| Mileage Chart | Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
Mickey wearing his Picasso
Crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri today, at Chester, Illinois. After a flood plain we climbed into the Ozark foothills, lovely country reminiscent of central New York state. I was happy to see Ralph and Janet again, with 24-tooth chainrings. Everybody was ready for the Ozarks at last. Mickey and I showered and ate at a truck stop, then camped at a picturesque Catholic church on a hilltop on the banks of I-55 in Ozara.
Very hilly morning, 1100 feet accumulated climb in 14 miles. Here we met a wandering lawyer named Tom, who, since his divorce, has been touring the greater part of the past five years. When not touring, he has settled briefly in places such as San Luis Obispo or most recently, somewhere in Tennessee. "Settled" is a relative term in that he's been settled only when compared to riding every day and sleeping in a different place each night. He's on his fourth or fifth crossing of the continent but reports being ready for it to be his last. He liked to write - it sounded like his only true interest. He had never let anyone read what he wrote.
Hills let up but riding was tedious from Farmington into Pilot Knob. Moderately heavy traffic flew by at sixty miles an hour on the narrow, shoulderless roads. It rained and the wind blew. Most cars put their lights on. Mickey got us free lodging in the fire station. He prepared a nice dinner, pasta in olive oil with sautéed garlic, onion, and broccoli. Tom never showed. It rained like hell during the night.
Riding out of Ellington, the final stretch of the day,
inexplicably I became a racer again. I jammed
hills, time-trialed the flats, got down on the drops for
descents. Mickey was off the back in 30 seconds.
Average speed for the day went from 11.2 to 11.8 mph in an hour.
Climbs were huge: the final descent dropped nearly five hundred feet and I hit
forty-five miles an hour, highest of the entire tour.
Our home for the night was Powder Mill Campground of the National Park Service. Amenities: water. Over bean burritos with two cheeses, onions and garlic; guacamole; and sweet corn - one of the best camping meals I've ever had - Mickey and I decided to go our separate ways in the morning.
On the road this morning I met Ed Spaydd, an unabashedly positive young man of 24 who said things like "Right on, dude," sort of like people who were making an effort to be hippies thirty years ago. I didn't mind it from him though. He had a degree in environmental sciences and did some painting - claimed he sold some. He was trying out for the national Nordic ski team, and had made it I think. He rode a steel Trek mountain bike, pulling a BOB trailer with loads of gear, averaging hundred-mile days. Nearly everyone I met for the rest of the trip had met - and been outridden by - him. The hills were devastating all morning. Kentucky's standard 300-foot climb has been succeeded by the Ozarks' standard 450-foot climb - at about 10%. But they eased into moderate rollers from Summersville to Houston, where we camped in the Emmet Kelley Municipal Park and Cockroach Pavilion. Overall, it was a bitchin' hard day of riding, in a smelter of heat and humidity.
Ed wanted to ride with me but in ten minutes he was out of sight, gone in the distance. I didn't mind. I rode 65 miles under gray skies buffeted by crosswinds. I was, by design, sitting in Bendavis when it rained, a ten-minute torrent. Ed blew off the road into someone's garage, startling an "old dude." He took a nap for three hours today and thought I had passed him, but he still got in well before me.
The first fifteen miles out of Marshfield were easy. The next
fifty were tough. Ceaseless hills of one
to two hundred feet - Atlanta-sized - wore me out, and my knees.
At my second lunch in Everton, I met a
retired couple. They had a farm west of Everton, a mile from
where he grew up and a mile and a half from where she grew up.
The couple passed me
in their car a while later."You're almost out of these Ozarks!" he shouted.
I didn't get into Golden City until 7:40. Ed was there - he'd
arrived at three!
I took a day off. There wasn't much to do in Golden City, but there was a ten-dollar "Biker's Inn" and it was air-conditioned. I did a little bike maintenance; drank a bottle of cheap white zin, the best wine in town; read the biker's log here at the Bike Inn. Park, Drew, and Jim made their entries on June 7 and 8 - they were five days ahead of me. I wrote three pages.
