July 26th, 2006
Yesterday (I’m writing this from Bendavis, MO) Chelsea and I rode absolutely the toughest miles of our trip to date. Things started out great with Alex dropping us off at the highway at Twin Rivers Landing in Lesterville, MO. We were nearly dreading the mileage because of how tough things had been the few days prior, but we were fresh off a great day and a half rest, so we felt optimistic.
The first 25 miles were great. We had some pretty good hills to climb up, but they were much more gradual, and even though we’d be in our lowest gears, we could just crawl steadily upward. All that changed after we passed Ellington. Wow, did it get tough! We did 48 miles, but it could have been 145, for how tired we were. Both of us were absolutely quivering, by the time we quit, and it took us some time to get our breathing back in shape.
We had steep roller coaster hills that were so exhausting I couldn’t believe it. We’d get to the top of one, get in our highest gears, ride like mad downhill hoping to get as far as we could up the next hill, switch quickly into our lowest gears, and work our bums off trying to get up the hill, only to repeat the process again, and again, and again, and again…this kept up for at least 4-5 hours. The lines of visibility are almost zero, the and the speed of traffic is astonishing, considering the circumstances. There are no shoulders, and the lanes are narrow. No one would be able to pass us without going into the oncoming lane, and the cars couldn’t even see what was coming most of the time.
The biggest volume of traffic by far came from gravel and asphalt dump trucks that would come screaming by us. The good news is that we could hear them well in advance. They were so utterly intimidating that Chelsea and I got to where we could tell when they were almost on us, and we would simply stop immediately and get off the road. I wasn’t going to argue the road rights with them! And of course, if one came by while we were on a hill, that meant we walked the rest of the hill, because there was no way we could get back up and ride – the hills were too steep.
There was one memorable hill that we rode where we were in our lowest gear for at least three-quarters of a mile, and finally couldn’t keep going any more, so we got off and walked at least another half mile. We got on again, and rode another three-quarters mile!
This reminds of something that Evelyn saw in a Florida bicycle shop: “Mountains? We don’t need no stinkin’ mountains. Ride Florida.” We laughed pretty hard at that when she told us, but it takes on new meaning now!
After this killer ride, we still had to find a campsite, which we did after a bit of cruising around. We were SO looking forward to hot showers and real bathrooms! Turns out the campsite was loaded with flies – and I mean thousands of flies. It was utterly overwhelming. Just having the car open to get things out allowed so many flies in that we had hundreds of them in there this morning, and found fly droppings everywhere. Ugh! What a way to start the day!
We were so tired yesterday that all we could do was just sit. I finally got it together enough to take a shower late in the afternoon, and discovered that we had to pay for the showers! It was 4 quarters for 8 minutes maximum, but we could do 1 quarter for 2 minutes. And quarters only, please. I decided to do it anyway, and then discovered that I couldn’t control the temperature, and it was set on hot. It was so hot that I couldn’t stand in the flow of water…deep sigh… It was an improvement, however, on the sweat of the day.
Needless to say, we just fell into bed – didn’t even clean our dishes. I had to wake up Alex to make him eat a plate of macaroni and cheese.