately we were wrong -- it was literally just a turnoff with a collection of picnic benches and nothing else, something that would only merit signs in Kansas -- but so long as the wind was carrying us along we didn't really care. Flying on a tail wind is always an exhilarating feeling, but in the middle of empty Kansas in the middle of a grueling cross-country trek the feeling is nearly indescribable. As we pulled up to the hotel, I realized that today was the first time on the trip that riding made me happier than finishing, the first time that I would have eagerly climbed back on the bike after we had reached our destination for a fun jaunt around town. I can't believe that it happened in Kansas, but it did. We even called Dave to get a weather and map report, to see if we could ride the tailwind all the way to the next town, but when it wasn't feasible we found we were also happy to check into the hotel, enjoy long showers, and go out to dinner at the vibrant Mexican restaurant across the street.
Playa Azule was delightful, and we returned to the room very content. Then I checked my email to discover that I had been offered an interview for a community college teaching job that I definitely wanted. It killed me to have to write back that I was currently in the middle of Kansas and wouldn't be making it back to the east coast in quite a long time. They don't do phone interviews, and I highly doubt the position will still be open when we return. This trip is eating up a good deal of our funds already, and now I'm turning down a job opportunity for it...the physical sacrifices were bad enough! I really hope that we make it across and always feel like the journey was worth it, because we're going through and giving up a great deal to get there.
| posted at: 01:16 |
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Monday, July 13, 2009
Today's ride was to the mythical city of El Dorado. Except, much like Nevada, they pronounce it El Dor-A-do. We were beginning to wonder if Kansas was running out of short a sounds.
Unfortunately this morning's ride also started out in a bit of a drizzle. So we started out in a bad mood. Jillian got cold, very quickly, but we both knew the temperatures were going to climb rapidly into the 90s. She really wanted to stop and put more clothes on, I wanted to keep going since it wasn't that cold, and she'd be too hot soon. Every conversation we had seemed to not work. We tried resetting twice. Each time we'd just pretend it was a brand new day and everything was good. Eventually the sun came back out, we warmed up, and we felt like we were moving along again.
Today got empty in a hurry.
Really empty. So empty that we started to wonder where in the world we could stop for lunch. The Garmin didn't show anywhere to stop between Yates Center and Eureka - 32 miles away. But right outside of Toronto, we came upon what we first thought was a mirage. Lizard Lips.
Their satellite dish may have been what drew us in.
Lizard Lips was empty when we got there, but we were immediately impressed by their ability to combine a grocery store, a deli, a butcher shop, a bait and tackle store, and a gas station. We sat down at the little cafe/deli and ordered a few sandwiches. Behind the counter was a white board featuring a list of names no longer allowed to receive store credit, right next to a list of names no longer allowed to write checks. In such a small community, it must be hard to be called out like that.
Lizard Lips saved us that day, giving us a place to recharge. When we set off again, there wasn't a whole lot to see.
And there wasn't a lot of space on the side of the road. The paved shoulder was a little more than a foot wide, with another three feet of crushed stone beyond it. To a car, it would appear we weren't using the shoulder at all, but we can't ride on crushed stone.
Only a few miles farther down the road we found a rest stop. This was again a very pleasent surprise. While stopped here we chatted with a few RVers. Bicycle tourists have an interesting relationship with RV drivers. Usually people who drive RVs aren't very good at driving large vehicles (unlike truckers, who were usually the most polite drivers on the road). But RVers are so friendly when they get out of their vehicles that you can't help but love them. We met a friendly couple who offered to make us dinner in their RV when we arrived in El Dorado, and gave us some bottles of water. Thank you!
Past the rest stop we many miles until we found a tree, where we stopped for a little break.
For what's always rumored to be the flattest, most boring state in the union, there was a surprising amount to see. To our north there were hundreds of cattle moving across a large, rolling hill. To our south you could see a vast plain, with little dots that must have been cattle. No buildings though.
Again, as it got to be near about four in the afternoon, a tail wind picked up. We sailed into El Dorado and rode through the typical four lane terrible commercial district to get to the west side of town where we checked into another Super 8. Unfortunately, there weren't any first floor rooms available, but the friendly staff let us keep the bike in the small laundry area for the night. We hiked across the street to Playa Azul for a Mexican dinner. It got terrible reviews on Google, but we thought the food was good, fairly priced, and most importantly, they had beer that wasn't Budweiser. Neither of us are heavy drinkers (in fact, Jillian may not have had more than one drink the entire trip), but after a 90 mile day in 90 degree heat, you get this craving for carbs and you're very thirsty. A good beer meets both those needs perfectly.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Seven |
| 7/12/09 |
| From Nevada, MO |
| To Iola, KS |
| 60 miles |
Nevada was a nice looking town by the light of day, with cheery storefronts, lifelike wall murals, and a town hall that resembled a castle.
So we started off in a good enough mood, even though we were headed into Kansas, the state we've been dreading since the beginning. We've heard many horrible descriptions from people who have traveled across it. It's not that the traffic is bad (in fact, there's hardly any) or that the people are awful (in fact, they're notoriously friendly, when you see them). But Kansas is known as "fly over country" for a reason: it is dreadfully boring to look at. People we know who drove across it complain about how mindnumbing their trips were, and we'll be toiling across it for days instead of hours. The less populated parts of Missouri had nearly bored us out of our minds, and by all accounts it was about to get worse.
Kyle faked a smile as Kansas welcomed us into barren prairies and tornado country.
Fortunately, our trip across the plains today was broken up by a visit to Fort Scott. It was a cheery Western tourist town, and we loved it. We didn't see much of the fort itself, since entering the buildings required money, but I was very content to wander the town. There was a lot to see, especially for Kansas.
We ate lunch at a diner packed with fun locals, then stopped by the fort entrance to ask the rangers what lay ahead of us. They were wonderfully friendly but bore unwelcome news: it would be many hours before we saw another building with a bathroom, much less a populated town.
We reluctantly got back on the very, very, very open road.
For the rest of the afternoon the only points of interest were a spider that had camouflaged itself against the guard rail reflector...
...and a silo tower covered in names; we joked that it must keep track of everyone who had ever lived in the area. Not that we saw any signs of a town, you understand, but we could just glimpse a farmhouse or two far off in the distance, and somebody had to be using the gas station that we detoured far down this road to find.
We were unbelievably relieved to finally reenter a slice of civilization, which in this case meant a road that had a gas station and several stores on it. I have developed a love of gas stations that I never expected to have. They have bathrooms, they have giant slushies, and they usually offer a shaded corner somewhere where I can lay down with a balled up shirt for a pillow and be utterly content. While I was sprawled on the ground at this particular gas station, a teenage boy and his mother, looking Kansan from head to toe, came over to ask me about the bike. They were so friendly and interested that I didn't mind being disturbed by them at all. Meanwhile, inside the gas station Kyle was seriously impressing a group of little boys with his cycling stories, and when they came out after him they were tugging on their parents' arms and pointing excitedly at us. I love the people here.
But I'm not so fond of where they live. We couldn't decide whether it was good or bad that not all of Kansas was as flat as its reputation; climbing hills in the heat, even moderately sized ones, is never fun, but at least they broke up the landscape ever so slightly. After some of the longest 60 miles I have ever ridden, we finally reached Iola, which was actually a fairly large town. We were so starving (and, I think, starved for the signs of civilization and commercialization that we usually hate) that we stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner and then packed up the extra breadsticks in the trunk and rode down the street to WalMart to buy what Kyle needed to give the bike a proper cleaning. As usual I guarded the bike while Kyle bought supplies, and in what is also becoming usual a slightly crazy WalMart patron struck up a conversation with me. She was nice enough though, and finally Kyle emerged with $1 little girl tights (to cut into rags), an equally cheap bowl (to catch the grease) and the smallest bottle of dish detergent available (which was still far more than we would need). We finally rode to the hotel and settled in. Kyle cleaned the bike, I took care of things on the computer, and we both fell asleep dreading the next day's 90 mile ride through the Kansan heat.
| posted at: 01:16 |
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
Since the little camera was broken, we spent a little time this morning looking about Nevada for anywhere that might fix our camera. Unfortunately, Walmart was the closest thing they had to both a bike shop and a camera store. But we did capture some awesome pictures of downtown Nevada.
A lot of midwest towns have wall murals everywhere. Its a fantastic use of space.
People in the midwest also know how to build their courthouses.
We took US-54 out of town, heading straight into Kansas. The plan was to follow US-54 for a while before trying to hook up with the official Adventure Cycling route which passes through Chanute, just a little bit to our south.
It wasn't long before we hit Kansas. It was a hot day, and it wasn't even past nine.
Our next stop was in Fort Scott, which had brick streets throughout downtown. In fact, it was a nice downtown in general. We decided to stop for breakfast at the Nu Grill. Good food, better service, and a general feeling that we were actually eating somewhere local for once instead of just another Subway.
Believe it or not, we actually then spent some time shopping for books.
Then it was off to see Fort Scott.
Except Ft Scott cost money. So forget that. We rode on.
We followed the low, rolling hills of US-54 a few more miles before it was time to start looking for a bathroom to stop at. We ended up going a half mile off route to use the gas station in Uniontown. This gave us the chance to check out the local past time: painting your name on a silo.
Then things stated to get really empty.
The most enjoyable thing we had to do was check out Kansas's highway signs. They were the best of any state we'd seen so far.
A few miles down the road from Union Station was Bronson. Despite Google's promises, there was no gas station here.
Our next stop was in Moran. Right here we started to feel really, really good. The temperatures were high, so we stopped at the truck stop for a slushy, but most importantly the wind had picked up. And for once, it was a tail wind. We'd get the bike up to about twelve miles an hour, and suddenly it would feel like the wind would pick us up to almost twenty. So this couldn't be a long stop - we had to make use of the wind. But we did take time at this gas station to make some friendly conversation with a couple of kids who were fascinated by our bike and couldn't fathom how far we'd come.
The ride to Iola involved no turns at all, but took no time at all, since we were moving so fast. This was really new for us. We finished the day feeling great, and meeting our goal ahead of time (though, to be fair, it wasn't supposed to be a long day). Jillian wanted to press on and make up some time. We gave David a call, and he said the weather report looked good, but he wasn't sure these tail winds would hold. Ultimately I decided it would be better if we rested for the night, did some laundry, and bought some supplies at the Walmart.
The kind clerk at the awesome Super 8 gave us directions around town, and after leaving our trailer we set off to visit the Walmart and the Pizza Hut (Note - Googling this Pizza Hut on 1/10/10 came up with a bunch of health code violations). While at the Walmart Jillian had a lengthy conversation with a few folks while I did some shopping.
One of our primary reasons for going to Walmart was to get cleaning supplies. The bike was filthy and full of dust from the Katy trail. We ended up buying a serving tray for a dollar, a pair of women's leggings on clearance for a dollar, and some dish soap. When we got back to the hotel Jillian spent some time doing laundry and blogging, I spent the entire evening cutting the leggings into rags and scrubbing and cleaning every corner of the bike, then re-lubing everything. It took a long time, but the bike seemed to ride a lot better when I was done.
| posted at: 01:10 |
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
Despite having paid a little more than we were accustomed to last night, we still got a bad breakfast this morning. Nothing unusual, but nothing hot, either.
