Thursday, July 09, 2009
24: Hating Katy
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| 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.
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| posted at: 12:29 |
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