Back in Carbondale, the eastbound riders from Colorado had told us about Cooky's in Golden City. After dinner, breakfast, lunch, and pie at Cooky's, I can review it fairly. It's an average diner. Scrambled eggs were served as an overcooked omelet; English-style fried fish was slightly underdone and greasy. Nor are potatoes a specialty: greasy hash browns; mashed potatoes with nondescript gravy; soggy "Suzi-Q" fries. In fact I would consider it a sub-average diner but for the fine pies, $1.25 for a generous slice.
Next to the Bike Inn, an old guy had three Mercedes sedans plus a Toyota Previa van, an old Rabbit and a few bikes, for sale apparently. He meant to start a flea market in an old service station, but he had some problem getting the former owners to remove the fuel tanks. He paid in advance - story of his life. When he started telling stories about "niggers" I bolted for a piece of pie.
I entered Kansas. In Pittsburgh, the first town I came to, I pulled up onto the sidewalk at Harry's Cafe on Broadway. A short man of around sixty said to me, "Ya got that thing loaded! How do you keep people from stealing everything?"
In ten thousand miles of cycle touring, I'd never heard that question. "I don't," I answered. "I just leave it here and no one steals it."
He said, "It's sad, though."
I said, "Not so far it isn't. No one's stolen anything yet."
He walked away. I wonder if he believed me.
In Golden City, I had seen on TV an author of a new book about fear. He maintained that we have too much fear in our lives, partly because of the media. We hear about a crime in New Jersey, one in Florida, and one in Texas, and we begin to think crime is rampant. In fact, statistically it's on the decline. We have too much information. I read in Newsweek that a weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a medieval man was subject to in his entire lifetime. (That is itself a ridiculous piece of information. They must have counted all the financial data.)
Over the first 1500 miles, the average climb rate for the tour had been 50 feet per mile, about like riding in Atlanta. In a typical sixty-mile day I'd accumulate 3000 feet. Today it was 14. Wind blew out of the southwest today, however, at 15 to 20 mph; as a result my average speed was 10.7 mph, lowest of any day except the day we climbed way up on Skyline Drive (when it was a lot lower - 7 something.)
In Walnut, I pulled into the local restaurant, the Boot and Saddle Cafe. I asked about camping as I waited for my cheeseburger. I was seeking the local police; the Adventure Cycling maps often recommend that you contact them before camping. "That would be George Hightower," the waitress told me. "Not sure where he is right now." There was a bearded guy there, maybe fifty. He said, "I'm the mayor and I give you permission." Richard Wright was not only the mayor of Walnut, but owner/proprietor of the cafe and store. He did some bricklaying and had some calves or something. He had worked for the DOE up in Boise, Idaho. After a while it came out that Richard used to be in charge of nuclear waste disposal for the western United States! He'd been to Chernobyl after that blew up, and around 1991, down in Savannah on a problem for the SRP. Seems the government purchased an old Esso refinery and filled the tanks with low-level nuclear waste, which was corroding them. I guess it still is.
Later I met George Hightower, driving a beat-up pickup with police markings. He was a husky bald man in ripped jeans and a mostly blue t-shirt. "Are you the local law enforcement?" I asked. "As close as it gets," he answered. I shouldn't hesitate to come by his house if it storms or I need anything. "We had a bad storm last night. And there's a murderer in Chanute." Someone got murdered last night; they don't know who did it. "Happens every five or six years," George said.
Twenty miles out of Walnut, at a roadside park, I met another cyclist, Jeff, one of the people Mickey rode with before I met him. We rode a short day to Chanute. We stopped at Spoke Folks and met Sheryl Willis, who drove us to a pizza buffet. We talked bike shops, computer programming, and life. She took us to the Martin and Osa Johnson Museum. They were photographers and cinematographers of primitive cultures and wildlife in the 1920's and 30's. Meanwhile, it rained outside. The woman at the museum gave us a ride back to Sheryl's place. Jeff and I set up in Yodelin' Katy's back yard. She promised us a snack later.
