L&C Bike Tour

One thing I would like to come out of this adventure is awareness and funding for the Melanoma International Foundation. I've been an athlete all of my life; I was one of those kids who was on swim team and spent entire summers at the pool in the 1970s, before most of the innovations in sunscreen. These days I cycle, kayak, and do triathlon, so I still spend a lot of time outdoors, but now it's with the benefit of SPF45 sunscreen with micronized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. My fellow athletes and outdoorsy folks and I are in a high-risk group for having melanoma, and are an important group with whom to raise awareness of melanoma and how to reduce your risk.

Just as important as protecting your skin from the sun is regularly examining your skin for any distinct changes, i.e. a change in a mole, a new mole or a lesion.  You should do this regularly, know your skin and bring any changes to the attention of a dermatologist. 
 
The Melanoma International Foundation funds patient assistance programs, providing reassurance and understanding on the journey of having the disease as well as providing free screening and awareness events. They provide education through their professionally moderated forum and helpline.  Melanoma can be fatal, especially if not caught early. But there's also a lot of low-hanging fruit in melanoma prevention --  broad-brimmed hats, protective clothing, staying indoors or in the shade during the most intense midday hours. 

I am using this bike ride to request pledges and donations to support the excellent and important work of the Melanoma International Foundation. In particular, your pledges here will support the Leroy Coolbreeze Fund at the Melanoma International Foundation.

The Leroy Coolbreeze Fund honors the memory of Ian Copeland, a legendary music agent and bon vivant who brought great joy to many people throughout his too-short life. Along with his brothers Stewart (best known as the drummer in The Police) and Miles (who, among other things, managed The Police and founded IRS Records), Ian brought music into being that changed my life and thrilled me starting in the late 1970s. Their work continues to thrill and excite me to this day. Ian died from melanoma in 2006. My request for your support is a testimony to the value the Copeland family has brought to my life, and the joy I experience daily through listening to and playing the music that they have created.

As my friends and I ride along the Lewis & Clark Trail, please give to this worthy cause. If you can specify the "Leroy Coolbreeze Fund" and "Lynne" in your donation, then the great MIF folks will take it from there, and will know that our Lewis & Clark Trail bike tour is raising your awareness of the importance of melanoma outreach and research, and enabling them to do even more of this important work.

[NOTE: I've front-dated this post so that it stays on top throughout our entire journey. This is too important to get buried.]

I can ride longer distances, I just have to be patient and pace myself.

I have to play around with my handlebar position to address my hand numbness and trapezius soreness.

Sunscreen and bug spray and breathable second-skin bandages are important things to have every day on the tour.

Seeing the country by bike allows you to see and appreciate things that are impossible to see and appreciate by car, and that applies both to flora/fauna/geology and to human action and human history.

This country is vast. Vast.

The courage, intrepidness, and iron will of the people who explored and settled the American frontier are mind-boggling.

We all ate more than usual, and ate a bunch of stuff we don't usually eat while on this trip. Some of this is necessary; on the Marshall-Tebbetts day, for example, my average speed was only 12.4 miles/hour for the 61 miles I rode, because of the friction on the trail surface, but I was working: according to my heart rate monitor I expended 2,887 calories. My daily expenditure while riding (not counting my basal metabolic expenditure) varied from 1,800 to 4,000, depending on the day.

Some of the things I ate with relative abandon that I don't usually eat were

• Steak: typically either prime rib or filet, so still low-fat cuts
• Barbecue: because going to Kansas City and not eating barbecue is just wrong
• Beer: maltase can crank up my blood sugar, so I usually don't drink beer any more, but this tour was an exception
  
• Ice cream
  
• Swedish fish: red ones
• Licorice: black ones
• Bread products: bread, hamburger buns
• Fried potatoes, although some of them were sweet potato french fries, so at least a wee bit more healthy ...
• Pancakes
• Bacon
  

I even had a full-sugar can of Dr. Pepper one day, and I was burning so many calories that I didn't get a sugar buzz at all. Now it's back to the beans, cereal, soymilk, fresh veggies, chicken that took a back seat during the tour ...

