andy reagan only the interesting stuff

Washington, Missouri

Today was great day of riding, it was super scorching hot but we were able to spend almost the whole day on a bike trail that was packed cinder (totally rideable!). I was expecting loose gravel from rumors the night before, but it was fine. I did, however, manage to take a wrong turn and to bike by lunch, adding a total of 16 miles to our 55 mile day! Our host at St. Peter's United Church here in Washington had showers on site (always a plus) and provided us with an excellent dinner tonight. We went and checked out the town which is cool, right on the Missouri River, and are going to bed early for a very long day tomorrow (96 miles!?).

The ride...how did I get lost?

I'm going to try to remember just how this happened haha, but it was just strange.  During the ride, I wasn't having too much fun riding really hard by myself and not being able to utilize the path to actually ride side by side, or check out the attractions but it all worked out!

So we rode on some bigger roads for the first 13 miles or so, and going down to the river to get on the trail, the path led to the left, but you could both ways.  I had went down it by myself, and Sarah W was behind me so I shouted back "left turn, right?!" but she heard "left turn!" so she said "yeah!" so I had thought that she looked at cue sheet and it said left.  I haven't had my cue sheet out yet, maybe I should work on that... I rode pretty fast to catch people, a little over 20mph across the gravel, but started to get worried after 3 miles and not seeing anyone at all.  So I stopped a couple, and they told me I was at the end of the trail! We were supposed to be on that trail for 35 miles, so I turned it around and caught Sarah on my way back and we headed back.  It was only a 6 mile detour, and the road was really nice so I didn't mind it.  The only problem was that the 20 minutes of riding had put us behind everyone.  I rode hard to try to catch someone, and passed the sweep riders after a few miles back in the right direction and kept on going.  I was riding really hard, at about 19mph solid on the flat cinder into a headwind.  But I just never caught up to anyone! After 42 miles of hard riding in the heat I was out of water (drank both 20oz bottles of gatorade and the 100oz camelbak) and ate both my clifbars and I was starving from riding so hard with still a lot of miles to go, so I called our van driver, and he said that lunch was at mile 30!  Which meant that with my previous detour, I was only about 5 miles from lunch...so around I turned.

Lunch wasn't shaded at all, so I poured on some PB and jelly to two pieces of bread (doubled up haha) and it was just sooo hot and I'd been riding hard by myself for so long that I was kinda miserable.  The only people left at lunch by the time I got back there were sweep, so I stuffed down some old pasta and headed out to try to catch up to another group.  My legs were pretty tired by that point and after eating my body didn't want to push...but eventually I actually caught up to some people!

Then I got to relax with everyone, I was sad that I had missed going to the winery or micro-brewery along the way (just to check it out, no one can drink since we're riding).  It was really nice, and my day turned onto a positive note for sure.  We talked about how so much confusion could have happened haha, the group I had caught up to had missed lunch entirely, and I'd ridden 17 miles furthur than them haha...it was just all mixed up because no one knew where anyone else was on the trail (couldn't chalk the gravel) and it was just strange how we got so messed up on a straight trail haha.

Pictures:

View from the trail. It ran along the river about half the time, and the other half farm fields. It was also mostly covered (trees on both sides creating like a tunnel of SHADE which was nice). This is one spot where you could see

The crushed cinder of the trail wasn't bad at all.

Coming into town, everyone stopped at Sonic. They gave us all free cherry limeade and ice cream, schaweeet!

I didn't get my clothes in the laundry last night, and didn't really want to because they insist on putting everything in the dryer! So I hand washed and hang dried my clothes tonight haha, it really only took like 10 minutes, I bought the string in Terre Haute just for this purpose, it worked perfect!

Downtown there were a bunch of small shops, a huge catholic church (four blocks with offices and school) and an enorrmous bank that made the rest of the town look small. It was outta place really. This picture is of the Catholic church.

They also had a permanent farmer's market which was nice, and covered

We were down there as the sun was setting, so I tried some of my photography skills out haha

The sunset on the Missouri was awesome!

St. Louis, Missouri!

Yesterday we biked into St. Louis, and it was a pretty awesome day.  I got close to 70 miles on the day, the first half into lunch was country roads and then as we approached the city it got busier.  Highlights included: seeing the arch, crossing into another state, and getting new sandals!

Today we built with Rebuilding Together of St. Louis, and it was great to be able to help out multiple people by improving the conditions that they live in.  Then we got to swim, play basketball, and play table tennis! And I got to talk to Lauren for a while which was good, hope she has fun on her road trip tomorrow.