Yodelin' Katy has been welcoming Trans-Am riders into her yard since the early 80's. She used to fix them breakfast - after serenading them into consciousness, accompanied by her ukulele, but at 71 her arthritis bothered her in the morning. She did give us cookies, one a bicycle, and watermelon when she had us in for a chat before bed. We signed the log book. Scott Peters was there, as well Park Kitchings. I had met eastbound Scott back by Big A Mountain in Virginia.
Katy was taking requests. She had a song list taped to her ukelele, like Paul McCartney's Hofner bass. We got "Don't Fence Me In" and some other song with an interesting title I can't recall. It had something about "a horse, a pretty good horse." (From that description my father knew the song.)
I got to know Jeff a little. In some ways he seemed normal, but poor. The $3.75 pizza buffet may have been out of his budget, though he tried not to show it. He sold used bikes at home in Watsonville, CA, and listed them all for me. He had had a good year last year, selling 15. He couldn't have made more than two thousand dollars - gross sales, not profit. He'd offered to ride down the Pacific coast with me, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to ride to Toronto, KS with him.
I couldn't get rid of Jeff. At lunch, he went on about the '67 Ranchero he sold to a friend for money to take this trip. He went on for a while about a Species movie then said, "I don't know, maybe we wouldn't want to see that movie." It was kind of like travelling with Mr. Haney of Green Acres. Other than that it was a great riding day, a bit warm but calm. We rode at 16 mph a lot of the day. I wanted to do a big day - 99 miles to Rosalia - but it would have taken until 7:30, so I bagged it at Eureka.
Tricky day: 36 miles to Cassoday, then 38 miles with no services to Newton. Weather: 95 degrees and windy. Wind direction: they didn't say. There was a county park 8 miles east of Newton as an easier goal.
Wind came from the south in
endless drafts and sporadic blasts, yet we averaged 12.2 mph and
rode all the way to Newton. The first 19 miles took us on
US-54, a busy road, but wide lanes with a foot to the right of
the white line. I needed it - semis from the other direction sent
a wall of wind into the Cannondale and its pilot. In Cassoday we
found Susanne and Fabian, Jeff's lost companions from Germany. It
was Susanne and Jeff who Mickey had ridden with. Fabian, Susanne's
boyfriend, had joined them later.
Susanne's English was excellent, and we fell to talking about Jeff. He's dependent, childish, "Without volition," I said. She found him odd as well, and was relieved that someone else did. "He was like my shadow," she said. Susanne had American flag stickers on her bike and helmet. She worked as an instructor for the Berlin police, and was on a year leave. Fabian had just left a marketing or sales position with a large Danish parquet flooring company, and somehow got three months off before his next job. Fabian rode long mountain bike races, fifty-plus miles in the Alps, and had trained with Thomas Frischknecht in Berlin. He was carrying five pounds of potatoes.
Leaving Cassoday, we - four of us now - headed downwind at 20 to 25 mph for an hour. Then began the 38-mile stretch across county roads to Newton, with no services. No one said much. Five or six times I was blown off the road. Thankfully we came across a Mennonite church midway, with water spigots and a lawn.
Although weaker, the wind was out of the northwest today. I stopped for my second lunch at Van's Picket Fence in Buhler, and never left. Her place was a house with tables in nearly every room, and items for sale on consignment. I was in her bathroom when she called, "You can take a shower if you want to." It seemed ridiculous, but I did it, and felt refreshed. "If you pass here again," she said, "you can sleep here, if you don't mind the floor." In the grocery store, "Estimated Prophet" by the Dead came on, and that's when I decided not to leave town.
Two views of Buhler
I came back to dinner. I ate with a young schoolteacher, Brian Mullen. Susanne, Fabian, and the ever-present Jeff pulled in later. Van and her husband had to go somewhere that evening, but they gave me a key and let me sleep there anyway.