By reading some travel brochures we learned that Clinton has one of the largest town squares in Missouri. Naturally, we had to see it. Fortuantely, there was even a bike shop not too far away, so we'd be able to search for my helmet and look for some tubes.
The bike shop in Clinton is a little different. It's technically called the Clinton Mower and Saw Shop.
But the owner knows more than just a little bit about bicycles. We chatted with him quite a while about bikes, and he helped us plan our route to Nevada. Although I didn't see a helmet I was interested in, we were able to procure a few tubes, and the advice was invaluable. Rather than take the busy route through Osceola and El Dorado Springs, we would ride the scarcely populated route through Appleton City. We started with an awesome ride out MO-18, before turning down highway K, which was just plain old empty. Empty got to be a theme of the day. Jillian really wanted to stop at a bathroom, but the one we passed around the Montrose Conservation Area was... unpleasant. We rode on to a Casey's General Store in Montrose.
At a number of times on our trip we've though of it was a tour of the gas stations of the country. Gas stations have a distinct hierarchy. Sheetz are way up at the top, since they're usually clean and always have a good selection of food. Casey's are toward the top as well (As are all the Turkey Hill affiliated stores we'd see where we least expected them). Casey's usually have a pizza joint, a gas station, a video rental, and a convenience store all wrapped into one, small store. There's usually a bulletin board where you can read about the local news. Plus sometimes the bathrooms are decorated by someone other than a corporate drone. At least one bathroom even had a plant.
We were also passed by an interesting arrangement outside Montrose.
Leaving Montrose we rode to Appleton City, where they were having a car show. After chatting with a few folks, we stopped for lunch at Dariburg Sandwiches. It was like stepping back in time to a much quieter place. Service was friendly, it almost felt like you were stopping by Grandma's for lunch.
From Appleton City we followed a few more letter highways toward Rich Hill. The road got very empty, and very flat. Jillian started to go insane. When things get boring I tend to kind of zone out and just keep pedaling along. Jillian starts to go crazy if there's nothing to look at and nothing to do. This is understandable - she can't even steer, after all. She's almost always in the mood to play some sort of game, such as Ghost. I'm never in the mood to play a game. It's taken a lot of experimenting, but today we finally found something we can both agree on doing. We played the A-Z game. I would try to tell a story about a friend whose name started with an A, and then she'd do B, and I'd do C, and so on. After we made it all the way through the alphabet, we switched and did the opposite letters. Then we told a story about every teacher we'd ever had, from Kindergarten to the end of high school. Then we told a Brian Reagen joke for every letter of the alphabet. Eventually we made it to Rich Hill, and it's oasis gas station.
It's a straight shot down highway 71 to Nevada (pronounced Na-vay-dah) from Rich Hill. Unfortunately, 71 is a limited access highway, and while it's legal for cyclists to ride (so far as we can tell), I hate riding on limited access highways. But we tried it anyway, since we didn't really see any other choices. It was awful. None of the bridges had shoulders, so we'd try to carefully time our assault on a bridge to when there seemed to be no cars coming. The cars were loud, so we couldn't talk. There was debris on the shoulder. It wasn't long before we had a flat, which we fixed at an intersection.
There were some horses in a field at the intersection and some kids were out playing in the field with the horses. It wasn't too long before they came over to talk. I was sure to ask about the road they lived on, and where it went, since the Garmin showed it as an alternative route. Unfortunately the 7 year old mind doesn't think about roads quite as clearly as adults do, and we wound up riding on some very unpleasant dirt - even if it was fun that the kid tried to race us on his bike for a few hundred yards.
Midway on our dirt ride we came across some very quiet dogs. Dogs that bark don't scare me. But dogs that are quiet and stare at you scare me quite a bit. We'd heard a lot of horror stories about dogs in Missouri. Fortunately we were able to slide away without incident by simply getting off the bike and walking slowly away. Bad choice getting off 71 though.
Eventually we found our way to Nevada, and had a nice ride through a cute old town to get to a Super 8 on the outside of town. The clerk informed us that there was no Internet, since the tornadoes up in Clinton (!!!!!) had taken a few things out. We grabbed dinner at a quiet Subway, impressed the sandwich artist with the story of our trip, and then settled in for a quiet, restful night.
| posted at: 01:09 |
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Six |
| 7/11/09 |
| From Clinton, MO |
| To Nevada, MO |
| 86.3 miles |
| 10.9 avg mph |
Before leaving Clinton we stopped at the town bike shop, which was actually a lawnmower and saw shop that happened to be owned by cycling enthusiasts who kept a few bike parts in the back. They didn't have much of a selection -- Kyle couldn't even get a helmet to replace his rapidly deteriorating one -- but they certainly had expertise and enthusiasm. The owner showed Kyle the best route across the rest of Missouri while I spoke with his mother and wife. Mother and son are regular tandem bicycle partners, so we discussed the joys and drawbacks of tandem touring, including the difficulty of getting men to understand our bathroom needs.
We were thrilled to be back on the pavement, but we knew today's ride would take us through long stretches of nothing interesting, and I dreaded the tedium. Luckily when Kyle heard about the alphabet games I had been playing in my head he suggested a collaborative one: we went through the alphabet, and for each letter one of us chose a person from our distant past and shared a story about them. My favorite story was about Kyle's childhood playmate whose claim that the Foot Clan (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was hiding in her backyard led to a major drug bust. We made it through the alphabet twice and we were still surrounded by nothing. Eventually we arrived in Montrose, and had to yield to a tractor that was hauling an entire tree down the main street out of town.
It was by far the most interesting thing we saw there.
Ten miles down the road was Appleton, which was teeming with people out for a big car show. As we rode by, a tattooed man with a toothy grin called us back so that he could take a picture. He was a bike and car enthusiast, so we talked to him about the bike construction for a bit before heading down the road for lunch. We were two of four customers in the Dari-burg, which featured delicious handformed hamburgers, a nice waitress who let us fill up all of our bottles with ice water, and art made out of saws.
We rode on and eventually hit a major highway. It had a wide shoulder, but it's still terrifying to ride any road with a 70 mph speed limit. Over the roaring of the traffic we started to hear a strange clanking from the trailer, and discovered that its tire was flat. Surprised that the back most tire would be the one to flat, we pulled off on a road that turned to dirt and leaned the bike against the fence surrounding a horse paddock.
As we were changing the tube and examining the extra large staple that had caused the problem, two girls in bathing suits ran over and started working one of the horses. They seemed shy and content to ignore us, so at first we did the same, but then their younger brother rode up on a pink hand-me-down bike. That kid didn't have a shy bone in his body, so soon all five of us were fast friends. The girls told us all about their horses, though their brother kept interrupting to ask us questions, talk about his own bike riding, and invite us to visit them "next time," which he said at least twenty times. I was beginning to worry about his social development until I discovered that he just looked much older than his six years. Since we were desperate to avoid more highway driving, we made the mistake of asking children for directions. Based on what they knew about the dirt road that passed their house, Kyle was fairly sure it would take us where we needed to go. The kids grabbed their bikes and raced us around the corner -- which was as far as their parents allowed them to travel -- and we waved goodbye to them, the horses, and the last signs of civilization we would see for a while.
The road did take us in the right direction, but it was long, dusty, and deserted. The rough surface made us feel like we were back on the Katy trail, except without shade or signs of life. And when we did finally encounter life, we really wished we hadn't. Lurking outside of a storage shed -- the only building we saw on the entire road -- were two large, intimidating dogs. One had a growth protruding from the side of his neck, as if he had just swallowed a softball, and both looked ready for a chase that we would undoubtedly lose. We got off the bike as quietly and calmly as we could and stood on the other side of it as they began to trot casually toward us. Hoping they would find us uninteresting and nonthreatening, we started slowly walking away; Kyle pulled the bike along and murmured soothing words to the dogs while I focused very hard on not panicking. I refused to get back on the bike until we were completely out of their sight, and I still stole a few glances backwards just to make sure they weren't silently pursuing us.
The dirt road seemed to stretch on forever, and now I felt vulnerable as well as bored. We finally saw a crossroads up ahead, and sank back into depression when we saw that the intersecting road was dirt as well. We kept riding, not completely sure that our dusty, difficult, mind-numbing path would ever link up with a main road. Our relief when it finally did was immense, and we would have happily hopped back on the busy highway, but fortunately Kyle found an old main road that had been superseded by the highway and so was now nearly deserted. After a day of dirt, brush, and farms, it was the height of scenery, including a bridge with a view and a giant mushroom.
After another 86 mile day, we arrived in Nevada, MO. Don't confuse it with the state, in fact don't even pronounce it like the state: we learned from the locals that it's Neh-vay-dah, with a long A in the middle.
I was just glad they had a Subway open late.
| posted at: 01:02 |
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Friday, July 10, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Five |
| 7/10/09 |
| From Booneville, MO |
| To Clinton, MO |
| 82.3 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
 |
Never before had both of us so dreaded getting on the bike in the morning. We were ruined from yesterday and utterly sick of the trail. Somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of the hotel around sunrise, and rode around an industrial park for a while trying to find the back way to the trail that the very friendly manager had told us about. We groaned as we finally rolled onto the crushed limestone.
Kyle was especially hurting, so we decided to switch and have me captain for a while. It was a miserable 25 miles, (yes, I'm pathetic) though not quite as bad as facing that Ohio headwind. It was admittedly fun to captain when we were careening down the trail at a good pace, but most of the ride was a slow struggle, fighting against the surface and the slight but steady incline. I'm becoming more confident and controlled, but I still tend to veer and over-correct sometimes, so Kyle took to chastizing me in a British accent whenever I wandered towards the wrong side. (It made sense and seemed hilarious at the time.) Neither my bad steering nor Kyle's antics mattered much, since we saw very few people on the trail all day. The predicted rain never arrived, but apparently it scared other cyclists away. We could tell that no one was ahead of us when we had to clear large pieces of a fallen tree from the path.
For the record, I tried to clear the tree first as part of my captain duties, but failed miserably at it. Apparently I should spend my stoker time doing arm exercises.
It was around this time that the lens on the small camera decided to malfunction, so even when I switched back to stoker I couldn't take any photos while riding (the DSLR is too bulky, heavy, and expensive for me to hold comfortably when we're pedaling). Not that the trail offered endless variety for me to photograph. Finally we reached the old railway depot and I got a break and a camera in my hands.
We wandered around the train station store for a while and struck up a conversation with the friendly woman behind the counter. We were concerned about the storms threatening on the western horizon, and wondered if we should get off the trail before its end and find a hotel for the night. She was incredibly helpful, looking up the weather and digging out all sorts of maps. She even found one that showed traffic volume, which helped us plan a route for the days ahead. Then her friend came by and gave us free Stealth Bomber pins. It seemed like a good souvenir idea, so I also bought a tandem bicycle pin.
And then it was back to the Katy for more uphill miles on limestone. Ugg.
