Photo: We cross the Missouri border. It's roller coaster time!
We spent our last night in Kansas, and now we’re entering Missouri, and the hilly Ozarks. The Ozarks made me very happy that I had decided to end my trip in Berea, KY rather than continuing on to Yorktown. After all, I have nothing to prove to anyone, and nearly 3,000 miles is a large enough taste of cross-country bicycling. Tom still plans to continue on and finish the trip. He’s a lot more determined than I am.
On the other hand, I’ve decided several things, first, my recumbent is rather sluggish going up hills. It has a much longer wheelbase than a traditional bike, so when uphill speeds get down around 4.5 MPH, it’s very difficult to keep upright. Several times during the trip, I lost concentration, and wound up crossing two lanes of traffic. There were no close calls, but it was a bit frightening. Furthermore, the recumbent is less efficient at delivering power to the pedals because the rider can’t get his weight over the pedals. Third, the Appalachian Mountains are much steeper than the higher Rockies. However, we were about to learn that the relatively short Ozark Mountains were very hilly, and very steep! In fact, I wore out a set of bicycle shoe lugs walking my bike up quite a few of them.
Today at about 4:15 a.m. a loud, windy storm woke us in our tents in our park shelter. I got up and struck my tent anticipating a horizontal rain storm which never came, so I slept on the picnic table until about 7:30 a.m. The wind and rain continued for a couple of hours, but no rain came. We ate a snack and headed out to Pittsburgh, KS., about 25 miles away where we at a nice breakfast at Harry’s café. A customer told us it was the best breakfast in town. We agree, it was GOOD, and inexpensive.
At 3:00 p.m., we ate lunch in Golden City, MO after corssing the MO border. This rest. is excellent! There were low prices, and a varied menu, including every type of homemade pie imaginable. I had beef brisket, breaded tomatoes and cottage cheese for $6.70, and then had pecan pie for desert, and then I noticed a rhubarb pie in the pie case. I haven’t had rhubarb pie since dad died in 1967, so I had to have a piece. It was so delicious, and brought back memories to the point that it brought tears to my eyes! Food has never before caused both tear ducts and saliva glands to function simultaneously! It appeared that, except for the restaurant, the town is very nearly a ghost town.
We stopped at a 1950’s era motel in Greenood, MO with 2 beds and a concrete block room with DTV for $34 cash.
Today’s miles: 66.5, total miles 2407, total pedaling time 5 hours and 58minutes.
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