Around dark I was talking to my dad on a pay phone when an old guy roared up on a riding lawnmower. He waited ten minutes for me. He was Jim McGyver, 68 years old, a touring cyclist. He travelled alone, a long ways, on a Cannondale touring bike with a Brooks saddle ("Do you know what that is?") He needed to slow down and enjoy himself like me, he said. He had had Scott Peters in a few weeks back for strawberries and conversation. He liked Scott very much and was delighted that I'd met him too.
By now it was nearly dark, but another guy pulled up, not on a lawnmower - Wayne Sill, another teacher. Wayne and I headed out to the city park to talk with the Germans till after 11, mostly of economics, East Germany and reunification. Wayne invited us all for pancakes in the morning.
Wayne's wife, away on a camping trip with some girls, is a road racer with a Litespeed, a couple Treks, a Serotta, a dozen wheels, and a few other bikes out on loan. Wayne's a USCF official himself. Last year his wife toured from Buhler to Banff; Wayne would go out to the city park every night to see if any cyclists were there and if they'd seen her. A lot of them had. So Buhler, Kansas, pop. 1277, was not only the friendliest town on the bike route, but a relative hotbed of cycling enthusiasts as well.
Kansas is known among Trans-Am cyclists for its friendly, open inhabitants. I had already heard about it a number of times, but it's hard to believe until you get there. Buhler was the Kansas legend come true.
I rode nine miles into Hutchinson to see the aerospace museum. I saw Everest at the IMAX, featuring the music of George Harrison, and liked it. The Cosmosphere, even having seen the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, was terrific. I read nearly every word of every exhibit. We - the whole gang - stayed in a cyclist's hostel run by a local church. Jeff has detached from me and stuck to the Germans. The more I see of him, he must have a developmental problem. He converses on the level of a 12-year old. It was difficult to see because he has no other signs whatsoever, and he's a polite 12-year-old. But I don't want one right now. I would like to travel with Susanne and Fabian, but fifty is a long day for them.
Pretty uneventful day of riding. From Nickerson to Hudson, 37 miles, there was hardly a house. I passed through the Quivera National Waterfowl Preserve and was done by 3:30, about the earliest I've completed a full day's ride. Susanne and Fabian, still asleep when I left this morning, rolled in an hour later. With canned tomatoes and chili peppers and a can of beans, plus rice, I made a good dinner. We all ate in a little sheet-metal shelter they opened up for us, then slept by the ball fields. Guess who else was there? Jeff.
For the first time on this tour, a good strong tailwind! It was out of the east or ESE, blowing about 15 mph, and it carried me 95 miles to Ness City. I dawdled in Larned till after three o'clock, then rolled 64 miles over the next four and a quarter hours, seventeen of them on dirt roads. The route maps show them paved, but it appears they've been repaved with hard-packed dirt. They rode pretty well, actually. Today's average was 15.8 mph, fastest day of the tour.
In the city park among the playground equipment, ferocious winds woke me at half past midnight, bending the little Eureka halfway flat. I dragged it next to a small concrete building for protection, and put on the radio. Some city, either Bezine or Beeler, was about to get hit by 70-mph winds and hail exceeding an inch in diameter. For your own protection, seek shelter immediately! Leaving three panniers in the tent to anchor it, I headed to the police station. By the time I got there, the worst was over, but I sat in there till 2 o'clock. I resolved not to sleep in the open in Kansas any more if I could help it.
I ate lunch in Leoti, at yet another in my
string of motel restaurants, with a retired farm couple out here
working the harvest, then rode to Tribune, 47 miles. The city park there was one of the more appealing ones -
lots of trees, located out of the way on the edge of town, 4-H
shelter close by. I ate at the restaurant that
appeared least substandard, Karen's Kitchen. For the first time in recent
memory it didn't rain in the night.