St. Charles has a special place in the Lewis & Clark expedition: in May 1804, St. Charles was their point of departure for points west. St. Charles honors this history in its historic downtown with plaques, statues, and restaurants that commemorate the expedition. St. Charles also had a large French settlement, and there is still a Frenchtown section of downtown. It's an incredibly picturesque town:

It turned out to be a great coincidence that we ended our ride in St. Charles on the 4th of July. Not only does Independence Day commemorate the same spirit that inspired me in the Lewis & Clark expedition, but St. Charles also does its 4th of July celebration up right. It's a large small town, with a historic downtown and a gorgeous riverfront. When we walked down to Riverfest, we happened to be approaching just as a traditional band was playing the fitting Liberty Bell March by John Philip Sousa, which is perhaps best known as the theme song for Monty Python's Flying Circus. As four Monty Python fans, we all appreciated the simultaneous celebration of individual liberty and fine British comedy!

The St. Charles train depot is charming and quaint, and beautifully maintained:

We sat near it to watch the fireworks that night, which were seriously probably the best fireworks I've ever seen!

The home stretch ... we started out early from Tebbetts in very nice, cooler-than-normal weather for the final ride into St. Charles. Today we decided to alternate between the trail and the road, to give ourselves a bit of a break from the vibrations of the trail surface. Good conditions, nice terrain and scenery, light wind (although there was a fairly stiff headwind sometimes when we were out on the road).

Along this stretch the Katy Trail winds through areas settled by German immigrants, including Rhineland, where we saw this lovely church:

The bluffs and hills along the Missouri River here are also the center of Missouri's wine country (including towns like Hermann), where the descendants of German immigrants make German-style wines, including those from white grapes like vidal blanc and seyval blanc.

Here's some of Team Corps of Discovery in action on this gorgeous day:

We stopped for the typical lunch of cycling champions (peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, mixed nuts and dried fruit, and apples and oranges) in Treloar, where another cyclist kindly took a picture of the entire Team Corps of Discovery:

I only rode 32 miles on the last day, because of my sore wrists and trapezius. But the reason I stopped there was so I could remember enjoying the 32 miles I did ride, instead of grumbling through the whole ride.

That meant that I was driving the sag wagon into St. Charles. Not only was the trailhead in St. Charles right near the park where the 4th of July festivities were taking place ... our hotel was literally feet from the trailhead! So I got us all checked in, showered, made a dinner reservation at the brewpub at the trailhead, and reflected on a very fun tour!

Boy, were we chomping at the bit to get in the saddle ... so much so that we missed a turn and rode 11 miles in the wrong direction! That's the point when you're glad to have a sag wagon, so you can get back on track with minimal fuss and trauma.

The first part of the ride this day was rolling country roads, and in Boonville:

we picked up the Katy Trail. The Katy Trail is the longest rails-to-trails trail in the U.S., along the line of the former MKT (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) Railroad rail line, which stopped service in 1986. Over half of the MKT line runs along the Missouri River at the base of the bluffs, so the ride is a flat crushed limestone path with trees, bluffs, swamp, and floodplain. There are also several neat steel truss bridges, such as this one further east on the Trail:

We lunched in Rocheport, at a bike shop/cafe along the trail:

We saw lots of flora and charismatic megafauna: horsetail (scouring rush), which has a high silica content and is still used to polish reeds for woodwind instruments; box turtles, terrapins, lots of dragonflies, tiny jumping toads, a bull snake, deer, indigo buntings, bluebirds, ...

I rode 61 miles, and they were enjoyable because the road and trail were both beautiful and scenic. However ... my road bike is not the best bike for riding the Katy Trail, so by the time we got to Tebbetts, my wrists and my shoulders/trapezius muscles were very sore. I was feeling every vibration in the surface.

That night we stayed in the Turner-Katy Trail Shelter in Tebbetts, a bunkhouse for cyclists right on the trail. It had the most important feature of any overnight stop for a cyclist: a hot shower with great water pressure!

This day was possibly the most frustrating cycling day I've ever had. Here we are, four enthusiasts, chomping at the bit to get back in the saddle after a day off, and what do we get? Thunderstorms.

We drive back up I-35 to get back on our map's route, and we sit. And wait. And get some coffee at the convenience store. And wander through the fireworks tent next door (I was always drawn to the ones that promise giant flaming balls!). And wait. There was just enough lightning to make us leery, but not enough rain to drive us into the car to wait it out.

