Up at 4:30 this morning and ready to roll at 5:30….now to find Popeye, get my selfie and head out of town. Someone let me know I misidentified Wimpy yesterday calling him hamburgler—I was so tired yesterday when I finished riding I could have been in Canada and not known the difference 🙂 supposed to be high of 88 today, cloudy and no rain—that would be great—a nice 77 now at 5:30am. We’ll…the high was 90 and the afternoon wasn’t cloudy — sunny and HOT, HOT, HOT! But, no thunderstorms today.
Crossed the Mississippi River this morning at about 6am…when you’re on a bicycle you can really tell just how much a steel bridge does shake with 18 wheelers going over it….got my Popeye selfie at the welcome center just before going over the bridge.
Good to see 76 bicycle signs again here in MO…they really help to get me through towns.
9am and about 28 miles in I was just topping a huge, killer climb….one of many this morning and I hear the familiar sound of a clanging spoke on my back wheel. Got to the top and checked….luckily it wasn’t broken but just very lose—tightened it with my spoke wrench I picked up when I was in Lexington and good to go. The torque on this back wheel with the weight I’m carrying is taking its toll on those spokes, but I have a good stock of them if needed. Going to have to start checking them each night before going to bed to make sure none are loose.
The 42 miles between Chester, IL and Farmington, MO were murder….nothing but up steep hills, quick down hills, then up another steep one. There are no services along that route, so by the time I got to Farmington I was tired and hungry….having lots of pizza and iced tea in town and figuring out how much further I’ll go today…that was a hard, hot, hilly 43 miles.
Heading out of Farmington saw two eastbounders….one asked me if I knew where the bike shop was located…I didn’t…first time I haven’t had to use one in a town that had one 🙂 stopped at the quick mart for gatorade and orange juice….going to be a hot afternoon ride—86 and the sun is out in force.
Later in the afternoon I started hearing noise coming from my tires like I was riding over crushed glass. Stopped three times to check them and didn’t see anything but some small rocks sticking to them. Then about a half mile up the road I see a sign that read fresh oil and loose gravel and came to where they were stopping traffic at the bottom of a big hill. They were letting traffic go from one way then the other following an escort truck. When it was my time to go, there was a line of about 20 cars—I told the flag man to not hold them up coming from the other direction on my account…it was going to take me a minute to climb that hill—steep! They were actually pouring tar on the road and then spreading crushed gravel over that and rolling over it with big rollers—I guess that’s a common technique in the mountains vs asphalt, but it sure makes a mess. They held the cars coming from the other direction until I got to the top—I’m sure they were happy commuters 🙂
A few miles on down the road, I was climbing this massive, steep hill, sweating buckets, and just dying in the full sun. About 30 yards from the top, I see this man out in front of me and on my right, riding out to the edge of the road on his riding mower—there was a dog following him. It was clear this was just a young hound dog—jumping around, playing….well, he saw me and headed straight for me. At the same time there was a huge cement truck coming up the hill behind me…you could hear it from a mile away. There was no shoulder—if I got a foot off the road I was going to be in a ditch. So I’m trying to pull off the road as much as possible while at the same time trying to make sure the dog—who was now running circles around my bike wanting to play—didn’t run into the road and get flattened by the truck. I tried to pull over and stop, but couldn’t get unclipped from my peddles fast enough, so now I’m falling over with my bike. I finally get get control with my bike laying over on the ground…the truck zooms by and the dog is standing by me and neither of us got hit. All while this was going on the guy never said a word—I could tell he was frustrated and didn’t know what to do—he just froze. After it was all over he called his dog and got him up on the mower with him and just looks at me and say’s “hot day, isn’t it?” I was hungry, hot, tired, and ticked off about the whole situation, and felt like telling him, I knew of a much hotter place he could go…..but I refrained and just yea, it is….got back on my bike and finished climbing to the top….then I stopped, drank a quart of Gatorade I had strapped to the back of my bike and shouted a few choice words out into the middle of nowhere—since that’s where I was!
I was going to try and make it to Centerville today and that would put me within 12.5 miles of Chief Two Feathers—aka Rob. According to my maps there was supposed to be a Butterfly Motel there, but when I called the number to verify they had a room, the number had been disconnected…so, instead I stopped about 12 miles before that and am camping at the Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. I got here about 5pm…have my camp set-up, washed my clothes in the laundry, took a hot shower, and ate food from the camp store—feeling good and refreshed right now about 8pm. Going to send this from the camp store, then hit the sack.
The next three or so days are going to be brutal….the Ozark Mountains are making their presence known (see part of elevation profile in pic below) and they’re going to drain a lot of sweat and energy from me before they release me to the flat lands of Kansas….looking forward to getting through MO….I feel like I’ve been climbing mountains ever since I started—probably because I have! 🙂
Feeling strong and good!