I had met some Appalachian Trail hikers back in Virginia. The AT is mainly a mental challenge, they told me. After a couple weeks you get in as good a shape as you need to be. The hiking doesn't get any harder, it just goes on and on. Bike touring, on the other hand, is mostly physical. Nearly every day is hard. You have to take everything nature throws at you - hills, stifling humidity and heat, rain, sun, noise, sleepless nights, trucks, cars, teenagers, rough pavement. Mentally, it's not all that boring. Scenery changes a lot, you pass towns and restaurants, you meet local people, you go fast and slow.
But not today. Buffeted by the strongest winds of the tour out here on the featureless plains of eastern Colorado, it was a mind game. And I lost. The riding wasn't hard, really - you gear down however far you have to and pedal your 90 rpm. It's too slow, is the problem. After 30 miles my average was 7.1 mph and dropping. I was riding on the 22-tooth ring, in 20 or 23 rear. Wind roared in my ears mile after mile. A mile would take ten minutes, some of them; and I had to stop every 2 or 3, just to not be doing it. After half an hour I knew I couldn't make it to Eads today. I had considered hitching soon as I reached the Colorado state line, but I rode two more hours to Sheridan Lake. After lunch the forces of nature continued unabated. That was it - I'm hitchhiking. In fifteen minutes I had a ride to Eads with a good old boy from Johnson City, TN. I took a room, easily talking $39.95 down to $25.
I wasn't hoping for much, maybe an hour or two before the wind became hell on the prairie again. Instead I was granted a calm, benign day, perfect for riding 62 miles in eastern Colorado. Only a light, pleasant breeze arose in the afternoon. Good thing, too - from Eads to Sugar City, there was one commercial establishment, the gas station in Haswell, 21 miles into the day. From there, I had 34 miles of scruffy, desolate prairie to Sugar City. For the first time in my life, I listened to a Walkman while riding, the Colorado Rockies vs. the Houston Astros. Baseball's leisurely pace suited the ride well. The Rockies won in twelve innings.
Hotel Ordway offers rooms to touring cyclists for five dollars, without linens. Madeline, the owner, supported the original BikeCentennial in 1976, and had a framed copy of the route map that was presented to her back then. I had a beer in town, then returned for dinner later. I had the special, ravioli stuffed with chicken and mushrooms, covered with unnecessary sauce the same color as Alfredo sauce. It was no worse than one of those refrigerated Di Giornio pasta packages from Publix. The salad, though, contained real blue cheese and romaine lettuce, the first I’ve seen since Atlanta. I told them it was good, which, in context, it was.
Take a day off and half the Trans-Am Trail catches you. I wasn’t too surprised to see Susanne and Fabian - and when I see them I’m never surprised to see Jeff lurking - but Mickey pulled in as well. We had dinner together and talked over our tours. For two weeks he'd been hearing I was a day ahead of him. I wanted to read about Windows 98, released today, but couldn't find a PC magazine in this town. I couldn't even find a Newsweek or Car and Driver for sale anywhere.
I rode with the three today, chatting with Susanne mostly. It was an easy day. Mickey left early for his own reasons; I promised to look for him in the City Park in Pueblo. I did but I couldn’t find him. It’s a big park. Fabian and I jammed the last five or ten miles into town at 20 to 23 mph. I felt like a racer for the first time since the ride into Owls Bend, MO.
Everyone but me loaded up with breads and bagels at the bakery outlet in Pueblo. Jeff got all excited about cheap AA Duracells, 4 for $1.40. "Do you need batteries? These are really cheap! And they’re like new. They use them in their price guns or something and they’re not worn out. Something like that. Maybe you should get some. Do you need any? Like for your Walkman or something?" I didn't.
Susanne and Fabian met a local woman, Pat Burke. She invited us to stay at her house. Home, she hauled out the cookies, made us instant iced teas, let us take showers. She drove us into the foothills to point out some mountains and ranges, then around a nearby subdivision ‘cause I’d said OK to looking at a few houses. She showed us hundreds. "That one is in a Spanish style. See the patio in front, behind the gate?" Two minutes later, "There’s another one in Spanish style. See the patio in front?" Five minutes later, "There’s another Spanish house. See the patio in front?" She said it at least three more times. We tried to buy her dinner, but she bought ours.
