Day 17
Yawn...time to get back on the road

Although everyone was happy to get a day off, it's always hard to get back against the grindstone.  I think everyone enjoyed some time to get their bikes cleaned and to do some sightseeing.  Several riders rented a car or caught rides to shopping malls.  A former rider, Jeff Unruh, came by and shuttled folks around town and rode out to the first SAG with us today...thanks Jeff.  Some took bike rides around town and others rode their bikes to bike shops or found some bike paths that took them around the city.  We had a couple of bike issues to take care of at a local bike shop along with shipping John's bike to him (he left the ride in Gallup).  We use Capps when we are in town and they really took care of us again this year.

The staff kept pretty busy getting the trucks washed and serviced, getting the shopping done, and of course the always important laundry run.  We are as busy as a usual ride day, but the focus is not on the riders...it's our only chance on this ride to get a little ahead and get our own chores done.  We also had to check out a detour on departure and pick up all the bike work at the bike shop...and we even had time to take in a movie.  A full day indeed.

But today, it's back to the grind!  After breakfast, we loaded and set out for our second half of the ride.  Everyone seemed to be ready to get on the road for the rest of the adventure, but it seemed to be chaos around the luggage truck.  I just gave everyone a day off and they forgot everything...where's this, where's that, I forgot this, or where's my route sheet...worse yet, where's my bike?  It didn't take long for the realization to set in that we weren't getting any closer to Amesbury standing around so they finally got to rolling.

We got an early start to beat the traffic out of Topeka.  We ride right into downtown and pick up highway 24 to highway 4.  The final miles out of Kansas are pretty tame with several long rollers to break the monotony.  In Atchison we leave Kansas and enter Missouri over the Emelia Earhart Memorial Bridge over the Missouri River.  When we crossed the bridge, it was under construction but I don't think anyone noticed...everyone was looking at the flooded river banks.  The water was higher than I'd ever seen it and I hope we can cross the Mississippi when we get there.

About 1 mile after crossing the bridge, we were welcomed by a Missouri state sign and of course we had to take the obligatory state line photo.  After the photo we rode about 3 miles on rather tame Missouri flood plain before we got into the real Missouri hill country.  We take county road HH through some beautiful rolling farm country to a little town of DeKalb (population 225) where we have our lunch SAG at the town square.  We never have facilities there but today a nice lady, Lula Belle Mathews a resident of DeKalb, opened the community center for us to use the bathroom.  We also set up the SAG under the overhang of the center to protect us if it happened to rain.  Thanks for your wonderful hospitality...we'll call again.

The final assault on St Joe is rolling farmland with mostly corn that's only about 6 inches high this time of year...at least in the fields they had planted.  The rest of the fields were still waiting to be tilled...and they will wait awhile after all this rain.  When the challenge ride comes through here in July, the scenery will be entirely different as the corn will be over 6 feet tall by then and hopefully dryer.

Jeff and I rode out of town after everyone else had left but we caught Kasper and his group fixing his tire boo boo (see below) along the side of the road and they joined us riding out of town.  By the time we got to K-4 we had a 10 man pace line cooking across the Kansas farmland.  It was fun churning the miles out with the group, but by the time we got to the first SAG, I told everyone they should slow down a bit in light of tomorrow's ride to Kirksville.  Today should be a good day to spin the legs to get them back after the day off, but they should not push too hard for tomorrow will be a taxing day.  I think most took my advice and had a great ride to St Joe.  It must have been an easy day; everyone got in by 1:30. 

After I got in, I thought I'd drive out the first few miles of tomorrow's ride to see if the most direct route, Hwy 36, had an improved shoulder.  We've been waiting for about 5 years for that improvement but Missouri hasn't bothered to fix it yet.  Good thing Barb and I drove out though as we found our departure route about 2 feet underwater.  With that info, we spent a couple hours rerouting tomorrow's route around the water.  We talked to a couple residents and they said they hadn't seen the water this high since '93...supposedly the worst flood ever.  I called the Highway Patrol to see if our route was underwater anywhere else and they informed me the road should be OK.  It's a tough 145 day already.  If we have to divert them any place it will only add miles...and hills too.  Well, that's tomorrow.  Tonight we sleep and rest for another adventure tomorrow...tune in and see how we scoff at 145 miles...not to mention the hills.