It’s not easy to define when a trip starts. When we first think of it? When we start Googling it? When our first piece of equipment lands on our doorstep and we go back to Amazon to find out how to return it? When we do our first training ride and realize we should have started a year ago because we’re not as young as we used to be?
Whatever, we got to the trailhead of Missouri’s Katy Trail about noon on Sunday.
Definition of “trailhead:” Noun. Singular. Place where with shocking clarity you suddenly see all the things you didn’t need to bring, and think of all the things you should have, but too late.
Nothing brings that sort of clarity like the trailhead, where you load the bikes. And load the bikes. And load the bikes until you begin to wonder if there are really bikes under there and where will you sit?
Undaunted, or at least minimally daunted, we set off in the wrong direction to make sure we were starting at the very beginning of the trail. If there’s one thing you seriously want to avoid on an adventure like this, it’s spending the rest of your life bragging that you did the whole trail when you have a niggling feeling that you actually didn’t.
Clearly we were at the beginning, so we turned around and rejoiced in the fact that our bikes didn’t fall over in the process. It would have taken two of us to pick them back up.
The trail is beautiful, often under trees arched like a grand entrance to a medieval castle. The surface is fine gravel, compacted to a concrete-like hardness. Not to get ahead of myself, but later in the day we met a lady who is deeply engaged with the trail and she told us the bed of the trail was required to be hard enough that train tracks could once again be laid on it in case the need ever arose. Like… I don’t know… we start doing cattle drives to railroad stations again. Or maybe if the interstate highways all get gridlocked.
We started off with a short 16-mile day. A sort of shakedown cruise. Nora said we were going slightly uphill the whole way. I said it was an illusion. So I checked. In 16 miles we climbed a rather unimpressive 466 feet. That’s 29 feet per mile, or about two floors of a hotel building. That’s hardly enough to keep water flowing, but Nora was right and I was wrong and she should hire herself out as a level.
We arrived in Windsor about the right time for a very late lunch at the only restaurant that was open, El Jalisco. In rural Missouri, about as rural as you can get, a restaurant serving Mexican food. How lucky can you get?
I won’t describe the food nor attach photos of it. It was delish without being artistic. For a time we were interrupted by a gentleman sitting by himself a few tables away. Clearly he wanted to talk, so every time he heard us say something, he joined in. Big mustache. Baseball cap from some branch of the service. Local.
We tossed fragmented sentences back and forth until he got up, wished us well on our trip, and left. When we’d finished and asked for the bill, the waitress said, “That man took care of it.” Wait. Whaaat?
Then we met a pair of ladies who were just finishing their lunch. One owned cabins in town, the other is riding from Kansas to Indianapolis. Lovely, friendly people. The cabin lady is heavily involved in developing more trails around Missouri and is the one who told us that the trail had to be ready for new tracks on a moment’s notice. The Indianapolis lady says she’s doing these things because she doesn’t have grandkids yet.
Checking in at The Broken Spoke, we unloaded our gear, which sort of exploded all over the rooms, freshened up, then decided that since it was Father’s Day (although really any excuse would have done) we should walk to Dairy Queen.
Funny thing: As we arrived, we saw a car with bold lettering across the hood that said, and I took a picture to prove it, “Fuel your body with the best nutrition!”
It was an ancient DQ, established in 1951, the same year I was born. There was no interior space for customers; you just stood in line outside waiting for your turn at the counter. Clearly it was the hottest ticket in town and there was a line, so I asked in a loud voice, “Who owns the car that says “Fuel your body with the best nutrition?”
“We do,” answered a classy-looking couple who were last in line. We laughed and she immediately pulled out a business card advertising some product that she said includes 34 vitamins and we need all of them and some of them aren’t produced by the body because a million years of evolution forgot about those and we should seriously consider buying her product.
I told her we’d take a look, but first I’d have to get past the fact that we met them at Dairy Queen. I guess the human body doesn’t produce soft serve ice cream either.
Back home there was a brief interlude where I took apart the bathroom sink drain and cleaned out a huge glob of hair so it would actually drain. It made me wonder if most cyclists are bald after their stay here.
We settled on the front porch to sketch and read and enjoy the quiet of a Missouri countryside. Ahhhh.