As we came to one of the trail's frequent bridges, an aggressive but tiny dog ran towards us, yipping its little head off. One of a pair of ditzy teenage girls -- the kind who usually own tiny, overgroomed dogs -- ran after it and scooped the thing up. She was very apologetic, perhaps because every few miles on the Katy Trail are signs strictly prohibiting unleashed dogs, "even obedience school graduates." We said it was fine, finished crossing the bridge, and went on our way. Apparently the owner had a very short memory or very weak arms, because less than a minute later we heard a familiar yipping as the dog chased after us. I'll admit that a small part of me wanted to stop, pick up the dog, and punt it back to its owner, or at least carry it back to her with a "My human is an idiot" sign tied to its tail. But we were confident that we could easily outdistance it, so we simply pedaled faster. And faster. And faster. The tiny dog kept pace with us, even at 25 mph. I was astounded; I have never seen little dog legs go that fast. I was about to squirt it with my water bottle when it finally gave up and headed back towards the high pitched screeches of its owner.
At least it broke the monotony and increased our pace.
As our misery and frustration were reaching their height, we were apparently reaching the height of the trail. We had felt the slight incline wearing us down all day, but the path was still flat enough that there was no way to determine the "peak" until we read the sign.
From there it was only 20 miles to the finish, and we felt every last one of them. We had a little celebration at the final trail sign before remembering that we still had to ride through town; once again it was almost sunset when we reached the hotel, a Best Western that was filled with boats -- and quite overpriced -- due to its proximity to the lake. Fortunately it was just down the road from a homestyle restaurant with giant portions, and as we drifted off to sleep we could take solace in the fact that tomorrow we would be soaring along on smooth pavement instead of crushed limestone.
But even though we're deliriously happy to leave the trail, something tells me we'll look back more fondly on it later; we might just miss the shade and the quiet when we're thrust back onto the open road.
Farewell, Katy. There was a time when we didn't hate you.
| posted at: 12:29 |
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Friday, July 10, 2009
Today started early. There was a good chance we'd be finishing the Katy Trail and maybe getting back onto some solid pavement today. But we didn't want it to start early at all. We were hurting. After last night's push to finish before dark (When the trail closed), plus the hill to climb out of Boonville to the hotel our legs just didn't want to move. I started the day Captaining, but after spending two or three miles trying to find the entrance to the trail, Jillian and I switched.
But, even tired, neither one of us can resist a good competition. Boonville is the last stop along the river on the Katy Trail. The trail climbs a fairly steady grade out of Boonville, but is never very steep and because you're not along the river anymore, the trail starts to straighten out significantly. It wasn't long before we spotted three cyclists behind us. Naturally, we had to do everything we could to stay ahead of them. Unfortunately, trail maintenance got in our way.
We ended up leapfrogging with the group for a little while, before stopping at the rest area in Clifton City to chat with a local cyclist. We learned about the local efforts to expand the Katy trail and add water at more stops. He was rather surprised that we were trying to complete the entire trail in three days, rather than the five which was normal. We also heard about how fortunate we were that the weather wasn't that bad, as it was often well over 100. But soon we were on the road again.
Beyond Pilot Grove was more beautiful trail. Flat, with a perfect tree arch canopy above us. There were even rather nice views to our sides. It wasn't too long before we reached Sedalia, by far the largest city on the Katy Trail.
It was a little weird riding through city streets again (there's a few miles of the Katy where there is no trail, just the local roads). We found our way to the Katy Trail visitors center, in an awesome train station, full of awesome bicycle art.
We also started looking for a bike shop. All of the foam padding in my helmet was falling apart, and we wanted to pick up some other tubes and such. Unfortunately, the only shop in town was closed for the day. Although the other three cyclists we'd seen were spending the night here, we needed to press on to Clinton. We spent a little bit more time exploring the train station, as well as making use of a clean bathroom, and then got back on the trail.
Once again, the trail was gorgeous.
But unfortunately, by the time we made it to Green Ridge the weather was starting to look bad again. On the horizon we could see storm clouds, and every moment it felt like a thunderstorm was going to rain all over us. There wasn't any shelter anywhere on the trail, if it started to rain we'd need to ride at least as far as the next rest stop - which could be as far as ten miles. Even then, shelter might amount to a very thin roof with no walls. We rode even harder, passing over the highest point on the trail (we needed to reference a photo to make sure we were in the right spot, since it was so flat).
When we got to Windsor we quickly determined there were no hotels we could stay at and rode on. We weren't more than a few miles out of town when we heard a distinctive "yip".
The Katy trail has a sign approximately every other mile reminding dog owners to leash and clean up after their dogs. Unfortunately, these rules do not appear to apply to 14 year old girls. Unfortunately, 14 year old girls appear unable to hold even a small dog in their arms. The chase was on.
Who knew a dog with legs no longer than a new pencil could run 28 miles an hour?
Past Windsor there weren't many reasons to stop. We were never sure the storms weren't going to get us, and now dark was closing in. Once again, we spent our entire evening riding as hard as we could.
We reached Clinton at dark, but only barely. We found our way to a Best Western, which like most hotels in this lakeside town, was rather overpriced. We found our way to a family style restaurant, ate all together too much, and returned to our room to crash, happy to be getting back on pavement.
| posted at: 01:09 |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Four |
| 7/09/09 |
| From Hermann, MO |
| To Boone, MO |
| 106 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
It was a beautiful morning on the Katy Trail. We rode past seemingly endless cornfields, hazy blue mountains just visible in the distance. Dragonflies danced alongside us and somewhere close cicadas sang to each other. Other insects joined the celebration of summer warmth and natural life and OUCH! OW! Damn it, where did all of these giant bugs come from and why do they keep hitting me?
Very quickly we became miserable and cursed ourselves for forgetting bug spray. Some of the assailants were painful biters, while others just flew into us, either poor pilots or aggressive fighters who greatly miscalculated our relative sizes. Even worse than being beset by a horde of bugs? Riding along in the pleasant shade of the forest and, without any warning, getting a spider web square in the face. We would inhale pieces, flail awkwardly to try to wipe it off... it was exceptionally unpleasant, especially the third or fourth time it happened. Enduring the heat, the insect life, and the long, flat trail, we both started going a little crazy. Kyle didn't feel like talking, so I tried to distract myself with mental games: trying to remember passages I memorized in high school, going through the alphabet and coming up with a book I wanted to read for each letter... anything I could think of to NOT think about the bike and the heat and the bugs and the miles left to ride. Those miles may have been the worst part: today was going to be a long day, since we had to cover over 100 miles, and we had to do it on crushed limestone, which significantly cut our speed. The thought frequently made us want to cry.
We also had to watch out for trail washouts caused by the recent storms, leaving behind giant holes and extra rocky terrain.
I'm not sure I can describe how much we both desperately wanted to be done with the trail. But always to our left were the mountains with their high climbs and the main road full of cars, reminding us to be thankful for what we had. So we sighed and got on with it...very, very reluctantly.
Despite the distance we needed to cover, we still made sure to stop for lunch. The winery was picturesque, but inexpensive food options were limited and it took far too long for our salads to make it to the table.
We also stopped at every bathroom area available to rest on the benches and attempt to preserve our sanity.
At one of these stops we were fortunate enough to meet Dan and Lou. They provided us with delicious apples, questions about our trip, and plenty of stories of their own: she used to be a correctional officer in a men's prison and he was a bridge engineer and Vietnam veteran. Now retired, they were driving from Florida to various points around the country in their truck. They were also absolutely delightful, and showed up just when we needed a break.
A few stops later Kyle, of course, found a canine friend. They even made the same face.
Also breaking up the miserable monotony were interesting sights like a dredging boat:
Standing Rock, which marks the levels of all of Missouri's major floods (as early as 1903):
and a water fountain with a ridiculously long range:
That's right, we got *really excited* about dredging, a rock, and a water fountain. It was that kind of day.
All of those photos of us were timer self-shots, by the way, because we hardly saw anyone on the trail for most of the day. Suddenly in the late afternoon a veritable pelaton of cyclists passed by, heralding our reentry into cyclist civilization. I don't think we would have had the energy to finish today's ride in time if we hadn't spotted several cyclists going our way and decided that we must race each and every one of them, whether they knew they were in a race or not. We didn't always win, but at least these spurts of speed got us into better position for our final and most important contest: a race with the setting sun. Legally we needed to exit the trail before it got dark, and we cut it very close. We sped past farm fields as the sun set, emerging from the trail just as it sunk below the horizon.
We were off the trail and had ridden over a hundred miles, but we still weren't finished for the night. Downtown Boone was a charming combination of old buildings and sparkling lights, but unfortunately it didn't have any reasonably priced hotels.
So we had to get back on the bike, bypass several tempting restaurants, climb a massive hill overlooking a rousing softball game, and after several more miles finally reached a Comfort Inn. A hop (over a retaining wall), skip (down a steep hill) and jump (over another wall) away was a truck stop with a Wendy's, where along with my hamburger I enjoyed a giant gourmet milkshake that according to the nutrition facts chart was over 1000 calories. I'm not sure how that's even possible, but I went to bed very satisfied.
| posted at: 12:29 |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
Ok, really, honestly, yesterday was probably the most boring day of riding we had all trip. Nothing extraordinary happened, we just pedaled along the Missouri with regular stops and no mechanical failures.
Our day started today with a pretty ride across the very awesome bridge between the Katy and Hermann. I wish we'd had more time to spend in the area, but we're still hoping to make it to Denver within another two weeks.
We discovered a problem this morning that would come to plague us on the Katy Trail. In the mornings, before many riders have been out, all of the spiders have built webs across the trail. Since we're the first ones on the trail, most of the webs wind up in our faces. So though we look happy in this picture, it's only because Jillian is taking photos until I've actually smiled.
One of the areas we rode through was called Rhineland. Apparently German settlers gave it this name because it reminded them of home. To us, it just looked like Missouri - large, flat, and with a big river in the middle. We enjoyed the the small park in Rhineland though, which gave us bathrooms and a break from the sun.
At our next stop in Portland a couple came over to visit us. Dan was an engineer who loved the bridges (and was as fascinated as I was by the non riveted, pin bridge downstream a way), and his wife Lou was kind enough to offer us some apples. They were on a bit of a trip themselves, and had driven through much of the country.
From Portland the trail deteriorated drastically. Riding became a chore, and I had to spend most of my time looking down and trying to keep the bike far enough to the side of the trail to avoid problems, while keeping it on the trail to avoid punctured tires from thorns.
One of the fun things we rode past was called Standing Rock, which recorded historic flood levels. By looking very carefully we were able to see a few marks scratched into the side.
Notice that in this picture you can see the year.
As the trail went on, we started seeing our least favorite signs:
Though the damage was often short, it was enough to slow us down and make us consider following the road nearby.
Unfortunately the road had a good bit of traffic on it, most of which was upset to see cyclists on the road. We decided that we were better odds to wining a fight with a rough trail then we did winning a fight with a large truck.
When we got to Tebbetts we passed the Turner Katy Trail Shelter.