Looking at the map, we're getting pretty far along!!

We spent the early part of the ride out of Greenville on route 140, which wasn't bad.  It was more cornfields, and there were parts where we could ride close enough to talk which makes the riding go by.  At 10 and 20 miles both we stopped to stretch which was nice, and I pulled lightly into a headwind for the majority of the ride.

Not too long after our second stretch break, my ankle hit my crank again on the right, and it hurt really bad.  It felt weird clipping it out, and sure enough the clip had actually slipped.  So Jesse stopped with me and we moved and re-tightened it and caught up to the others before getting to lunch, which was behind a McDonalds today haha.  The bad part about that was that there was no place for shade to escape the heat or to nap, but we really didn't have time for nap today anyway haha.

Coming into the city was sketchy for a lot of people, but I didn't mind the riding at all! It was kinda exciting, and our stay host here in the gym of UMSL is nice.  We've got table tennis, a pool, the basketball arena, showers and laundry...

Dinner for both nights was absolutely amazing, I'm really running out of words to describe how awesome the trip and the people and food along the way have been.  Christina and Sarah G's parents provided the dinners, and we got to experience some real St. Louis cookin.  Pork steaks the first night were bomb and tonight the spinach salad and just everything was spectacular.

Working today was great, I got to fix up walls and install flooring in the bathroom of a house with Jesse, and it was so hot up there that we couldn't find a dry spot anywhere on our clothes haha.  Not the heat really though, it was the humidity.  Coming back to swim and shower and play basketball and table tennis was great.  I'm ready for the next four days, including a 95 and 106 mile day on our way to Kansas City where we build for two days.  For pictures, I'm working on using flickr and here is the URL for that:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51163058@N08/sets/72157624262049394/

I didn't really do captions but in reverse order they show the Ohio River, the Arch and the view from that at night (and the ride up it), cool things from downtown that night and today they show some of the roof we put up under a porch.  Check out that board that I cut to fit in the angled space...it fit so tight that it held itself up, boom! And there is a picture of the neighborhood that we were doing the work in, it was rough but I'm glad to be helping where it's really needed.

Rumor is that they next two day, and 160 miles are on gravel...so not looking forward to that part, but at least now I'm expecting gravel trail so when I find pavement I'll be even happier! Better than the opposite haha, that's what I was just telling Jen.  Alyson, one of our fearless leaders, just confirmed the rumor, sorta haha so it should be interesting!

I'm working on getting a better photo system still, leave comments about how this flickr thing works! Here are the very best haha:

Thiiiiick gravel before the bridge

The Mississippi River!!

Get ready Missouri!

The Arch really was awesome

St. Louis by night, from the top of the Arch

The neighborhood we build in, I didn't take too many pictures to not be creepin haha

Greenville, IL

Today was a great day of riding, despite the monotony of the plains we had an awesome time dressing up, napping, and swimming! Since the terrain provided little entertainment, we had to provide our own, so we went crazy dressing up for the day with accents and the like. At lunch I took a very excellent nap, and we found a pool at the end of the ride that let us in for free! Here's a look at some of the get-ups.

Senor Sharif

Jen Hock lookin good

Laura

Will was the craziest haha

The whole shindig was Jesse's idea

Heather

Aileen

The goth couple lol

El Dia de Los Locos!!

On the way to lunch, I caught up with these guys and had fun pulling along, moving easily at 20mph was smooth sailin.

Yay riding buddies haha

Andy from Andy's Autobody got his pilot license, exciting!! And Mark's cafe is right next door haha

When taking the fields of corn picture, Emily had some trouble getting it up lol

Look at all the corn!!

At lunch I got an epicly awesome nap in, using the helmet pillow! I'll demonstrate the helmet pillow later sometime haha.  After that nap, a bunch of us cruised at like 22mph with a slight tailwind after after an hour of pulling, we caught up with Raleigh, Laura and Heather and they were determined to find a pool.  We found one, they let us in for free, and it felt great!

Yay swimming!!

Another exxxcellent dinner, which included sloppy joes was enojoyed by all.

After we went through haha

Feasting!

Then I shot some hoops in the gym (they have a really nice gym) and then we played outside for awhile!

Intense four square goin on here, Aileen the reigning champ had to resign because her feet starting hurting and she knew she'd overdo it haha

Since then I've played around on the internet, and finished today's and yesterday's posts! Hope you've enjoyed the pictures, we're all really excited to go to St. Louis tomorrow crossing the Mississippi into another state and meeting at least two rider's whole families!