After a good July 4th week in Fayetteveille, it's time to hit the road again from Lawrence, Kansas. I love that place. We caught a ride there with Iris' mom and also picked up a couple of more people on our way. We leave with 6 folks, the original three plus Laura Gunter, my friend from St. Louis, a friend of hers who dropped out after a half day (knee problems), and a 16 year old kid named Thomas who lived Fayetteville. He would be on the trip with us to Denver where he met up with a church group for the week. We stayed with Iris' half brother and he took us out to a bar with a kick ass band.
So we obviously wanted to ride as far as we could each day to get the hell out of Kansas as soon as possible. We did pretty good the first day, around 85 miles, to right outside of Manhattan. We were at a gas station where we met a guy and his twin daughters who offered us a place to stay. They were pretty awesome and a nice little farm place outside of town. We cooked dinner and showered up and went to bed.
The next day was another 85 mile day to Concordia. We got into town late and it was raining pretty hard and we didn't really have a hit on a place to stay except maybe the city park. Iris was going to check that out and passed by a fire station that offered to put us in the extra rooms for the night. This place was awesome, it had showers, a computer lab, a huge TV, and we could make it home. We would be trying to find places like that a lot more along the way.
80 more miles the next day to Smith Center. I liked this town a lot. There was a campground there which would have been fine to stay in, but other people wanted showers and whatnot so went to check out the scene. I was happy with camping, so me and Laura went to the pool to hang out for the rest of the day. After the pool closed, we ran to meet up with the others at the bar street and they had found us a place to stay with a painter named Chris(???) He was a nice guy and had just finished a house so was celebrating and bought us some beer and a pizza. We shut down the bar and slept in his back house, but the most ironic part was that the three who didn't want to camp ended up camping anyway behind his house. Apparently the back house was too hot, but I was too drunk to care, plus there was a matress, which I hadn't seen in a couple of days so I was all for it.
The next day was our first century day!!! Woohoo and shit! We made it into Oberlin that night pretty late and went to a pizza pie shop, really the only thing open in town. We asked around for a place to stay but we were just directed to the hotel down the road. We stayed in a tiny hotel room, so small we had to lock our bikes up outside. At least we had a warm shower, though.
The next day was pretty light, only about 70 miles, but it would be our last night in Kansas, so we were pretty ecstatic. We stayed in St. Francis, the last town before Eastern Colorado, with a high school physical education teacher named (???). His family was nice; there were a bunch of kids running around playing with neighbors when we got there. The town seemd pretty nice, too, especially in comparison to the tiny towns we had been passing in the last week. Thomas bought us all ice cream in celebration of finally making to Colorado, or at least being close enough.
Kansas is NOT flat. It's actually like a stair step up all the way to Colorado. We were just happy to be going less uphill when we did, and that was few and far between. The headwind was tolerable on most days, I remember only one bad day in particular. But I was so sick of seeing corn and wheat fields and nothing else I was happy to be in the Colorado desert.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
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.
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.
Hoosier Hospitality
We bounce from Louisville and immediately cross the border into Indiana and on the road to Evansville, two days away. Today was our first crash... mine. My front tire got caught up in the space between the road and some railroad tracks and I fell pretty hard in the road. As I was falling I looked for cars coming from behind me, which turned out to be good because it allowed me to fall and come out with only one scratch. No cars were coming, thank Jebus, but you knew that part.
So we stop at Hawg's Tavern bar on the way and have some crown shots... and some jello shots. The bar was a typical biker bar and the bartender, Caroline, ended up liking us and our story and hooked us up with everything for $5 plus sent us on our way with a dozen jello shots. I liked that bar.
That night we ended up staying in a little bed and breakfast/ vineyard called Scout Mountain Hideaway, owned by a guy named Mike who was a very cool guy. They had people coming in the next morning so we actually stayed in the barn out back, but we did get to use their hot tub and finish off the jello shots we picked up from the bar.
We leave the hideaway and are on the way for Evansville. On the way we stop at a vineyard for a tasting and it turns out the bartender knows Mike pretty well. He gets some grapes from Mike for the wine. We also met a couple there who had a couple of kids with them and they offer to put us up a couple of nights later if we were coming through their area. We would meet up with them later. We stopped a little while later for lunch and a guy comes up to us and asks us about the trip and all and says, "Yall ever heard of Hoosier hospitality"? He then throws down $40 and says "Well I'm buying your lunch, welcome to Indiana." It's like Southern hospitality, but in Indiana, I love it.