For $5/person/night you got a place to sleep, a shower, and air conditioning. Unfortunately, we passed it too early in the morning for it to be any good to us. We only allocated three days to do the entire trail, stopping now would add a whole extra day to our trip.
Our next stop was right outside Jefferson City, MO, the capital. I had hoped we could find lunch here, but unfortunately there were no businesses by the trail head. However, there were a number of very enticing deals on Hotels. For about $75 the Truman Hotel and Conference Center would shuttle us back and forth from the trail and give us movie tickets. The thought of doing something "normal" got to me and I was suddenly very ready to stop. We phoned Jillian's mother, who checked out reviews for us online. After hearing about the reviews we decided to refill our water bottles and get moving.
The drinking fountain had enough water pressure that when I first tried to take a drink it shot me in the face. But we quickly found ways to have fun.
Sad as I was to be going on, we were soon back on the road with a new sense of purpose. There is nothing between Jefferson City and Boone, and in order to make Boone in a reasonable period of time we needed to move quickly, especially since the trail closed at dark.
A few miles down the trail we stopped to watch some dredging of the river take place. This was a tremendous ship.
We stayed to watch and eat a few energy bars, since we were both starving.
We reached Hartsburg around 5, and once again I was starving. Conveniently there was a slightly overpriced winery where we could get some food. Overpriced, maybe, but it was real solid food, with healthy breads and real fruits and vegetables. The downside was that good food takes time to make, and I was starving.
The minute I walked out of the winery I knew we'd made a mistake. We wouldn't make it to Boone until dark. Both of us rode as hard as we could, barely pausing for anything. At a couple of different points we saw other riders on the trail and would try as hard as possible to pass them and then prevent them from passing us. We made it to Franklin as the sun set. In Franklin we left the trail and crossed into Boone on the US-40 bridge, hoping to find a motel quickly. We hadn't made a reservation, since we weren't sure we'd be able to make it to Boone.
Perhaps because of the Casino there was actually quite a bit going on downtown.
After stopping at a Bank of America (these were impressively hard to find) to withdraw some cash, we called my parents who looked into the hotel we'd passed right at the river crossing. Unfortunately it was much too expensive for us, so we set about riding past town. Using our Garmin, we rode way out of town to a Comfort Inn at the intersection of US-40 and I-70.Although Comfort Inns are usually a little too high priced for us, this one had excellent service. The manager found us a room on the ground floor large enough to hold our bike, then wrote us careful directions on how to find our way back to the trail in the morning. It seems that we could have avoided a rather unpleasent ride through Boone in the dark by just staying on the trail for one more rest stop, where we could have exited and found ourselves right behind the hotel.
Dinner was at a Wendys, where service was incredibly slow because the exit off 70 was closed. Still, it felt so nice to stop for the night. Day 2 of riding the Katy trail was hard and annoying. Bad road surfaces, cobwebs, and dust everywhere made us want to get off the trail and onto the road. But the one time we did try it we got right back on the trail to avoid cars.
| posted at: 10:25 |
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
After a wonderful rest day with Emily's parents in St Louis, we've arrived at the heart of Missouri wine country in Hermann after riding nearly 60 miles on a crushed limestone trail. We've decided to take the Katy Trail instead of getting on the TransAmerica route right away in the interest of seeing another rail trail and lots of the Missouri River up close. As a special bonus, we'll also be tracing part of Lewis and Clark's route.
We were also notified that we made the Effingham News Post. Check out the article!
| posted at: 18:36 |
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Three |
| 7/8/09 |
| From Ferguson, MO |
| To Hermann, MO |
| 88.9 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
 |
We were reluctant to leave the Vosses this morning, but the open road called... and told us that if we didn't get riding again we weren't going to make it across the country in time. Our plan for the day demonstrated one of the many benefits of staying with locals: they know all the best routes. We had originally planned to take various roads across Ozark Mountains, having no idea that we could instead take the Katy Trail, over 200 miles without cars or steep inclines that partially follows the path of Lewis and Clark. To get there we rode around a picturesque waterway and surrounding park that were just starting to fill with kayaks, crew teams, soccer players, and runners. More reasons to move to the St. Louis area, if only it wasn't out in the midwest.
When we hit the Katy Trail I was delighted to discover that it offered bathrooms at regular intervals. Unfortunately they were toilets set over deep but rarely emptied pits, and I gagged horribly at the smell of the first one I ventured into. Some were better, but it was usually advisable to avoid breathing anywhere near them. But you're probably not here to read about disgusting bathrooms, so I'll distract you with the tiny, tiny frogs that we found outside of one.
Look at that little guy compared to the bolt. So tiny!
The trail also offered fairly regular food stops. We got a mid-morning snack from the icecream freezer at a bike shop and tried not to laugh too hard at the tourists getting used to their rental bikes, then a few hours later we had lunch at Dutzow Deli, which lived up to its German name with delicious pretzels and meat items. They were very possessive about their bathrooms, newspapers, and ice -- signs listing the regulations were the primary decorations -- but otherwise it was a nice place and a welcome rest from the heat and the dirt outside.
It was an especially warm day, and we sighed with relief whenever the trail turned away from farm fields and into the forest, where we would be shaded by dense trees and towering walls of sandstone.
Apparently Lewis almost plunged to his death while exploring one of the tallest of these cliffs, but managed to lodge his knife into a crevice of the rock and hang on to save himself. I hope he looked exactly like this depiction from one of the informative signs:
The part of the trail that intersected with Lewis and Clark's route was full of these historical markers, plus each bathroom area featured displays about local history and ecology along with a detailed map of the route and surrounding towns. Here I am in front of one, lamenting the fact that Kyle refused to be in any more of my self-shots today (oops).
We also passed the Daniel Boone Judgment Tree Memorial, a humble affair just off the trail in the midst of a farm field. Apparently after attaining celebrity status Boone settled down in the area and served as a respected administrator and judge, despite his lack of legal training. There is an actual tree planted there to celebrate some anniversary of the Boones' arrival, but I was more interested in the flowers and maps.
Another benefit of the trail was the prospect of meeting touring cyclists like ourselves, or so we thought. We quickly discovered that most people who appeared to be on long-distance tours had just embarrassingly overpacked (and from me this is really saying something). Many were carrying as much gear as we were... for a few days on the trail. One of these heavily laden groups actually had experience with longer trips, and all four of them thought that we were absolutely crazy to be traveling east to west. One who had crossed the country west to east described the 45 mph tail wind that had carried him effortlessly for a day or two, and laughingly wished us luck fighting against it coming the other way. They acted like we were choosing to contend with the hounds of hell when we could have just been carried swiftly across the country by a fleet of sweetly singing cherubims. After we left the annoyingly cynical group, I asked Kyle why on earth he hadn't mentioned these drastic wind trends when we were deciding which direction to travel (trying very hard not to sound bitter and accusatory). He contended that the wind has an unpredictable mind of its own (true), that the wind rumors were exaggerated (probably true), and that we would almost certainly end up with as many favorable wind days as unfavorable ones (we'll see).
To be honest, my favorite fellow trail traveler was this guy, making his way very gradually across the road:
He was an excellent reminder that slow and steady wins the race, or at least gets us to the coast. Hopefully he actually made it across.
We had to climb a hill to get into town, of course, but it was the only one we had been dealt all day. We checked into a motel and then ate at a diner whose food was less spectacular than its ceiling, which was covered with dollars raised for a local family in need. Then it was off to bed for a good night's sleep before continuing our slow and steady journey the next day.
| posted at: 12:16 |
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Since we needed to navigate tricky roads through St Louis in order to find our way to the Missouri River and the Katy Trail, we opted to leave early, again.
Things were great, roads were empty, all the way until US-67 (Lindbergh Road). Google Maps seemed to indicate that we'd be able to cross and find our way to Fee Fee Rd, but unfortunately there was a large concrete barricade in the middle of the road. So we ended up riding half a mile out of our way. As we got close to crossing the beltway we stopped at a grocery store for breakfast. Once again, I got donuts. Note the lack of a kickstand.
We soon reached Creve Coeur Lake State Park, where we saw a bunch of people playing on the lake. Even better, we hooked up with a spur trail to the Katy Trail, which will take us most of the way to Kansas.
The path to the Katy Trail was great - paved, no interaction with traffic, separate paths on bridges. We were going through a tunnel and suddenly a whole bunch of birds went nuts. They were in these little nests in the corners.
After crossing the Missouri River, we came to a parking area, which allowed use access to the Katy Trail along the river.
The trail was a little different. It was a crushed limestone path, which when dry generated a lot of dust. But the whole path was level, with no worse than railroad grade hills anywhere. The only real problem was the bugs. We had to keep moving all the time, otherwise bugs would try to eat us alive.
One of the best parts about riding this part of the Katy Trail was the shade. At times it seemed like we were riding through a jungle.
The other best part was that we were following the Lewis and Clark trail - every once in a while we'd see a spot where Lewis and Clark camped, or a place where some adventure happened.
The bridges on the trail were pretty awesome. Most were the standard iron truss bridges, but at least once we saw a bridge that predated rivets and was actually held together with pins.
The fields along the river were awesome - they're in a low lying area that floods occasionally, creating rich soil. We'd ride along, and we'd keep seeing more and more field.
By far the best parts of the Katy Trail were the rest areas. Every 10-12 miles there'd be a terrible smelling bathroom (more of a pit toilet), occasionally potable water, and once in a great while, ice cream! In Defiance, MO we stocked up on ice cream and cold drinks. If we had just been in the area to ride the trail we could have rented bikes here. It makes me so happy to see advertisements on a bike route - makes me think people are taking bike transportation seriously.
The Katy trail also meant we could ride after people on a regular basis - kept us motivated to ride hard. At some point we stopped at the Daniel Boone Judgment tree, which is rumored to be where Daniel Boone held court back in the day. We'd had no idea that Daniel Boone decided to settle in Missouri after he was done with his adventures in Kentucky, and seems to have just missed meeting Lewis and Clark. The tree in the picture isn't actually the Judgment Tree, but it was planted in its place.
The only downside of the rest stops was that they caused us to stop regularly. We might have made much better time, but when you're touring you never, ever pass up the chance to use a bathroom.
Each rest stop had a map showing the area we were riding. They were very helpful. Note the elevation on this one,
The turn to Hermann is a little tricky. Before the road underpass there's a trail that seems to go up to the road surface, but what you really want is the turn after the underpass.
Once we made the turn we had an awesome bike lane back across the river to Hermann. There was even a little gas station where we were able to pick up something to hydrate with.
Hermann seemed like a nice town, but unfortunately we got in a little too late to enjoy it. Most of the motels were Bed and Breakfasts, meaning we stayed at the Hermann Motel, which seemed to be the only place in town. Hermann is in the middle of Missouri's wine country, which I'd love to return to and enjoy some day. After checking into the hotel we took a look at the restaurant next door. Good service, reasonable prices, and road food.
Then we returned to the motel to catch a good night's rest. The Katy trail was looking good - no traffic, no dog problems, regular rest stops. We're optimistic.
| posted at: 10:04 |
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Two |
| 7/7/09 |
| Rest Day in the St Louis, MO area |
With a borrowed car, a list of sites, and the energy that comes with sleeping late, we were more than ready to tour St Louis. We spent most of the day in Forest Park, which houses several museums and the zoo. We spent some time enjoying the park and pond, the water and the wildlife.
