Saturday, July 11, 2009

26: Horses, Dogs, and a Giant Mushroom

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.

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