So we make it to Evansville and meet up with a guy named Chris who taught college there and was the ultimate faculty adviser for the college. He ended up taking us out and buying us dinner at a great little German brewery. Then we went out in town to 80's night at some bar in town and danced maybe had a drink or two... or three. The next morning we set off for the rest of Indiana.
So we stop at Hawg's Tavern bar on the way and have some crown shots... and some jello shots. The bar was a typical biker bar and the bartender, Caroline, ended up liking us and our story and hooked us up with everything for $5 plus sent us on our way with a dozen jello shots. I liked that bar.
That night we ended up staying in a little bed and breakfast/ vineyard called Scout Mountain Hideaway, owned by a guy named Mike who was a very cool guy. They had people coming in the next morning so we actually stayed in the barn out back, but we did get to use their hot tub and finish off the jello shots we picked up from the bar.
We leave the hideaway and are on the way for Evansville. On the way we stop at a vineyard for a tasting and it turns out the bartender knows Mike pretty well. He gets some grapes from Mike for the wine. We also met a couple there who had a couple of kids with them and they offer to put us up a couple of nights later if we were coming through their area. We would meet up with them later. We stopped a little while later for lunch and a guy comes up to us and asks us about the trip and all and says, "Yall ever heard of Hoosier hospitality"? He then throws down $40 and says "Well I'm buying your lunch, welcome to Indiana." It's like Southern hospitality, but in Indiana, I love it.
So we make it to Evansville and meet up with a guy named Chris who taught college there and was the ultimate faculty adviser for the college. He ended up taking us out and buying us dinner at a great little German brewery. Then we went out in town to 80's night at some bar in town and danced maybe had a drink or two... or three. The next morning we set off for the rest of Indiana.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Kentucky is Awesome Again
So we left from my Aunts house and biked about 70 miles south to get back toward Lexington. Our plan was to hit as many bourbon distilleries as we could before shooting west towards St. Louis. The next few days would be a beautiful ride. There were a ton of horse farms all over Kentucky with huge plantations and a bunch of old money. We made it right outside of Lexington and stayed at the Kentucky Horse Park camping grounds, the absolute largest campground I've ever been to by far. It had a pool, tennis courts, a huge bathhouse, the works. We got in really late so we set up and passed out pretty quickly so we could get out early to go to Louisville that night.
We left the park toward the distilleries the next morning. We only had time to make one, the Buffalo Trace distillery, which turned out to be really good whiskey. They used to be Ancient Age before getting bought out and upgraded. So we got some free whiskey and decided to hurry and get to Frankfort, the capitol of Kentucky, to eat lunch. We stopped by the best place we probably could have, Rick's White Light. Rick has to be one of the coolest characters we've met so far. This guy has been a chef for presidents, movie stars, a bunch of big people for a long time, but now owns a small corner burger joint that seats less than 20.
Rick was outrageous. We stayed and bullshitted with him for about 3 hours about politics, race, law, and a bunch of other shit. He got sued by a copyright infringement lawyer for selling "Derby Pie," which the lawyer convinced the courts was an owned name when it actually has been around since Rick started cooking. It is most definitely public domain, but Rick's lawyer really sucked and lost the case. And then the lawyer told Rick he owed him about $12,000 for legal fees, so Rick was pretty screwed. The most amazing part was his ability to laugh about it and to come up with a plan to get the money. He has a styrofoam cup in the restaurant that says "Rick's Legal Fund" and he figures if someone gives him $7 each day in the cup, he can pay them off in like 30 years or something. It's been working, the lady that sat next to me gave him his $7 for that day. She also gave him a bottle of wine, which he poured for us a little bit later. What a solid guy. If anyone is ever in Frankfort, it is by far the best place to be, though it is a little hard to find. Look for the sign that says "Ladies Welcome."
So we leave Rick to close up and head on to Louisville with no plan of where to stay. There really weren't any campgrounds close to where we were but we were pretty sure there was ultimate in town so we called King Kharl assuming that he would know most people in Louisville... He told us where to go to find summer league games that night close to the river. I left the girls to go find ultimate by the river, but didn't know exactly where it was at. So it get to the river and start riding down the road as I pass soccer field after soccer field with no ultimate and am starting to lose hope. It was getting late, after all. I decided to ride until my odometer said 80 miles and then I would turn around and figure something else out. My odometer reached 80.08 when I saw the first 7 on the line and it was like beacon of hope.
