A near perfect day...

I have so many photos from today it took me ten minutes to decide which to include and which to file away...obviously I opted to go with more than usual. We did have a great start from St. Joseph - the sun was up but it was cool and the terrain, again, was beautiful. The first photo is of Hank (who is our senior member - almost five years older than me) riding down a long easy descent that eventually turns to the left. This was probably about 7:45 or so...you can see the long shadow from the rising sun.

The highlight of the day came at about mile 30 when we rolled into the little farm town of Maysville. For the past dozen or so years the town historical society has made the arrival of the Crossroads bikes a kind of town holiday. The first thing we saw, maybe three blocks short of downtown, was all of the pre-k and kindergarten (and half a dozen 1st and 2nd graders) all lined up on the sidewalk in front of their school and as each rider rode in (singly or in groups - singly in my case) they started cheering and clapping. I really had no idea what to expect and when the cheering started it just brought an immediate smile to my face...the kids were so cute and enthusiastic. So we all kind of congregated there until the entire group had arrived and meanwhile the teachers lined the kids up and marched them down the street to the downtown area - the steps of the town hall actually. All of us riders then lined up two by two and rode into town where they had yellow tape blocking off a part of the side of the street for our little procession. And there, in front of the Historical Society was a table with home made cinnamon buns, fruit, peanut butter sandwiches, and lemonade and ice water - and, even more, some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. They all wanted to know where we were from, how we liked the ride, and, of course, how we liked Missouri and Maysville. We heard all about the town, visited the little museum of the Society - all neatly laid out and artifacts going back to the civil war - and, of course, thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality. Just an incredible experience. We took one final group shot of all of us with the school kids on the steps and very reluctantly got back on our bikes (do click on that picture...those kids were so darned cute).

Fortified with cinnamon buns (Mack, one of our support folks accused me of eating 8 of them but that is a false and slanderous rumor with no basis in fact) we waved our goodbys and shouted our thank-yous and headed on to Chillcothe - it would have been very easy to forget that we still had another 55 miles to go.

The route generally was rolling with an almost continuous up and down but the saving grace was a very nice tail wind and almost perfect cycling weather - the big puffy clouds that do so much to enhance the landscape and a warm but not too hot day. Again, we were passing farms and cattle operations, smaller than what we saw in Kansas but still pretty sizeable for the most part. The photo of the house was an abandoned farm that I saw along the road...I just like the scene of the old house atop the tree with the old dead trees kind of framing it. We had been climbing and descending for a long time but somewhere around mile 70 the hills starting getting really serious. We had long descents (I hit my high speed for the trip at 41`mph on one downhill) and equally long and much steeper climbs, i.e. climbs at 11, 12, and 13 % grade. You can get a bit of a slingshot effect on the downhills but it only lasts for a short time and your speed quickly drops back down to 9 and 7 and occasionally 6 mph. We had done somewhere over 70 miles for the day at this point but for some reason I felt more exhilerated than tired and I had a ball running up and down the hills. There are moments on some of the climbs where you finally get to the top and it's like a roller coaster when the car gets to the top and you know you are on the verge of thrilling descent...not quite so fast on a bike but you move over the crest and start shifting and down you go...fun stuff for sure. One of the last photos is again Hank on one of the earlier hills in this 10/12 mile stretch as he is heading down with the climb ahead.

And finally we went through the tiny little town of Lock Springs - population 69, a dozen or so houses and more boarded up business than live ones. But they did have this monument to a native son, a man who had apparently been a congressman who died at the young age of 39. I know nothing of his story but was so taken by the plaque "Happy are those who dream...." that I had to include the photo.

We rode through the thriving little town of Chillicothe and straight to the Dairy Queen - a root beer float at the end of a day like today is just about as good as it gets.

Tomorrow we have 75 miles to Kirksville and have been promised a lot more of the hills and climbing we had today...will find out if I still have any legs left - and I promise to let you know.