I've been trying to photograph egrets for the past few days, by the by, and this was the first one that remained still long enough for me to get my camera ready. It was a good start to the morning. What most caught our attention, however, were the fifty kids on bicycles circling the pond. They were part of a young triathlon camp, which is one of the coolest ideas I've ever heard. I really hope our future children want to attend because they may not be given much choice.
We made our way across the park to the St Louis Art Museum, heralded by a giant statue of King Louis himself.
The museum's collection was fantastic and wide-ranging.
Breaking of the Vessels by Anselm Kiefer. Inspired by the Kabbalah.
Box Candy by John Chamberlain
New Continent by Louise Nevelson
January, December, November by Gerhard Richter. A reflection on communist East Germany.
And the space itself was equally impressive.
Berlin Room
German Expressionism Room
When Kyle started to go into culture overload we headed across the park to the zoo. I've always enjoyed zoos, especially with a camera in hand.
Penguins were clearly my favorite, especially the one playing with the guy cleaning his little house.
Unfortunately some of the zoo animals just made us sad, like the black bear whose dead eyes and listless, repetitive head movements made him look animatronic.
The grizzly bear was also unhappy with his small living space, but he reacted by pacing back and forth, whipping his head around at each turn. He was the epitome of pent up rage, and I've never felt so much simultaneous pity and terror.
We probably should have ended our visit with the frolicking penguins instead.
After the zoo, we headed to the university section of downtown. Thanks to Big Shark's Bike Shop we picked up a much needed wrench of some kind (I think it's clear that I'm not the mechanically inclined one) for a few dollars. Then it was off to Fitz's, a colorful restaurant and rootbeer brewery.
The rootbeer wasn't quite as delicious as I'd hoped, but the floats were amazing.
We headed back to the Voss home very content after our relaxing day out but also very sad that we had to pack up for an early departure. We really wanted to stay with them an extra day (or week) but our recent worries about the west have made us more concerned than ever about staying on schedule. So tomorrow we have to leave St. Louis, our wonderful hosts, and this relaxing and stationary existence. :-(
| posted at: 10:18 |
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
While they were at work, Emily's parents were kind enough to loan us a car and provide us with all sorts of information on places we could visit in St Louis. We decided to head to Forest Park, where we could visit the Zoo and the St Louis Art Museum (they call it SLAM, which is pretty awesome). Somewhere on the way, we passed a St Louis Bread Company, which is what Panera is called down there.
We easily found parking and decided to hike through the old World's Fair grounds to SLAM. One the way we encountered large groups of kids on bikes.
We had to stop and see what sort of awesome camp this was. It was a triathlon camp! While walking the paths, we even got to watch a group of kids practice their cornering on a bridge. The instructors didn't seem very impressed with our story though.
SLAM looks pretty impressive. It's one of the few remaining World's Fair buildings.
Art isn't really my thing, so for further details check out Jillian's entry (Which I'm hoping has more details). After eating at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant for lunch (it was the only option and very overpriced), we went to the zoo. Both SLAM and the Zoo were free, thanks to a special St Louis tax that I've fallen in love with. We didn't get to see the entire Zoo, since it was hot and we were already tired, but we did snap this gem of a photo:
We also went to the bear exhibit. It was the saddest thing we'd seen the entire trip. The black bear simply sat in his water hole and stared at the people with eyes so dull they could have been fake.
The brown bear was even worse. One of the bears paced fifty feet back and forth across his pen. Animals that big should have large forests to play in, not small concrete pens with chained down logs.
We also made a stop at the penguin exhibit. The penguins were much happier, as were we, since it was cold in the exhibit.
Deciding we'd had enough of the zoo, we moved on to Fitz's and Big Shark bike shop. Big Shark was kind enough to sell us the headset wrench we needed for our constantly loosening headset, but didn't have many tips for Jillian's constant foot problems. Fitz's was more fun, with good food and in house brewed root beer. The creme sodas were fantastic. Naturally, we got root beer floats.
Then it was time to head back. Last night we'd spent some time talking about the Katy trail. The official Transamerica route crosses the Mississippi some thirty or forty miles south of St Louis, so our plan was to ride down the river, meet up with the route, and go west. Unfortunately, this would require crossing the Ozarks, in an area known to be full of loose dogs. The Katy trail runs across the center of the state, following an old railroad bed along the Missouri river. Today we decided to take the trail out to Clinton, MO before moving into Kansas and finding the route. I spent quite a bit of time using the computer, planning our route out of St Louis and on to the trail. Jillian got some blogging done (as well as laundry), though the cat got in the way.
Emily's parents watched us pack up our stuff in their living room as we got ready for an early start. Our goal was to be out of St Louis early enough that traffic wouldn't be able to bother us.
So, once again, we turned in for an early night. Although I didn't realize it at the time, we hadn't once spoken about not finishing. After our conversation in Indiana, we'd decided only to make it to St Louis. Now that we were here, neither one of us thought once of not making it to Colorado.
| posted at: 09:13 |
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Monday, July 06, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty One |
| 7/6/09 |
| From Greenville, IL |
| To Ferguson, MO |
| 70.3 miles |
| 10.8 avg mph |
I started off the day by losing the "school or prison" game, the one where you guess whether a new, fancy building is a school or a prison. You fooled me, Federal Correctional Institution of Greenville. I could have sworn that those search lights were for a football field.
My next discovery of the day was that Gretchen Wilson was born in Pocahontas IL, population 850. I didn't initially recognize the name, but Kyle has long tormented me with her hit "Redneck Woman." (I hate most country music, except for Taylor Swift who somehow manages to be too cute to hate). In any case, you can tell that he was very excited to ride through Gretchen's hometown.
I was much more excited about Misty's, an icecream shop that we spotted on the map this morning. We had a warm ride getting there, and we could taste the ice cream as soon as the building came into view. Unfortunately, that's the best we would get, because Misty's didn't open until late afternoon. Oh cruel mistress Misty, how you broke our hearts.
Luckily things were about to get better. Our first sign was the bike rack in the middle of nowhere.
We were incredibly confused until we came across a system of bike paths nearby. We tried to follow a map of them and made a wrong turn once or twice, but we didn't really mind. Zipping under trees, through tunnels, across bridges, and occasionally past other cyclists, we thoroughly enjoyed our shaded and traffic-free ride.
The only downside was the absurd amount of dandelion fluff clogging the air and the paths...
...but as it swirled through the air it looked like snow in a children's play so we didn't really mind it either.
We eventually reached and crossed the expansive Mississippi River.
We took the Chain of Rocks Bridge, a spectacular construction with a bend halfway across.
At various points along its massive span, small displays celebrated Route 66.
At the state line we came across a jovial tourist group bursting with accents: a Texan was showing the country to friends from Sweden. One of the Swedes was more than happy to take our picture by the bike rack that marked the state line. He complimented the camera and directed us as if we were models at a high energy photo shoot.
From the bridge we could just spot the Arch, but I was more excited by the water intake structures that looked like castles.
The bike paths led us through a nice park, and also past a group of men setting off fireworks in the parking lot. Their ring leader was the third person today who wanted to know exactly how much the bike cost; it seems to be a Missourian obsession.
Missouri gained a lot of points with us for having an extensive bike path network, but promptly lost most of them when the official bike route led us onto busy, multi-lane roads with little or no shoulder. At one point we had no choice but to ride on the sidewalk. We were headed to Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis where our college friend Emily Voss grew up. She wouldn't be there, but her parents had enthusiastically offered to host us. We were relieved to finally escape the traffic and find their neighborhood. After admiring the bike and introducing us to the neighbors, they welcomed us in. It felt amazing to eat and relax in a home rather than a hotel. As we enjoyed a homecooked dinner (and produce like we can never get on the road), we answered questions about the trip and really became reinvigorated. The ride is our reality now and we're immersed in its daily challenges, so we can forget about the enormity of what we're doing; the Vosses were so excited and impressed by the trip that we remembered again and felt inspired.
They rounded out the evening by taking us to the famous Ted Drewes, which serves vanilla frozen custard with every topping and mix-in ingredient imaginable. It more than made up for the closed ice cream store this morning, and we went to bed looking forward to more St Louis tourist activities tomorrow.
| posted at: 10:11 |
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Monday, July 06, 2009
After a quick ride down 40, we stopped at Pocahontas, which we discovered to be the home of country music star Grechen Wilson.
Pocahontas was also where I-70 and US-40 merged for a while. Fortunately the frontage road was easy to follow and we had an easy ride in to Highland. We stopped for lunch at a Subway, where Jillian and I once again admired the outdoor adventure toys you could get with your kid meal. We didn't have any space on the bike, so we couldn't get one.
We had two options form here. Either we could stay on US-40 or we could switch onto IL-143 and stay north of I-70. We decided to stay on 40, which was fine, but probably the wrong decision.
After passing through a swamp, we were really hot and hungry. Fortunately the Garmin reported an ice cream stand ahead. Excited, we pedaled on. Misty's was on the corner of US-40 and IL-162, where we'd turn off US-40 forever. We stopped to take a picture, since we'd spent two weeks pedaling the same highway and now we were going to finally be riding some different roads.
St Louis is famous for being muggy and today was no exception. We were miserable and so excited to maybe get some ice cream and take it easy a minute, but then we discovered that Misty's was closed! Jillian almost burned the place down.
After passing through Troy IL-162 started to have a smaller shoulder and we started to have a lot less fun. Soon we passed by something very curious - bicycle parking next to a corn field.
A little bit of investigation helped us discover an extensive bicycle path network. We scrapped our previous plans and got on this path. The paths were amazing.
Though we missed our turn on the path, causing us to do a few extra miles, we didn't mind. We had shade, well marked paths with regular rest areas, easy access to civilization, and no traffic. We were able to ride these paths almost all the way to the Chain of Rocks bridge. While studying the map I discovered that if we'd taken IL-143 we might have run into the paths even sooner, letting us ride almost traffic free all the way to the river.
The Chain of Rocks bridge trail starts with a smaller bridge over the canal. It was a former two lane bridge that had been converted so that bicycles could have a lot of space, with a barrier to keep cars away. Not that there were many cars on the bridge, but it was good riding.
Once across the canal we had a pleasant ride through a mostly forested island before coming to the end of the road where the Chain of Rocks Bridge began. This bridge had been totally converted to pedestrian and bicycle use, which made for amazing riding.
To our left we saw what looked like water castles, but were actually water intakes from the World's Fair.
Crossing the Mississippi was awesome, and I started to feel like we'd actually done something impressive.
If we looked into the distance we could just make out the arch. This was the closest we got to the arch, since we had a lot of other things to do in town and not much time.
At the center of the bridge was a bike rack, right on the state line. This made us optimistic about the bike routes through St Louis we'd read about. A group of tourists was kind enough to take a photo of us.
This bridge was also cool because of the turn in it.
At the center was a variety of Route 66 signs and such. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to refill our tank.
Jillian took a rest on a fun bench.
