Day 33
Avast me maties!  Thar goes the river.

I think just about everyone was pretty proud of themselves for their accomplishment yesterday.  After all that climbing, today's challenge was nothing...well almost nothing.  While it wasn't nearly as bad, today was a pretty strenuous day in itself.  As advertised, the first part of today's ride was similar to yesterday with many hills to negotiate and hills in Missouri are pretty steep in some areas.  The good part about today was there were some areas of flat roads between all the hills that it gave the riders a bit of a rest between strenuous efforts.  By the 50 mile point, the terrain mellowed out a bit and by the time they crossed the river, the last 25 miles became checker board flat.  It was perfect conditions to put the pedal down hard and cruise into town as the light winds felt like tailwinds after yesterday's all day headwind. 

Our first SAG was in Baring MO; a town that showed signs of prosperity in the past, but now is only a service station, a set of railroad tracks, a few houses, and a small cafe to service the residents.  We park right beside an old hotel that must have served the railroad some time ago...I didn't see much else that would support a hotel this size.  The cafe was a hit as the riders enjoyed a bathroom and cold drink to cool their pallet.   

Even though our route is a bit hilly through here (as seen at left), it is great to be out in the county away from the busy highways.  We are in Amish territory and we encountered several families riding down the road in their buggies and farming the old way (below right).  They represent a time much less complicated than we live in today...sometimes I long for those times when life was simpler...when you didn't have to worry about the price of gas...just whether or not your horse pooped in the middle of the road and wasted that good fertilizer on the pavement.

Baring was the only small town on our route until we arrived in Canton where we crossed the river on the ferry.  A couple of years ago a tornado came through a day or two ahead of us on the Fast Ride and completely destroyed several sections of the town.  You could still signs of the destruction as a couple houses were still boarded up, but it seemed they were on the road to recovery and rebuilding the devastated areas.

When I arrived at the SAG and ferry, there sat Steve in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt...what's up with that.  I discovered he had broken his wheel..."Wait a minute, you broke your wheel yesterday...the wheel you have today was our spare!"  "You mean you broke it too?"  That was the case...and it was our only spare wheel.  Linda was riding our other one because her cassette is bad and Scott is riding Barbara's wheel since he broke his yesterday too.  What's left?  I pulled my rear wheel off my bike and let Steve ride in on it...he had to change clothes again, but he was happy to do that.  I stopped at the bike shop before going to the motel and bought another spare rear wheel...these guys are breaking wheels so fast I can't keep enough of them around. 

After the second SAG, the riders loaded onto the Canton Ferry and crossed the mighty river...yep, the river up close and personal.  I think they enjoyed the change of pace.  My trip wasn't too much fun, when I loaded the van to cross, I was on board with two semis and another truck...all I could see the whole crossing was the rear of the semi in front of me...oh well, I've seen it before.  The final miles to Quincy were along the bottom of a ridge line through fertile farm land full of corn and soybeans.  It's beautiful and peaceful, but full of surprises none-the-less.  As I was driving along between a corn field and soybean field, a deer ran out of the corn and sprang across the road a mere 10 feet from my front bumper...most of the stuff in the rear of the van was instantly moved a few feet forward and I looked feverishly for the next one to run out before I could get stopped.  Luckily, there was only one and she lived to run in front of another vehicle.

The evening mechanic's time was full of replacing wheels, truing wheels, and changing tires.  Steve's wife drove from St Louis with wheels for him and Scott so we now have them on good wheels again.  Johnny's rim is cracking too so he stopped in town and bought a new wheel set to finish the ride, and Monica's rear wheel was wobbly too.  Hopefully, now that we are in tamer terrain, maybe we can take it easy on our equipment.  We'll see how it goes.

After a great dinner at a Chinese Buffet (that had lots of American food too), I settled in to do the site and watch the Tour on OLN.  From here on in, motels will be rated as to whether or not they have OLN.  Tonight, I'm in heaven.  Tomorrow we ride again on tamer terrain to Springfield.  It's a long day, but not nearly as strenuous as the past couple days in Missouri.  We'll see you when we get there.  M