Back at home, I got the tour of the basement - "here’s the linen closet" - and some of her story. Now about 70, she'd spent maybe 18 years taking care of her sick mother then her sick father. Her only son had committed suicide. I think he would be about my age. There may have been one passing mention of a husband, but he didn't seem to be a major player.
In the morning Pat fixed us breakfast. It was hard to get away - I think she would have loved some of us to stay.
On the forty-fourth day the Rockies began at last, with a climb of 600 feet to lunch in Wetmore, and the best iced tea of the tour. It must have been decaffeinated, because Fabian nearly fell asleep afterwards. They ride a long ways without resting, then they take a long break. I’ll see you in Florence, I told them - I’ll wait for you. But we got mixed up and I lost them again. So I kept on to Canon City and beyond, climbing about a thousand feet to this campground near Royal Gorge. I slept at 6200 feet above sea level, the highest altitude I had slept at, probably, since I'd moved out of Colorado in 1981.
And at 2262 miles, it became my longest tour. (I did 2220 miles in 1990 from Seattle to Lake Superior.)
Good to sleep in my tent last night - I'd slept indoors for the past week, except in Tribune. This morning I reviewed all the Sundays of the trip.
1 week ago - big tailwind day
in KS
2 weeks ago - rode out of Golden City, MO into KS, finally to
Walnut
3 weeks ago - left Carbondale, crossed the Mississippi River to
Ozara
4 weeks ago - looked at the Lincoln birthplace; fixed 2 flats;
rode to Axtel, KY
5 weeks ago - left Council VA, climbing to Breaks Interstate
Park. Sat around most of the day.
6 weeks ago - Second day of the tour, Sperryville to big breakfast buffet for $1.25 on Skyline Drive, then to Big Meadow.
After spending the morning at Royal Gorge, I wasn't off until after noon. It was a hot, steep ride with no shade for twenty miles. My throat felt tight from the dry, thin air. I exhausted my supply of hot water a few miles short of Guffey, and had to take a detour there for sodas and junk food. The Shecter’s, who had a hostel for cyclist, however, was just three more easy miles. For $8 I got a cabin with a padded bench for sleeping, an afghan, a hotplate, some chairs, an outhouse, and the coldest, cleanest water I’ve ever tasted. It made for the coldest shower I’ve ever experienced, but at least I was naked high in the Rockies, 8750 feet above sea level.
Fabian and Susanne showed up at the hostel around 8. Jeff, incredibly, was not with them. They last saw him back by the Gorge on his bike (they were in a car at the time). Weird to see them without him, but I’m glad we’re reunited. Mickey, meanwhile, had to stay over a day in Pueblo.
The last day of June dawned overcast
and misty at 6 AM. I was on the lonely road at 8:30, having
awakened Susanne and Fabian to wish her happy birthday. They
went back to sleep. A brisk southerly helped me up
Currant Creek Pass, 9404 feet, and propelled me along to Hartsel
for a second breakfast, blueberry pancakes and sausage. I rode the flat
road to Fairplay and stopped for lunch. The Continental Divide was
right in front of me.
Everyone says the Rockies are easier to ride than the Appalachians or the Ozarks, but they’re still hard. My knees ached and my hands, most problematic body part of this trip, went numb. I couldn't ride to the ability of my strength; even standing up to jam made me lightheaded. But I was up there, on Hoosier Pass, by 5:00. At 11,542 feet, it was the highest point of the route. I hurtled towards Breckenridge, over 30 mph for miles. Still descending, I took the Summit County Bike Path to Frisco, getting my second puncture of the tour. This is a bike path that even the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign could like, wide, paved, well-signed, and well-used, by non-riders and serious cyclists alike. I set up camp in the woods along the path at 8:30, having come 73 miles and climbed over 4000 feet.
| Mileage Chart | Part 1 | Top of Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