Once across we had a fun ride through the park while we tried to find Chambers Rd, which was listed as a bike route. We had a lot of trouble, and ended up doing multiple laps around the park. I'm sure the people in the cars that watched us doing laps were amused. When we did finally find it, we were very disappointed to find that there was a huge difference between bike path and bike route. Chambers Road had virtually no shoulder, lots of traffic, a number of hills, and lots of traffic lights. It was a terrible introduction to St Louis.
We got to Emily's parents house without any real trouble though, and after showering and enjoying a delicious, home cooked meal they took us out for Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. The lines were a little ridiculous (I know the picture doesn't show that, but that's only because they were almost closed when we took the photo).
Ted Drewes only serves vanilla custard. But we ordered "concretes" which consisted of a number of different ingredients blended with the custard. They were awesome.
On the drive home we saw an incredibly large Amoco sign. More roadside advertisements we enjoyed.
On our return, we stayed up even later talking with Emily's parents, who were great company and hosts. But eventually we found some sleep, excited to have a car that we could use to explore the city the next day.
| posted at: 09:07 |
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty |
| 7/5/09 |
| From Effingham, IL |
| To Greenville, IL |
| 62.9 miles |
| 11.6 avg mph |
Leaving Effingham this morning we saw "the world's largest cross." Well, Kyle spotted it right away, but it took me so long to find it that I thought he was lying to me. See, it was overcast and I was expecting something taller, thinner, and closer plus sometimes there were buildings in the way and... ok, fine, I have no excuse for missing a 200 foot cross.
The rest of the time we saw a whole lot of nothing. The road stretched on for miles. It was straight, flat, and boring, except for one town in which it was straight, steep, and boring. When the road finally turned we were shocked enough to take a picture.
As the barren landscape stretched out before us, refusing to change much no matter how fast we pedaled, I wondered how long it would take us to go insane. I was already on my way, unless it's normal to give roads funny voices and have them talk to Kyle about how far they go and what the intersecting roads are like. Then I remembered that we still had to cross Kansas, which would undoubtedly be worse.
When a bit of excitement finally came our way it wasn't exactly welcome. Three yipping dogs sped out of a front yard towards us and spread out in a triangulated attack. Their speed and strategy impressed us so much that we almost forgot to get the hell away from them. Luckily their minuscule strides allowed us to outdistance them, but those little legs were moving. There must be something in the water around here, because I swear I saw a full grown cow cantering today. I didn't even know that was physically possible.
We did encounter people as well, including a few familiar faces from Effingham and an excitable motorcyclist whose "Hell No!" at the sight of our bike made me laugh.
When we finally reached our hotel in Greenville, the woman behind the desk suggested we venture into the historic downtown, which "looks like a Norman Rockwell painting." I thought she meant that it had old barber shops and soda fountains with charming owners and cheeky young customers, but it turns out she meant something more literal.
This trip has turned me into a mural enthusiast, so I really enjoyed the town. We had to ride there, but luckily the police let us lock our bike to the tree outside of their station. Too bad they weren't around when the local pizza joint got hit.
Apparently the robbers also stole some letters from that sign.
With few other food options, we headed back towards the hotel to find dinner. We ended up eating at at a mediocre family restaurant and grabbing dessert at a convenience store -- malted milk balls that tasted like they had expired months ago. I'm just looking forward to home cooked meals tomorrow when we make it to St. Louis, where our friend Emily's parents have graciously offered to host us for a few days. I can't wait to stay with them and be a relaxed tourist again!
| posted at: 10:02 |
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
While the distance from Effingham to St Louis is only a little over a hundred miles, we wanted to make sure we could arrive in St Louis while there was still plenty of daylight left. Looking over the map, we figured our only option was Greenville, since Pocahontas looked too small and Highland was a little too close. Plus, there'd be another section where US-40 was on I-70, so we'd need to navigate rural roads in order to find our way. Greenville had also been described to us as being "like a Norman Rockwell painting" so we were excited to maybe have something interesting to see.
There wasn't anything interesting to see. After a brief detour around construction, we got on a long stretch of straight road. Traffic was light, the ground was flat, and the wind didn't blow too hard. Occasionally, we saw an old oil well, chugging along slowly.
Several hours in, we turned about 45 degrees. We were so excited, we took a picture.
Only to then have more flat, straight nothing.
Eventually we arrived at Greenville and checked into the Super 8. Rather than have dinner nearby, we decided to ride the bike into town and wander around. We locked it up at the Police Station, where we were informed that we were unlikely to find anything open on a Sunday evening.
While wandering, we discovered that "like a Norman Rockwell painting" actually meant that Norman Rockwell scenes were painted on all the walls.
After grabbing some cookies at the Subway, which was the only place open, we rode back to the hotel and grabbed dinner at the Red Apple Restaurant. The food was nothing special, and the service was similar, but it was nice to not eat at a chain restaurant. After grabbing dessert ice cream at the gas station, we went to bed, hoping to get an early start tomorrow morning.
| posted at: 09:07 |
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Saturday, July 04, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Nineteen |
| 7/4/09 |
| From Greenup, IL |
| To Effingham, IL |
| 27.4 miles |
| 13.5 avg mph |
We planned a very short ride for today so that we would end up in a town big enough to have Fourth of July festivities but be off of the road before they began. Our goal was Effingham, which, along with having an entertaining name, was less than thirty miles away. I thought it would be an effortless and enjoyable ride...until I noticed the forecast for relentless rain.
I don't have much to report from the ride itself, as I mostly remember being cold and wet. We were focused on finishing as quickly as possible, and it's not like we could see much through the sheets of rain anyway. We did pass a sign for the country's strangest high school mascot: the Teutopolis Wooden Shoes. I wonder if their cheerleaders dance to "These Clogs Were Made For Walking" before giving up entirely.
About two hours later we arrived in Effingham very wet and very cold. We pulled into the first place that offered a roof and warm sustenance, which happened to be Joe Sipper's Cafe.
We had no idea how fortuitous this choice would be. I think it took the entire afternoon for me to get anywhere close to warm and dry, but in the meantime we had wonderful company. Frank, one of Effingham's biggest cycling proponents, happened to be having coffee there with his daughter. We talked for a long time about our experiences, his recent bike trip across Europe with his son, his daughter's post-graduation plans, and the crazy pig sacrifice bbq that happened at his cabin last weekend. When Frank heard about our mechanical problems he introduced us to his friend Chad, who used to work on bikes in Colorado. Chad and his friends braved the rain to look at the bike and in a few minutes he managed to fix our shaky headset, the same one that had plagued us through several states and befuddled every bike shop owner who looked at it. It was an Effing miracle.
Our Heroes
Frank also called his contact at the local newspaper, who came right down to the coffee shop to interview us and take our photo. I can't believe we might be in another paper!
We spent the rest of the afternoon in Joe Sipper's, very content to blog, drink large amounts of coffee, and people watch. I learned that teenagers in the midwest are just like teenagers anywhere else, except that the girls are more likely to be wearing long jean skirts. I also started reading the shop's copy of Lance Armstrong's first book; hopefully I can find more copies in shops and libraries along the way because I really want to finish it. When the rain finally let up in the late afternoon we were reluctant to leave, until we remembered that my mother had used her reward points to get us a room at the Hampton...A room with a warm shower, a big fluffy bed... We suddenly found the energy to ride again.
Ironically, we missed the fireworks that we had ridden to Effingham to see. We were holed up in the warm hotel room when they started, and by the time we stirred ourselves enough to walk outside the show was over. But we didn't really mind; after all, we've been seeing and celebrating America every day.
Happy Fourth of July everyone.
| posted at: 10:02 |
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Saturday, July 04, 2009
As excited as we were to be riding another short day, we also really didn't want to get out of bed. It was raining. It rained the entire time we were on the bike, all thirty miles to Effingham. Nothing interesting happened, it was just cold and wet.
But once we got to Effingham we quickly found our way to a coffee shop. Once there we talked with a group of mountain bikers who had hoped to get a ride in, but decided to stop at the coffee shop due to the rain. When they heard about our shaky handlebars, one of them said he'd love to take a look for us. It turns out that Chad had been a professional mechanic for a number of years in St Louis. While he'd never seen a headset quite like ours before, he knew what he was looking at. After grabbing a pipe wrench from his friend's truck, he proceeded to fix our problem right there. The difference was night and day. All we needed was a standard headset wrench, and then we'd be able to fix it ourselves. You just loosen the clamp at the bottem, loosen the allen bolt, then hand tighten a nut inside the headset. It takes about three minutes.
After the mountain bikers left (Chad is on the left) left, we sat at Joe Sippers for the rest of the day. Jillian and I alternated between reading Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike
and blogging. It was warm, the coffee was good, and they didn't mind that our stuff was dripping water everywhere.
The first man we met at the coffee shop (and who initially introduced us to the mountain bikers) also called the local paper, so we gave an interview as well. They wrote up a very nice article all about us, and were even nice enough to send copies of the paper to our house and to our parents. The reporter also let us know that the 4th of July festivities were likely to get canceled due to rain, which made us sad, but we were expecting.
By late afternoon it was time to check into the hotel, so we found a break in the rain and rode to the relative luxury of the Hampton Inn. Since we had some extra time we even did laundry before having dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. Although the service wasn't as good as the Texas Roadhouse in Terre Haute, the refills on lemonades were still free, and that was all that mattered. Since there weren't going to be any fireworks, we got to bed early.
Effingham looked like a pretty awesome town, we were sad that we only got to explore during the rain. We were also sad that it was in Southern Illinois - neither one of us is ready to move to the midwest.
| posted at: 09:06 |
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Friday, July 03, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Eighteen |
| 7/03/09 |
| From Terre Haute, IN |
| To Greenup, IN |
| 53.3 miles |
| 10.1 avg mph |
As we were getting ready this morning, our bike and everything on it suddenly crashed to the ground. We were confused until we saw the kickstand in pieces. Apparently we're carrying too much weight because that is a serious piece of metal to snap in half.
This essentially means we'll be without a kickstand for the rest of the trip; even if we could find the heavier duty kickstand that we apparently need it would probably be out of our price range. Instead we'll make creative use of benches, trees, fences, our hips, and anything else we can find to steady the bike.
Once we righted the bike, we enjoyed pedaling in the pleasantly warm morning, though my feet were back to their usual burning agony. We rode through part of Indiana University, which offered nice bike paths and tennis courts but otherwise seemed stuck in the 70s. Then we took an early break in an expansive park by the river, which featured many attractions for my camera.
When we were done dancing and reciting Shakespeare on the stage we got back on the road. Before we knew it we were crossing into Illinois and a new time zone.
And the Lincoln love continued in every town we passed.
The charming town of Marshall was our lunchtime stop. We sat on a time capsule marker in front of town hall and ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples. Squirrels frolicked around us and a cyclist sporting overalls and lots of gray hair zipped around the square. It was delightful.
We then left town for the wide open country and, more problematically, miles of soft shoulder. As we passed a scrap yard a new friend ran out to meet us. Not that I ever consider a sprinting, barking dog a friend, but he was nice enough once Kyle calmed him down.