So we decide to drive on to Lawson, Missouri, hoping that as we moved east and the storm moved northeast our trajectories would diverge. Sadly, it was not to be. We hung out in the town park, in a pavilion, and then as we thought the storm passed we headed into a local cafe for a morale-boosting mid-morning snack. Sadly, we left the cafe in as much rain as we entered it ...

We drove a bit further along the route, and the weather cleared up sufficiently that we thought it was worth trying for a bit of a ride. I'm pretty risk averse about lightning, so I offered to drive. The guys got in 5 miles of riding, but the lightning line ahead of us was still too close and too threatening to make riding safe.

So we packed it in and headed to get some lunch in Lexington, which has a lot of importance in American history. Situated on the Missouri River bluffs, it lies on the Lewis & Clark Trail. It's also the site of a 3-day battle in the Civil War, and was the location of Russell, Majors & Waddell. RMW were the main outfitters for people heading west on the Santa Fe Trail, and they later founded the Pony Express. We didn't go check any of them out, but there are several points along the Santa Fe Trail through Missouri where you can still see the wagon ruts from the trains of Conestoga wagons heading west. Here's a snap of me with Matt and Al in front of the Lexington Pony Express memorial plaque:

After lunch we headed out in hopes of finding clear weather for afternoon riding. No such luck. More rain, and enough thunder to make us all uncomfortable at the thought of riding. Truly exasperating, to be raring to go but to have this yes-no-maybe back-and-forth with the weather.

So we head to our terminus for the day, Marshall, Missouri. We ran into some bad mojo at the Super 8 Motel where we had a reservation; the owner would not let us bring our bikes into our rooms. This is the first bad mojo we've encountered in the entire tour; everyone else has been welcoming and curious about our trip. So we left, walked our bikes across the street in a driving rain to the Comfort Inn, where they welcomed our business enthusiastically (and gave us cleaning towels to dry off our bikes).

After a utilitarian but uninspiring dinner at Applebee's, we topped off our frustrating day with a wee dram of Highland Park and a good night's sleep, to ready ourselves for Thursday's ride.

We spent Monday night, Tuesday, and Tuesday night in Kansas City, resting and eating as much good steak and barbecue as we could! Hey, it's important to fuel properly for endurance activity, right ... ?

We slept in, cleaned the bikes, did some maintenance, re-taped my handlebars (my tape job got trashed in my little gravel incident), and chilled out.

Kansas City has a lot of interesting industrial and rail history and architecture, so after our Tuesday night dinner at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue (an assortment of beef ribs, pork ribs, lamb ribs, beef brisket, and "burnt ends", yum!), we strolled through Union Station and pondered Kansas City's role as a rail transportation and agricultural hub. There are lots of neat old brick warehouses, many of which have been transformed into loft condominiums. The area near the restaurant and Union Station also has some funky art galleries, so we had fun peering into their windows.

Then it was off to an early sleep, to get ready for Wednesday's ride: Holt, Missouri to Marshall, Missouri.

Monday was a bright, beautiful day. It was my first day back riding after my tumble, so it was important to get back in the saddle. We crossed the Missouri River at Atchison and headed southeast along the river's flood plain in Missouri. The terrain was gentle rollers, with a very slight tailwind. We were moving through the Missouri loess hills and into the prairie.

The vegetation was also shifting from the scrubby high plains plants of South Dakota and Nebraska into more lush Eastern-style forest vegetation.

We had a great lunch in Platte City, Missouri, at a tea shop/cafe, and ended our day by driving from Holt to Kansas City for our day off. We ate steak that night at Plaza III, one of Kansas City's famous swanky steakhouses.

I rode 42 miles that day, and they were 42 good ones!

Sunday began with a 1.5 mile stretch of gravel road. Uh oh. Gravel and I are not friends. Take it slow and steady. OK ... until the downhill with the large gravel piled across the entire road. My back wheel spun out to the left, and I tucked and rolled onto my right thigh, hip, and shoulder.

Wipeout!

