Platte City, Missouri

 


Missouri has been much hillier than Nebraska and Kansas.  There have been lulls, but rarely for long.  They leave the legs more depleted than the headwinds, but they are not as dispiriting, as the descents allow some respite, and can almost be fun when they are tight enough for the rollercoaster effect. But it does take a lot out of the legs when riding vigorously trying to maintain my momentum from the descent all the way to the summit of the next hill.  The level of strain is definitely more extreme propelling upward than the relentless pushing into a wind.

The county roads can have steeper grades well beyond the more heavily trafficked main highways, which try not to go beyond five or six per cent to accommodate the 18-wheelers. The gravel roads are the steepest of the steep. Luckily I’ve only had a couple of gravel interludes and of less than five miles each.  They give a deeper sense of being away from it all, but it is always a joy and a relief to return to the smooth rolling of pavement.  With the threat of washboard or thick patch of loose gravel, I have to keep my speed well under control.  The down hills are wasted.  

I didn’t much mind several hours on a divided four lane highway, route 36, which turns into the Pony Express Highway after it crosses into Kansas, as it had a wide smooth shoulder and was moderately graded.  I still accumulated a goodly amount of vertical feet, as a two per cent grade could go for half a mile or more.  But it was just a barely perceptible strain on the legs, thanks to a modicum of assist from an easterly mixed in with the predominant wind from the south.  I could maintain a steady pace gliding upwards and feel as if I had diamonds in my legs, as racers say when they’re on a good day.

And the busier highway provided for good scavenging—two license plates, a pair of purple shoe laces and a pair of garden clippers.  The clippers will come in handy when I have to snip limbs to clear a path through brush for a place to camp and to further clear a space for my tent, especially when the growth is prickly and it is difficult to get a grip on something I’d like to break off.  They would have come in handy several times already, enough so that I ought to consider adding clippers to my kit.  

Shoe laces are always in my reserves, not for my shoes, but as string for securing something.  The purple laces were too colorful to resist.  They were in a pair of Nikes, which were luckily not my size, or else I would have been tempted to try to find space for them, which would not be easy after Gary in Edson added a sweater and down vest to my gear.  As it warms I may jettison the sweater despite its quality.  The vest packs up relatively small, so will be nice to keep.

A pair of Carnegies nearly one hundred miles from the last in Albany completed my brief incursion into the northwest corner of Missouri.  They were just twelve miles apart.  I passed through Chillicothe, which lays claim to being the birthplace for sliced bread, tracing its origins to July 7, 1928 when the Chillicothe Baking Company began selling pre-sliced bread, reputedly the first time sliced bread was available commercially anywhere in the world.  They used a machine invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Iowa.

It was twenty-eight miles east to Brookfield and its barely recognizable Carnegie, taken over by the VFW quite a few years ago.  I had to ask several people before receiving confirmation that it had indeed been the old library.  The only hints were the steps up to the door and some ornamentation by the steps.  The windows weren’t the usual larger than normal, nor was there anything on the facade indicating it had once been a library, as is usually the case. 

There was no mistaking the Carnegie in Marceline. Not only does it still serve as a library, but it was prominently branded with Carnegie on its facade.  It forwent the usual “Public” preceding “Library,” simply identifimg  itself as “Carnegie Library,” clearly and proudly understanding that was a mark of distinction.

My three hundred mile loop through the northwest corner of Missouri yielded the first Trump signs of these travels, a mere pair just a couple miles apart.  One was accompanied by a “Fuck Biden” flag and the other was part of an ornate display including a large metal elephant. 

Earlier I passed through a small town of less than one hundred residents where a Confederate  flag flew in the corner of someone’s property.  I took a rest against the closed down fire department across the road from the flag.  A neighbor evidently saw me snap a photo of it, as a couple minutes later a young woman came by in a car and stopped in front of me and said, “My mother wants to know why you’re taking pictures of her property.”

“I liked the small building,” I said.  “It’s rather quaint.”

“It used to be the tourist office,” she replied with a sense of pride and maybe relief.  

After this brief interruption I could resume listening to the highly entertaining and informative “Watts Occurring” podcast of the Ineos Welsh teammates Geraint Thomas, Tour de France winner, and Luke Rowe, team road captain.  These veteran, hardened pros give unvarnished insight into the peloton.  They scoffed at a rider who recently got in a scuffle in a race, saying it meant nothing as the racers are all friends off the bike.  Rowe commented he could think of only a handful of competitors he’d like to have a beer with, and he was sure the feeling was mutual.  

They have been mightily impressed with the strong early season of two-time Tour winner Pogačar, just about ready to concede July’s race to him, as he’ll be extra motivated after coming in second last year to Vingegaard. “Poor Vingegaard,” Rowe said.  “It looks like he’s just going to be a one-time winner of The Tour.  What a loser.”  That got a chuckle out of Thomas, as he’s a one-time winner himself.

Rowe is highly attentive to the fines levied against riders in races by the UCI, as he’s been fined for petty infractions, like holding on to a team car for too long in a race.  He pointed out that the UCI finished second to Jumbo Visma in money accumulated from fines at the recent week-long Tirreno-Adriatico race in Italy.

Rowe mentioned he watched the television coverage of a race he wasn’t at and noticed that Thomas was the only rider wearing arm warmers and wondered why.  He explained he was late in taking them off and when he was ready to shed them the action was too furious to risk the effort.  

Rowe complimented Thomas for being superb on the bike in just about every respect, but then added, “Your Achilles Heel is taking a piss while riding,” which necessitates Rowe pushing him along while he takes care of business for longer than he’d like.  Thomas said he’d been working on it and thought he’d improved.  

Theirs is as fine a cycling podcast as there is out there.  The journalist Daniel Friebe of the Cycling Podcast, the granddaddy of them all, from time to time mentions something he has picked up from their commentary.