Unfortunately our new friend quickly wore out his welcome. Whenever we started pedaling he would chase alongside us; he seemed determined to follow us all the way to Oregon. Not only was I nervous that he would lunge at the bike or my ankles, even just in play, but he would often zigzag out into the middle of the road and would have been run over if traffic was any heavier. The guy running the machinery at the yard said the dog didn't belong to him or anyone he knew, so there was no one to take him off our hands. Eventually we had to get rid of him with a light spray of Halt. We felt really bad about it, but we didn't know what else to do. We just hope that it taught him to avoid chasing things in the road.
Our other animal encounter today was with turkey vultures. Yes, just like the ones that circled us back in Ohio. We apparently still look like carcasses. These vultures stood like sentries guarding the nearby barn; whenever I got close enough to startle one into flight it would flap a few times and move to a post at the end of the line. They were eerie but fascinating.
Today was a relatively short ride, so we reached our destination with sunlight to spare: the very green Greenup Motel.
All of the reviews described a sketchy outside but a clean and accommodating inside, which is exactly what we found. The new owner explained that he had just finished renovating the rooms; in fact much of the old furniture was still piled on the lawn. While Kyle checked in I stayed outside with the bike and had an awkward conversation with an older woman whose voice was hopelessly garbled, presumably by the cigarettes that she wasn't giving up anytime soon. Luckily her son was there to interpret with a mixture of love and embarrassment in his eyes. He liked to build and modify bikes from spare parts so we had a good chat about the Pino until Kyle came out with the key to our room.
After showering and settling in we decided to walk into town. Greenup calls itself "The Village of the Porches," and they were all decked out for the 4th.
We had hoped to find internet in town, but unfortunately the only coffee shop no longer existed and the library was already closed. The local museum was also closed, so we looked around the outside and garden before searching for a place to eat. We settled on an overstaffed pizza shop (4 waiters for 2 tables of customers) and enjoyed both the food and the fitting booth art.
Dessert was icecream at the soda fountain next door, which also served a startlingly green soda. Then it was back to the hotel to relax and watch Dirty Dancing, which Kyle had somehow never seen. But the best entertainment of the night came from the commercials for indispensable products like the Pee Patch. If you aren't aware of this little piece of genius, the Pee Patch is essentially a square of absorbent astroturf that owners are supposed to train their dogs to pee on when inside. The footage of dogs peeing and looking around for the patch was strange and amusing enough, but when the announcer got to "Great for outside use too!" we just about lost it.
When the movie ended we decided it was time for tired cyclists to get to bed. Kyle got up and wandered around the room for a few minutes before I asked him what on earth he was doing. With a forlorn look he explained:
"I can't find my Pee Patch!"
| posted at: 10:01 |
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Friday, July 03, 2009
With the 4th fast approaching and a renewed desire to visit local attractions we decided to take two days riding to Effingham, which would be big enough to have a fun 4th of July celebration. This meant two fairly easy days of riding, with a stay at a Hampton Inn in Effingham (paid for with rewards points from Jillian's parents - thanks!).
Our morning routine usually involved Jillian opening doors for me while I moved the bike and trailer outside. Then she'd go in to do a final check for things we might have left in the room and I'd assemble our trailer. This involved me using both hands to strap down the duffel bag onto the trailer, carefully weaving the bungees through our spare tires. In order to have both hands free, I'd leave the bike set up on the kick stand. Unfortunately, this proved to be too much for our two legged kickstand.
The kickstand actually cracked, causing it to fall over, and bending one of Jillian's handlebars.
I know it looks like I'm pouting in the picture, but in reality I'm kind of happy to be losing another pound of weight. The downside is that it will be a little harder to work on the bike. With the kickstand out and the trailer off the bike wheel is completely off the ground, making it easy to true. Now we'll both need to be there when I work on the bike, plus we'll need to find a tree or something to lean the bike on wherever we are.
We decided that since we weren't going to go that far we might as well tour Terre Haute a little. Our first (and only) stop was at the park along the river. I wandered around while Jillian took pictures.
I also acted out a small part of a scene at Hamlet.
We rode through the swamp to the west of Terre Haute, then climbed a little hill and entered Illinois. There wasn't a sign on our road, but we were close enough to the interstate to take a picture of that one.
For the first time since the Sheetz outside York we stopped for a picnic lunch, this time at a town square in Marshall. All towns in this area, regardless of their size, seem to have amazing courthouses and squares. We also ran into a recumbent rider, who thought recumbents helped fight the wind.
Just after Marshall we passed through a small town that had a junkyard on one side of the road. Jillian spotted a dog running toward us. We tried our new strategy of stopping and getting off the bike. The dog was so glad we stopped and ran over to let us pet him. Except then he wouldn't go away. So I led him away from us by his collar, back to the other side of the road and the junkyard. The dog through this meant I wanted to play, so he jumped up on me a few times. I tried to give him to the junkyard owner, but he said he didn't know whose dog it was. So I returned to the bike, dog walking behind me. We hopped on, trying to ride away, only to have the dog follow us in the road. We tried riding faster, but that just made him want to chase us. So we maced him, leaving him confused and rolling around in the grass. Again, I felt terrible, but that dog was going to get himself killed running in the highway like that.
The rest of the day was pretty flat.
After riding through some empty, if annoying construction, and stopping at a little town to rest a few minutes, Jillian was finally able to get a picture of some birds. She had been trying to take a picture of any bird at all since the beginning of the trip (especially Herons), but had been completely unsuccessful - they always flew away the minute the camera came out. Finally some Turkey Buzzards decided to wait for her.
We arrived in Greenup and stumbled right into our motel, the Greenup Inn. It looked ridiculously scary.
But it was one of only two hotels in town, and the reviews were good. So we checked in, with a very friendly family that ran the place. Imagine our surprise when we saw how nice the rooms were.
We even had cable!
We had some pizza at the pizza shop...
...checked out the porches around much of the town...
...looked at the well Lincoln helped dig...
...and had some ice cream at the soda fountain.
The ice cream place sold some sort of weird green soda. We didn't try it. Afterward, we returned to the hotel room and fell asleep watching Dirty Dancing and listening to people setting fireworks off early.
| posted at: 09:06 |
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Seventeen |
| 7/02/09 |
| From Indianapolis, IN |
| To Terre Haute, IN |
| 89.6 miles |
| 11.0 avg mph |
This morning we woke up at 4. I know that during the school year Kyle frequently wakes up at 4, but I still say no human being should ever wake up that early. We had good reason though; we wanted to start before sunrise to avoid the infamous traffic through Indianapolis. We enjoyed a delicious hotel breakfast before we left, which helped, and honestly crossing Indianapolis as dawn broke was an amazing ride. The buildings and artwork were all lit up and the streets were calm enough that we could take our time through the city.
On the outskirts of Indianapolis we passed through the Spanish Quarter, which I decided to use as an educational opportunity. I had Kyle translate signs and added this new vocabulary to the very limited Spanish I already knew: the words for hello, tomorrow, monkey, water, and 1-10. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but soon I was exclaiming in broken Spanish "Big Monkey not pedal. Big Monkey eat small children!" (I warned you we were becoming strange and easily entertained.)
Mono Grande clearly needed breakfast, so we stopped at a Kroger grocery store to stock up on supplies. We always shop in shifts so that someone can guard the bike, and when Kyle was in the store he got to talking with an employee all about the trip. By the time I took my turn word had spread throughout the store and I kept overhearing conversations about us. "That's amazing! Are they camping do you think? Did you see the bike?" A few of them found me in the energy bar aisle (I assume the spandex made me easy to identify) and I had a fun time answering all of their questions and feeling like a grocery store celebrity. Eventually I said goodbye to everyone and went outside to eat a pig shaped cookie for breakfast. It was a little hard for my taste, but it certainly looked cute.
Our day was full of such encouragement from strangers, including an older woman who reminded us that "life is too short to not take adventures." Well said.
We were following the historic National Road again today, and the ride was mostly more of the same: riding from gas station to gas station on country roads with moderate traffic. I've learned that cities in this part of the country are not like those on the east coast; they don't spread or sprawl, gradually shifting from urban to suburban to rural. Instead, a bustling city is quite often neighbored by a vast field and the line between them might as well be a country border. While waiting in a long bathroom line I asked the lady beside me if there were any other gas stations or restaurants nearby, but she told me "I have no idea what is in this area at all. I'm from Indy." We couldn't have been more than 15 miles out of the city. It was astounding.
We rode on and eventually stopped for lunch at the Cornerstone Bar & Grill. It was a nice little place, which is good since it was the only game in town. We had heaping portions of food and much more soda than was prudent considering how long we'd have to wait for the next bathroom.
Our final destination for the day was Terre Haute, and I was excited because it was enough of a city to have tourist attractions. I had a list of art and history museums that I wanted to visit, but as our ETA became later and later I had to cross them off until the only one left was the Swope Art Museum that was open until 5:00. Even that started to seem unattainable, but we kept pushing as hard as we could. I felt awful when Kyle, who had no interest in visiting the art museum, started having hamstring pain, and I had about given up when we finally saw signs for Terre Haute, proud home of Clabber Girl Baking Powder.
We raced into the center of town and found the museum just in time. Swope isn't an expansive museum -- two small floors of American painting and sculpture -- but that meant I could see all of it in the 20 minutes left before it closed. I discovered a new favorite artist in sculptor Richard Hunter, and the "Water Baby" garden sculptures by Terre Haute native Janet Scudder just made me grin. Most of all I loved having the rooms of art all to myself to wander through in relaxed silence. I wanted to support the museum by purchasing postcards, but sadly they didn't have what I wanted: portraits of disillusioned and unemployed youth who look pretty much the same a century later. Someone should tell those boys to hop on a bicycle, go see some art, and otherwise escape the depressing job search for the summer. It's certainly making me feel invigorated and accomplished...at the moment anyway.
We had one last stop to make before the Comfort Inn Suites: Fat Bikes. We were hoping that the local bike shop could fix our increasingly shaky handlebars. The owner was a bit bemused by our strange headset but hypothesized a crack and lost bearings -- not a good sign, and not something he was willing or able to fix. We'll just have to hope it holds together until we reach the next bike shop on our route, wherever that may be. ("Hear me, baby? Hold together!")
| posted at: 09:06 |
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
In keeping with what we'd decided the night before, we were up and out of bed before 5. Although the free hotel breakfast didn't start until 5:30, the friendly man working the desk got breakfast started early for us. This cemented La Quinta as one of our favorite hotels forever and ever. We ended up getting on the road at about 5:30, while it was still very dark.
This was probably for the best though. Riding on 21st street we passed a lot of abandoned houses and sketchy neighborhoods. We took 21st street to Massachusetts, which we followed into town. Though it was a weekday, traffic at dawn remained light, offering us lots of opportunities to shoot photos of town.
We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of cycling lanes downtown, but when we were on them it was only an accident. We hadn't planned a route that took advantage of cycling lanes at all. When we did get downtown, we stopped and Jillian wandered about, shooting pictures with her big camera instead of the little point and shoot she kept at ready all the time.