It hurt. Yowie, did it hurt. But I didn't break or sprain anything, either on myself or on my bike. I have some spectacular scratches and bruises, as you can infer from my right leg and left index finger here:

I lost a day of riding on Sunday, but I'm fine. It's really too bad, because the weather was glorious and the route between Nebraska City, Nebraska and White Cloud, Kansas was spectacular. Rolling hills, huge fields of corn swaying gently in the wind, bright blue sky. The guys had a great day of riding; Al in particular was ecstatic.

Interestingly, when we got to White Cloud, where we were planning to camp, we found the marina "campground" a foot deep in mud from flooding three weeks ago:

So we drove on to Atchison, Kansas, and got a hotel. I love Atchison! More on Atchison in a separate post, but it has a great rail history and we puttered around next to the old Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad depot for some time:

Among other things, this trip is an exercise in adaptation, and again I feel like I'm channeling Lewis & Clark: you don't undertake as enormous an enterprise as theirs without realizing that you will have to adapt to dynamic and changing conditions. Today threw a lot of things at me that required adaptation (nothing on the scale of the Corps of Discovery, but still, the simile strikes me as apt).

Extra points if you can identify the quote in my title: it's from Episode 34 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Harold Pither's cycling tour of Cornwall ("September 2nd. Did not fall off outside Iddesley.").

Well I've got some good news and some bad news.

What a great day of cycling! I rode 51 miles today, and our route was through the rolling Loess Hills of western Iowa:

The Loess Hills are generally located between 1 and 15 miles (24 km) east of the Missouri River channel. These hills are the first rise in land beyond the flood plain, forming something of a "front range" for Iowa, and parts of Missouri and Nebraska adjacent to the Missouri River.

During the last Ice Age, glaciers advanced into the middle of North America, grinding underlying rock into dust-like "glacial flour." As temperatures warmed, the glaciers retreated and vast amounts of meltwater and sediment flooded the Missouri River Valley. The sediment was deposited on the flood plain, creating huge mud flats. When meltwaters receded, these mud flats were exposed. As they dried, the fine-grained silt was picked up by strong prevailing westerly winds. Huge dust clouds were moved and redeposited over broad areas. The heavier, coarser silt was deposited close to the Missouri River flood plain, forming vast dune fields. The dune fields were eventually stabilized by grass. Due to the erosive nature of loess soil and its ability to stand in vertical columns when dry, the stabilized dunes were eroded into the corrugated, sharply-dissected bluffs we see today.

Not only are they geologically interesting; they also make for great cycling along the Loess Hills Scenic Byway. The wind vascillated between head wind and tail wind, and it was sunny all day.

We also couldn't resist the photo op in front of this wonderful old sign on the side of a building in Pacific Junction, Iowa:

And we ended the day with a visit to the Missouri River Basin Lewis & Clark Visitor Center in Nebraska City, Nebraska. Informative and fun exhibits, including a replica of the L&C keelboat that induced some roleplaying:

What a great riding day! Gorgeous sun, relatively flat terrain, a tailwind ... beautiful! I rode 50 miles on Friday, and they were 50 really great miles.

One of the great things about this ride is that even driving the route is gorgeous, so doing my share of driving the sag wagon is OK.

I was driving the last leg of the route, into Missouri Valley, Iowa, where we were planning to camp in the municipal park. Until we saw that the camping area was under an underpass, next to the local swimming pool, and surrounded by jungle gyms and the local fairgrounds ... luckily, the Days Inn a mile away had room for us.

We cleaned up and headed south to Council Bluffs to see the Lewis & Clark monument there; Council Bluffs was a major location in their journey because it was the location of a meeting with the leaders of several local tribes. President Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark out with one of their missions being to engage the Indian tribes in friendly commercial relations, and this meeting was to be an important part of advancing those relationships. Thus the name of Council Bluffs, and the memorial there, commemorate the importance of this mission.

Council Bluffs is across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska, and I had found us a local micro-brewpub for dinner and good beer. So we headed out, in advance of an extremely threatening-looking sky. As we walked into the L&C memorial in Council Bluffs, we heard the severe storm warning siren from Omaha. So we got to watch this extremely serious storm roll in:

It was just stunning to watch the wall cloud move through at 50+ miles/hour, which we did until the wind and rain reached us on the other side of the river. We watched the wind through Omaha knock trees down into transformers, and we could see the shocks and sparks from all the way across the river as the transformers blew. The wind also kicked up serious dust, and as we watched, the dust cloud blocked our view of Omaha -- totally obliterated it.

