Monday, August 4, 2008

Missouri was easy

After Evansville the next big stop was St. Louis. We say goodbye to Chris and head out for Wayne City where the couple from the Winery picked us up. Nothing very interesting happened today except I found a bag of jawbreakers on the side of the road... and that was exciting. The floods did divert our route a bit and we had to take the freeway which wasn't as hectic as I thought it would be.

The couple, Brent and Beth Young, were amazing to us. They picked us up and we met most of their little girls, who were adorable!!! We ended up sleeping in the girls room in bunk beds, which was really cool and reminded me of when I had a bunk bed as a kid. They sent us off the next morning with Dairy Queen shirts (they owned one and a subway), good for me cause I only had one non-biking shirt at the time. Thanks so much for the hospitality!!!

So we were off to St. Louis, finally, and made it to Praderborn, a town with a bar and a church. We stopped in the bar and met a group of bikers (vrooom vrooom kind) called the Praderborn Rat Pack. They were really nice to us and gave us a bunch of paraphanalia including bandanas and coozies. One of the guys mailed us a bunch of cherry moonshine that we ended up drinking later in Colorado, more on that later.

So we made it around nightfall to Columbia, a suburb of St. Louis. We stopped at a bar there and waited for Mike Mertz to come pick us up. If you don't know Mike, you should. I met him through ultimate a couple of years ago and he is nothing if not a scholar and a gentleman.
We had a good night bumming around St. Louis until we got rear ended in the middle of the night. Our bikes were on the back of his car on a rack, and Iris' got pretty smashed up, keeping us in St. Louis for a couple of days while she waited for repairs. We really wanted to get to Solstice in Tulsa, so we hitched a ride with Addison, one of Mertz's friends, to the tourney and had a blast as usual at Solstice. Heather flew home and if she doesn't regret it, she should... You hear me Heather!!!!

Then a week of kicking it in Fayetteville and the dreaded Kansas was the next part of the trip. Don't worry, as soon as I get back home I'm taking the Katy (sp?) trail from St. Louis to Lawrence to make up for lost time.

2 comments:

Sara said...

The Katy trail is great. My mom and I rode it together after I graduated high school and we loved it! Let me know when you go, I've been wanting to do it again forever(though I may not be able to keep up with your "riding across america" ass).

Anonymous said...

Missouri was a MONTH ago. Can we get a what-what update, Yo!???