Show Me:

You guessed it we are in Missouri. We crossed the Missouri River on this decrepit bridge about 70 miles into the ride today at Acheson. Acheson is actually a really famous place from the Acheson and Topeka railway fame and of course home of Amelia Erhart The bridge itself is the huge iron truss affair which stretches across the river in three sections it is probably over half a mile in length. It had to have been built as part of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" in the mid 1930's and it has not seen any maintenance since. Last year's Pacific Coast ride boasted some big bridges but this one was right up there. May be not in size or length up certainly in terms of scare factor.

Tonight we are in St Joesph, MO which is a really quaint place of about 75,000. There are lots of old Victorian homes and the old downtown is mostly 20's-30's brick . However there are lots of modern shopping malls as well. The ride into town took us though some beautiful treed streets and parks. St Joesph is home of the pony express and although it only lasted a few years is quite famous. The is a huge pony express rider statue right in front of the museum. (No picture sorry messed up). It is also home to Jesse James and the Younger brothers gang. I am really messed up on this western stuff this place doesn't look any thing like the west of the movies. The Wild West in the movies is this dried out sun backed place which is full of tumble weeds and evil Mexicans (sort of like Nevada). Looks like I am going to have to make another trip though here to visit these places in more detail.

I guess that today's ride also marks an important point in the trip as we are now over half way. Topeka was the half way point. It seems to have just flown by. It is really hard to believe that we have traveled in excess of 1900 miles. There have been some great adventures and I am sure that there are a few more just over the next hill.

Today's ride was 87 miles with a 25-35 mph tail wind. So most of the time we just flew down the road. It was great flying along at 25+ mph without even pedaling. At one point I was going up a pretty steep hill at 22 mph and wasn't pedalling. However the last 8 miles or so though town was tough as there are a bunch of really steep hills and I was tired from yesterdays beating. Never the less the seat time was only 4:57 and the average speed was 17.6 mph. I got in just after 1:00 and was really fortunate as my room was ready. Most of the crew had to wait until 3:00 to get their room. Boy was there ever a bunch of grumbling. So even though I had a ton of office work to do and should have got for a run but I opted for a 2:00 hr nap. After that I worked on my brakes they were not working very well and there were a couple of places where I really had to jump on them to stop. Rick the Crossroads mechanic was going to the bike shop so I hitched a ride to get some new brake pads. The shop however was may be the worst shop I have ever been in they didn't even have brake pads.

Today's picture is fooling a round at the first rest stop. Jim took the picture even though he had no idea of what was coming down. Randy (blue shirt and white helmet) is the only one who knew what was happening. I could have shown you a bunch of really pretty county side but you have all seen beautiful county side. You know rolling hills with lots of trees and fields of grain and fields with herds of cattle. The country has really changed over the last couple of days.

Well thanks for visiting my blog and thanks for all the comments. I love to know that you're out there. But tell me what kind of dirt you want to know about, and I will try to let you in on it.

On the road again.

Terry