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
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 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
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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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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