The storm passed very quickly, and when we got to Omaha the summer arts festival had its vendor tents blown down. Luckily for us, the historic area near the river still had power, and we really enjoyed our dinner at Upstream Brewing. I really liked our Omaha visit:

The trucks with fancy fiberglass motorboats on their trailers started showing up around 3:00 AM. Ahhhhh, yes, that's why the Bass fishing trailer was set up near the shore; there's a big-time bass fishing tournament today! Dozed back into a fitful sleep until 4:40, when the heat lightning became so frequent, and the regular lightning and thunder started, that we decided to break camp. Sometimes heat lightning amounts to nothing, but we wanted to make sure our camping gear didn't get wet. In a stroke of perfect timing, the rain started right as we pulled out of our campsite. We drove, instead of biked, to Vermillion in a steady downpour, but it had dissipated by the time we got there. We found a cozy coffeeshop and caught up on some reading and writing.

The radar showed another line of storms on our heels, so we kept driving southeast to Sioux City, Iowa. We spent a good chunk of time at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center there (again, with good timing, missing most of a downpour while there). Lewis & Clark camped there on their outbound journey, and the only fatality on the trip occurred there, Sergeant Charles Floyd, who died from a "bilious colic". Chances are it was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, but they couldn't diagnose such a thing in 1804. There's a nice monument to Floyd on a bluff south of town.

Sioux City has a nice little downtown historic area, where we found a bar with something like eleventy-billion beers on tap (Buffalo Alice), and across the street from it, a nice Italian restaurant.

So yeah, the day was a washout from a bicycling perspective, but we had fun nonetheless!

I woke up on Wednesday determined to pace myself better for the longer distances. We spent Tuesday night in Spencer, Nebraska, about 9 miles south of our route, and ate steak at a local saloon (with a large bison head hanging on the wall above me!). Then Wednesday morning we ate "'cakes and eggs" at a café in Spencer, got in the car, and headed out.

The morning ride started with a flat bit that led into a couple of nice downhills as we approached the Missouri River at Fort Randall. Fort Randall is one of the dams on the Missouri used for flood control and hydroelectric power generation; upstream of every dam the river is essentially a lake. In fact, there was almost no water going through the Ft. Randall dam spillway, presumably to reduce the volume of water heading down into the Mississippi River watershed in light of the downstream flooding that's happening right now. I also got to geek out a little about the hydro plant at the dam!

From there our ride turned east toward Yankton, through the Yankton Sioux Reservation via Marty and Springfield. I loved this part of the ride - enough breezes to keep us cool, but not enough to be a killer headwind, sunny but not too warm, terrain that was flat but not too flat. I would claim unequivocally that County Road 2 between Marty, South Dakota and Springfield, South Dakota is one of the best rides I've ever done. The scenery continues to be a gorgeous combination of crops, grass, hills, river, and rocky outcroppings. Along this stretched we started to see exposed rock with the gold, orange, and red rock that I'm used to seeing further west, but that we hadn't seen between Pierre and just west of Marty.

Our stop for lunch in Springfield was a welcome break. We found a local place that made great hamburgers and milkshakes, and we had a great time talking to the folks there. The ride between Springfield and Yankton continued to be gorgeous, but the wind and the temperature kicked up, so it was pretty hard work! I took the last 10 miles as my turn driving for the day, leading us into the Lewis & Clark Recreation Area campground, right on the river. Again, here the river is more like a lake because it's adjacent to another dam (which gives tours and has a Lewis & Clark visitor Center).

My total mileage for the day: 75 great miles!

After we set up camp and admired the great location (and I went for a quick swim), we headed in to Yankton for laundry, drinks, and dinner. We spent a happy hour drinking great beers and chatting with the folks at Ben's Brewing, where we also got some good dining and cycling tips for the Yankton and Vermillion areas. Then back to camp to douse ourselves in bug spray and head to sleep.

