Jul/090
Day 26 – Awakened by tramp-song
Woke up this morning to what sounded like a tramp complaining to his dog about the “mess some bikers have left here, clothes all over the place man”. With all our gear and our personal safety in mind, Callum jumped into action by telephoning Dowds, and the two of them sat in their tents asking each other what to do for a good few minutes. Callum later told me that his plan was “wait until Chris goes out and sorts it out”. Callum’s plan, as ever, went off without a hitch.
After putting on a t-shirt to avoid startling the poor fellow with my bizarre albino/african tan-lines, I went out and told him we’d checked in with the sheriff and apologised for the mess, but we’d be out of there soon. Turns out he wasn’t really that crazy, but he did mention in passing (during a conversation about gun-control) that he shot and killed a burglar when he was 15. He was a nice guy, but he did have a lot of stories, and I was desperately trying to get my stuff packed away while simultaneously keeping up a conversation about all of the following topics mixed together: border control, the benefits of a full-suspension bike and city park ordnances. Callum and Dowds, as useful as they were earlier in the morning, left me to talk with my new friend and pegged it off to a cafe for some WiFi.
Managed to get moving after a while, and headed down the road to the cafe I thought they would be at. I could tell it was the right one because I saw two bikes (Dowds’ and Blake’s) propped neatly against the side and one just thrown on the ground. Callum’s bladder strikes again. The cafe (Moose Cafe) was awesome – they gave all cyclists their first drink free, but because I didn’t want a drink she gave me a chocolate muffin for free. I ended up buying two more so I was still a Good Customer.
Most of the ride was pretty uneventful. Towards the end of the day we ran into some roadworks. They were resurfacing the road, and they do it slightly differently than in the UK. Instead of the works being done by a couple of blokes called Nigel and Dave who dig a 6-foot trench in the road, eat a Pukka-Pie and fill the hole back up again to a level about an inch below the rest of the road, the Americans do it differently and on a much larger scale. Huge trucks filled with gravel and tar; modified road sweepers to brush off the excess gravel; ‘pilot cars’ to guide people through; all resulting in…
7 miles of riding over loose gravel with rock dust clouds kicked up in our faces every time a car drove past.
Welcome to the USA – now get off your bikes and into a car you idiots.
It was actually pretty fun. I turned on my portable speaker and managed to find just enough decent, non-boyband music on Callum’s iPod to get us through it.
Arrived in Marshfield and Dowds promptly fell off his bike outside a gas station. My camera chose this moment to run out of batteries so I’ll have to leave you with a relevant photo of what happens when you decide to ride topless at midday in Missouri with cycling bib-shorts on.
Oh Dowds, you really are a Brit On Holiday. Captions welcome…
Our free city park campsite for the night was right across from the swimming pool so we had a quick dip, grabbed a bite to eat in town and hit the sack at around 9pm like the hard-core party animals we are.