Their summer league was pretty good size with 12 teams and a cool director named Lumis (might be spelled wrong...) who I talked to at first about a spot to crash. He offered his, although we ended up staying with another player after a full night of drinking and debauchery. All you can eat pizza and all you can drink beer plus a facemelting band for $10 in Louisville on Wednesday nights, by the way. We partied there for a while and met up with our future host, Evan, who was a very chill guy. He was so chill that he convinced us to stay another day in town so he could show us around all the parks and the cool parts of town. We ended up lounging by the pool for a while after working out a bit and then checking out the town, which was one of those towns like Austin or Fayetteville that just seems out of its element compared to the rest of the towns in that state. It was a funky little place that was big on local business and had a nice little nightlife scene. So we went out again that night and met up with Lumis again to have a few beers and a bite. Thanks again Lumis and Evan!!! Yall made Louisville very worth the trip! We geared up to leave Louisville the next morning to take off for the plains of southern Illinois and Indiana on our way to St. Louis.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Poultry Days
So Jess drops off us the next day to catch our ride, and we make him pretty late for work in the process (sorry again!). The Asheville players who came down were really cool to pack us in pretty tight for the ride up to Versailles. They also convinced that I want to do a lot of hanging out in Asheville. It sounds like a Fayetteville-like area in North Carolina, except the mountains are bigger. So we arrive in Versailles at my first Poultry Days, which I had no clue was also a town festival with carnival rides and food and delicious chicken dinners on Saturday night after games. Bowers and I rode some rides that almost got the better of our stomachs, but we managed to not ralph on each other... yet... The camping was pretty good, too. It only rained the first night, and for some reason I was in Scott Brown's tent which we fucked up right before going to bed and so got a little wet. The second night I made it to my tent, and it didn't even rain that night, but I still woke up wet and in a puddle... that's so strange...
I got to play with UPS, I think for the first time ever, which was very cool. I already miss playing with every person on that team... except for Scott Brown. Ha, yust yoking, but he is a broken like he's on the mark lookin ass!!! That kiddie pool fucked that kid up! I'll see you in Tulsa though, I just bet... Thank you, Jon, for picking me up. I got that $30 for you somewhere, I think it fell out of my pocket on the ride or something...
So the tourney came to an end and we snagged a ride back to Highland Heights from a scrumptralescent (and I only use that name for very few folks) dude named Kevin, who happened to grow up about 5 minutes from my aunt's house. He has been away for a while in the service, but lives right above San Diego now and came back to visit his family and go to Poultry Days. It turns out he actually went to grade school with another cousin of mine (once or twiced removed) who I haven't had the chance to meet yet. Thanks for not only the ride, but for the shoes, too. They are perfect retro, purple and blue, Oasis tennis shoes. I swear I had a smaller version when I was a kid. Until now I've only had the bike cleats, which are getting pretty roughed up, so the shoes really saved my ass!
We made it back to my aunt's house and had a great taco night and promptly passed out only to wake up too late to get where were gonna go today. So, were gonna chill one more night before taking off to the bourbon trail tomorrow. I at least had time to catch up on my blog today, which has been a long time coming. I need to get a lot of pictures on this thing so I gotta quit writing, but keep checking and hopefully I wont wait a week before posting. Peace!
I got to play with UPS, I think for the first time ever, which was very cool. I already miss playing with every person on that team... except for Scott Brown. Ha, yust yoking, but he is a broken like he's on the mark lookin ass!!! That kiddie pool fucked that kid up! I'll see you in Tulsa though, I just bet... Thank you, Jon, for picking me up. I got that $30 for you somewhere, I think it fell out of my pocket on the ride or something...
So the tourney came to an end and we snagged a ride back to Highland Heights from a scrumptralescent (and I only use that name for very few folks) dude named Kevin, who happened to grow up about 5 minutes from my aunt's house. He has been away for a while in the service, but lives right above San Diego now and came back to visit his family and go to Poultry Days. It turns out he actually went to grade school with another cousin of mine (once or twiced removed) who I haven't had the chance to meet yet. Thanks for not only the ride, but for the shoes, too. They are perfect retro, purple and blue, Oasis tennis shoes. I swear I had a smaller version when I was a kid. Until now I've only had the bike cleats, which are getting pretty roughed up, so the shoes really saved my ass!
We made it back to my aunt's house and had a great taco night and promptly passed out only to wake up too late to get where were gonna go today. So, were gonna chill one more night before taking off to the bourbon trail tomorrow. I at least had time to catch up on my blog today, which has been a long time coming. I need to get a lot of pictures on this thing so I gotta quit writing, but keep checking and hopefully I wont wait a week before posting. Peace!
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