Up at the usual 5:30 AM. Today we had breakfast at the Iron Man Cafe down the street from the Skyline Motel. I drove us back to the highway and then we discovered that the road milling that began just past Bonesteel and had gone to US 281 (in what would have been a truly miserable and unsafe ride) ended just past the junction of 281 with SD 18. Good news!

Today I spent a good deal of time nursing Achilles tendons and rode only 48 mi. The day was notable for crossing the Missouri at the Snake Rive dam. The view coming into the valley overlooking the river is really spectacular and when we could see the climb on the other side it was a gorgeous site. We had a PB&J lunch at the Snake River State Park - very nice and well maintained although the mosquitos were bad even at noon.

Fortified with a satisfying breakfast from the same restaurant in Chamberlain, SD where we had dined the previous evening (The Anchor Grille), we headed off toward Bonesteel, SD along the north side of the Missouri River. Our route along back country roads made for great cycling and scenery, although the persistent headwind made me, in particular, quite unhappy. Apparently from talking to the locals, in South Dakota the wind always blows, and it always blows from the direction from which you don't want it to blow! That was certainly the case on Tuesday; we were riding south-southeast, right.into.the.wind.all.bloody.day.

We crossed to the south side of the Missouri at Snake Creek Recreation Area, which is also where we had lunch. It was gorgeous:

Note the road going up the steep descent on the other side. Yep, that's our route. I did not ride it. Al did not ride it, because his Achilles tendons were giving him a bit of trouble and such a climb might not be a great idea. Matt and Phil did the climb, and they said it wasn't as bad as it looked.

We ended up in Bonesteel with Matt and Phil having ridden the entire route that day, 92 miles. Yikes! We celebrated by eating ice cream. Oh, the things you can do when you are biking your butt off every day that you can't normally do ...

My ride report for the day is that I turned left out of Chamberlain and proceeded immediately uphill. And uphill. And uphill some more. Having the first couple of miles of the day be a climb in a headwind is not fun. And it's demoralizing. But I am proud that however slowly I rode it, I didn't stop and I didn't walk the bike.

Once we got going, though, it was beautiful despite the headwind, and I got into my usual groove. My usual groove is a 16-18 miles/hour, 90-95 cadence pace. As is my wont, I went out like a jackrabbit. However, what I learned is that I can't do that for the duration of our rides on this trip. My usual rides are 30-40 miles, and that's what my riding is tuned for. So between my pace and the headwind and the intermittent climbs, I was DONE at 30 miles.

It was a fitting parallel to the Lewis & Clark expedition, which spent six months paddling upstream from St. Louis, MIssouri to the Mandan villages in what is now North Dakota. In my small, insignificant way compared to the enormity of their enterprise, I spent most of the day feeling like I was paddling upstream.

So here's a challenge I set for myself for the rest of the ride: I am a fast twitch girl (I've always been more of a sprinter in any sport I've ever done), and rides of 70-plus miles per day are slow twitch activities. I'm also used to riding a particular pace and a particular way for triathlon. So my challenge is to work on my slow twitch side, leave the triathlete at home, and slow down my pace.

5:30 AM: the alarm goes off after a mediocre night's sleep that was punctuated first by a passing train, and second by thunder and steady rain. We get dressed and eat breakfast (make your own waffles at the hotel, yum) while watching the weather radar. Sure enough, it didn't look like the storm was going to disappear any time soon, although the thunder and lightning looked like it would be short-lived.

So we set out, in a steady rain and facing a headwind of 20 miles per hour that was gusting to 35. Not the most pleasant cycling conditions! Matt had taken the first turn driving, and he met us at mile 10. I was only too happy to take my turn driving, so I could dry out and warm up! Slowly the rain lessened and disappeared, but the wind did not, and of course it was blowing from the direction we were headed-south-southeast.

The terrain and the scenery were beautiful, despite the rain and wind. Because of the rolling terrain we had more elevation changes (read: more climbs) than I anticipated. You look at them on the map and you think, "oh, that'll be fine, it's a small climb". But when there are several of them in a row, ... it made for more climbing than I anticipated. They are manageable, longish climbs, though, nothing too short and sharp. But my climbing legs got more of a workout that I thought! The terrain east of Pierre is very much what I expected this part of South Dakota to look like - rolling grass-covered hills, tress that are scrubbier than those further east, plains and wheat fields. After lunchtime the weather cleared up a bit:

We covered 85 miles, and I rode 42 miles. One thing that I'll have to adjust to in addition to the elevation changes, which should diminish over the course of the ride, is that because of the way we are shuttling the car, I don't anticipate riding more than 60 miles per day. We'll see.