After crossing the river and traveling down the White River Parkway, we rejoined US-40 to get out of town. A lot of this road seemed to be through a Hispanic neighborhood, and I tried to teach Jillian some Spanish. She ended up saying things like "La Mono grande come los ninos", which roughly translates to "The big monkey eats the children." Just before we crossed I-465 again (this time on the west side of town), we stopped at a Kroger for breakfast and supplies.
Usually we take turns going into a store, and I'm usually the one to go in first. As I was in the store buying some donuts Jillian talked with a number of people on their way into the store who were curious about the bike. By the time it was Jillian's turn to go into the store we'd become minor celebrities, and it took Jillian forever to get through the store because of the number of people who stopped to talk to her about the funny looking bike out front.
This meant we didn't leave the Kroger until traffic had really picked up. So there was more not so fun riding along 40 until Plainfield, where we stopped for a bathroom break. This involved talking with even more local people who were curious about the bike, which was really cool. Talking to random people along the way has become one of the most fun parts of this trip.
One constant task is finding bathrooms. Often we try to find the first and the last gas station in town, so that we have to go as few miles as possible between towns, where there are no bathrooms at all. Jillian tried to ask another woman in line if there was anything further up the road, but the woman responded "Oh, I have no idea. I'm from Indy." We both found this really interesting, since we were less than 10 miles from the beltway and less than 20 miles from the center of downtown. In the DC area it seems like people have a pretty good idea of what's around the outside of town, in the midwest it seemed like there were city people and there were country people. Country people knew the area, traveled a lot, and were very friendly. City people seemed to stay locked away in their cities, never getting more than a few miles from their home unless it was by plane.
A few hours later we stopped in Stilesville for lunch, after riding through absolutely nothing at all. We went to the only restaurant in town, Cornerstone Pub. It was standard bar fare, but the food was good and it felt great to get out of the heat.
On our way out of Stilesville we started talking about when we'd make it to Terre Haute. The night before Jillian had been reading tourism magazine and had seen a lot of things to do in Terre Haute. She decided that she really wanted to make it there in time to see their art museum. When the winds started to change direction and it no longer felt like a headwind, we really picked up the pace. We flew along the road, trying to make it before the 5. This led me to get rather frustrated, because Jillian had earlier made me promise to not have any more "deadline days" like we'd had in Bedford.
But only two nights earlier we'd had a long talk about why we were doing the trip, and if we were going to do the trip at all. One of the things we'd decided was that we needed to experience more things along the way. Since we had the wind and Jillian was pedaling really hard, I rode hard with her without too much complaint. We made it to Terre Haute with less than half an hour to spare. Jillian got off the bike and ran inside to tour the gallery, while I stayed outside to guard the bike (Art isn't really my thing).
Fortunately the art gallery rejuvenated Jillian, and we left the gallery in a much better mood. Our next stop was Fat Bikes, where we hoped someone would be able to look at our shaky headset.
Sadly, we had no luck. The shop mechanic had never seen anything quite like our bike and didn't think we'd have any luck ever finding someone to fix it. Not a good sign, but the shaking wasn't getting worse much faster. We'll be taking a day off in St Louis, so if we're lucky we'll find someone to fix it there.
Then we went about finding a hotel. The hotels in downtown Terre Haute are very overpriced, so we went to the south end of town, where most of the chain hotels are. A lot of the hotels in the area had rather mediocre reviews, so we decided to try a few higher end places (read "medium priced") first. When we stopped at the Comfort Inn Suites and inquired about a price the desk clerk asked us what we were willing to pay. After a very brief negotiation we got an awesome ground floor suite for 30% off. Since we'd managed to make our goal - the art museum before 5, and get a much nicer hotel room than we'd planned on, things were looking up. Maybe we would make it to St Louis and beyond after all. We grabbed dinner at Lonestar, where I took advantage of their free refill lemonades and had a ridiculous amount to drink, and then crashed.
| posted at: 08:30 |
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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| Stoker's Log Day Sixteen |
| 7/01/09 |
| From Richmond, IN |
| To Indianapolis, IN |
| 73.3 miles |
| 12.1 avg mph |
After our difficult discussion last night we needed an uplifting ride, which fortunately is exactly what we got. We started our day with an amusing bit of encouragement: enthusiastic fist pumps from a graying man carrying his groceries home. Better yet, my body was miraculously pain free all day. My legs felt fresh, my joints moved fluidly, and my feet were as cool as a cucumber.
We made our first stop of the day in Richmond's historic district. I started to photograph the old buildings but soon became more interested in the squirrel cavorting on a steam powered tractor.
We then passed through commercial districts with some of the most unfortunate business names I've ever encountered. Raper's Rentals and the Butcher Chapel of a funeral parlor topped the list, though Mr. Faultless the lawyer was also amusing.
We actually spent a great deal of today laughing; the isolated and exhausted are easy to entertain. At one point I suddenly felt the bike's resistance disappear and yelled out "Oh Blimey!" I thought Kyle was laughing at my British exclamation but it turns out he was laughing because the chain was off but for some reason I was still spinning the pedals as quickly as possible. We almost tipped over because Kyle couldn't extricate his feet while I was still pedaling, and then we almost fell over again because we were laughing so hard. Also whenever Kyle sang or hummed an old television theme song that I didn't recognize (which was often since I was never a fan of cartoons) I would chime in with the line "Saviour of the Universe!" from Flash Gordon at the top of my lungs. It may not seem hilarious, but I'm pretty sure it will amuse us for days.
We also revisited the more serious topics from our discussion last night. It was depressing to talk about the daunting challenges of the west but hopefully if we keep going over the problems we'll come up with a solution. As we talked I got the germ of an idea that just might work: maybe we could have a friend fly out west to drive a rented truck or UHaul as our support vehicle. That way we would have someone to carry supplies and to rescue us if we became stranded or just needed to be driven to the nearest bathroom, and if we couldn't make it to the next hotel by nightfall we could always sleep in the back. We're not sure if we can afford it and we're also not sure who would be willing to sacrifice two weeks of their summer to camp out and drive a rented vehicle very slowly across the west, but it's something to look into, and something to give us a bit of hope.
Another realization we made as we dissected our trip was that we wanted to spend more time talking to locals and really getting to know each region through its people. So this morning we were excited to chat with David, who pulled over to check out our bike, as well as the delightful owner of Cinnamon Spice Bakery.
We stopped there for a delicious breakfast just before reentering rural nothingess. I had to diverge from my usual bakery plan when I found out that all of the croissants were both glazed and fried (welcome to the midwest) but Kyle was a very happy man with his two giant donuts.
Cinnamon Spice was not only a bakery; it also sold every decorative concrete entity you could imagine: lions, guard dogs, gnomes, those creepy fishing boys that seem to haunt every pond we pass... When an Animal Control truck pulled up behind a line of concrete carnivores I couldn't contain myself. Unfortunately the driver didn't get the joke and was very suspicious of my photograph.
For the next several hours we rode through farmland and small towns, ducking under trees or into buildings whenever the light but persistent rain decided to intensify. At one of our gas station stops we met an energetic man in overalls with a very important message for us:
"My wife and I tried a tandem once and only once. We rode to her parents' house a good distance away and when we finished she felt horribly sick for days and it took a while for us to figure out what was wrong. This taught us a very important lesson: tandems can get you pregnant."
Good to know.
This week I also discovered a business that was entirely new to me: drive-thru and drive-in alcohol stores. Some are super snazzy and some are glorified garages with shelves of beer on the walls. They could never exist in PA because of the state's liquor laws, but I swear I've never seen them anywhere before. Here they seem to be everywhere.
About halfway through our ride today the nearly empty country roads were suddenly replaced by heavily trafficked roads with little or no shoulder. Kyle's stress level shot through the roof as he danced the bike on the white line or skidded through gravel. It was a nightmare for a while but finally we hit better roads and flew through the rest of the ride. We arrived just outside of Indianapolis in good time and checked into the La Quinta, which instantly became our favorite hotel ever. Even if it hadn't been the least expensive hotel in the area we would have fallen in love with the plush bedding and the perfect shower. It even had guest laundry, which we sorely needed, and next door was a restaurant with ample servings of delicious food and a wonderful waitress named Shelly who was really excited to talk about our trip. It was the perfect evening after an overall great ride, and we couldn't stop smiling. Yesterday half of me wanted to go home... today, maybe 10% tops.
| posted at: 09:06 |
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
We started the day with a brief look around old town Richmond. Unfortunately we didn't really have any time to see anything interesting, since we were anticipating more wind and trying to get to Indianapolis as fast as we could - we didn't want to be arriving after dark, no matter what.
On our way out of town we stopped for lunch at a little bakery. In addition to selling bakery items, you could also buy concrete lawn ornaments. We were very amused by the presence of animal control, keeping those concrete lions in line.
The donuts were delicious. I love donuts. Unfortunately, my stomach does not.
But thank you Cinnamon Spice bakery. You even had a very clean restroom, which is always a pleasant surprise on the road.
We spent the rest of the day riding under a mix of partly cloudy and partly rainy. It never got bad enough to warrant putting on rain gear, but we were always afraid we'd have to seek shelter at any moment.
Although there wasn't much shoulder on the road, there also wasn't much traffic. It wasn't until we reached Cumberland that traffic became an issue and riding became unpleasant. Captaining an 11 foot long bike in traffic isn't a whole lot of fun. To complicate matters, as we got closer to the city we started running into construction. Indiana drivers were also the worst drivers we'd seen since New Jersey, and were maybe even worse. In an effort to avoid traffic we turned up German Church Rd, opting to follow 21st street into the city.
This may have been the wrong choice. Traffic might have been lighter, but there was no shoulder at all, and in some places we actually had to deal with a sharp drop off the pavement into dirt. Riding became a series of sprints in between groups of cars. 21st Street had a slightly better shoulder, but drivers wouldn't give us any room at all.
The plan was to stay at La Quinta, but we weren't sure which one. There was one just north of I-70, off Post street, which was closest. But Franklin street had no shoulder, no sidewalk, and lots of traffic turning onto the highway. We stopped at a Home Depot to reconsider our options. Though it was now getting dark, we opted to stay on 21st street a little longer, cross under I-465, and stay at the other La Quinta. This was a little bit farther, but it was also a little bit farther on route, saving us a little bit of time for tomorrow.
It was an excellent choice. Though it was a pain riding on shoulderless streets as it got dark, the La Quinta was an amazing hotel - by far the best hotel we'd actually purchased a night at so far. Plus the Lincoln Square Restaurant was right next to the hotel. Good food, friendly service, and reasonable prices. The wait staff took an immediate interest in our trip and fed us very well. La Quinta had guest laundry, so Jillian was able to wash our clothes while I tackled the process of finding a route through Indianapolis the next day.
Way back in Granville we'd been warned to not take US-40 through Indianapolis due to safety and traffic concerns. Though we'd been told to stop at a bike shop just inside the beltway, I decided we'd be better off if we just left really early in the morning and tried to make it to Terre Haute the next day. So it was off to bed, with a decision to be on the road before sunrise the next morning.
| posted at: 08:30 |
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