Total calories 5881

About 75 miles

Today was the hardest 10 road miles that I've ever ridden. Sideways rain, rolling hills and 35 mph wind hitting us at 2:00 (right Shoulder). 2 miles into the ride my heart rate was 165. Looking right I saw the Missouri river covered with white caps. This was heavy weather. Earlier that morning we (Lynne, Matt, Al and I) decided that we would ride in any rain regardless how hard HOWEVER we would not ride in any lightning regardless of how little. Then came the hail.

Fortunately by about 10:00 the rain stopped, but the wind was there to torment us constantly. On flat roads we could only make about 10-12 mph.

Make no mistake about it, this beautiful country but there is so much poverty. We stopped at a gas station to have lunch but the place was unfit to order food so we ate Pb&j in the dirt parking lot.

Later that we did a good deal of climbing; some of those hills hurt but the thing that surprised me was that there are large cracks in the paving, and on the descents the pounding at 30 mph hurt my wrists and pushed my seat post down. In all my years riding a bike that was the most painful descent that I've done.

Later that evening we ate dinner at a local restaurant. Went back to the campsite and drank tequila and ate Swedish fish.........all in all a great day.  

Waking up at 5:30 this morning didn't give me warm fuzzies - Phil, my roomie, said that it was raining and when I looked out the window, I saw a big sky-to-ground lighting strike. We had assembled the bikes the night before, after getting to Pierre somewhat after 8 PM. Dinner in a good local watering hole was tasty and we split a bottle of Coppola cabernet to top it off. The bike assembly had gone smoothly, but the sky had looked a bit threatening.

We met in the lobby of the Days Inn and agreed that we'd "ride in rain, no matter how much, but not ride in thunder no matter how little" - quote from Phil. After an hour or so we set out in really miserable conditions with hard wind from the SE and rain that was just punishing and seemingly horizontal and stinging a good bit. When Matt met us at 10 mi out, he said that it had in fact been hailing. Just a great way to start 2 weeks of cycling . . . .

Lynne took over driving and we slogged onward. Since I'd managed to pack my windbreaker jacket instead of my waterproof, I was pretty wet inside and found that at the 2^nd stop I was chilling a bit so I kept moving. As the morning progressed, things settled down and by noon, while overcast, it was just windy, but still from the SE. We stopped for PB&J, bananas and some of Julie's dynamite chocolate chip cookies in the "village" - on a good day- of Stephan. Actually it was at the gas station on the route, since the village had nothing in it and was a mile or so off the route. On the way down to the village I came across some of what looked like Ipomea sp. - a low creeping vine that has pink or white & pink trumpet flowers about 1 cm max diam. I collected a specimen and took a couple of pictures.

The scenery of the morning was really great - the rolling hills with many sharp valleys [we really need to put a photo here]. Aside from the scenery the "charismatic megafauna" - quote from Lynne - event of the morning was Lynne and Matt sighting (and pointing out to me) a pronghorn antelope. Hoo Ha! In addition, while waiting for the group along the road in the Crow Creek Reservation, I spotted a nestling of a small prairie bird - in the highway pull off; I moved the Explorer across the street, came back and got a photo of the babe; it looks good.

By the time we got into Fort Thompson, my right Achilles tendon started to tighten up and my lower back as well. I decided to drive into Chamberlain from there. I stopped at the top of the first hill, picked up Lynne and we drove together into Chamberlain to find the American Creek campground. Because of the weather, we'd decided to try getting 2 cabins rather than tenting. We lucked out, and, considering how bad the mosquitoes were, we were happy to have done so. Showered, washed clothes and lubed the bikes.

We went to dinner at the Anchor Inn in downtown Chamberlain - an easy walk away. Pleasant wait staff and a nice meal. Back to the cabins and had a sip or two of tequila then to bed. Breakfast the next day was also at the Anchor Inn - again a nice experience. Overall, people have been excedinngly pleasant all along the route the whole time. What a treat.