Today I rode my bike over the Mississippi River, or as I've heard it called around here, the Miss'ippi River and into Quincy, IL. It has been a rough couple days getting here though. After cleaning off my bike in St. Louis, it was covered in limestone dust from the Katy trail after only 5 miles. My bike is finally starting to show the wear and tear from the trip and so am I. One of my panniers lost a screw and broke loose while I was riding yesterday, the pedals and bottom bracket sound sick, and the seat post is slipping. Pains for me are minimal, but I do have a bit of pain in the front of my right knee. I am going to blame this on the slipping seat post causing a poor riding posture, but lets hope it goes away soon. While adjusting and tightening the seat post this morning, I managed to break the bolt that hold it in place...AWESOME! I rode a few miles out of town to a hardware store with my seat spinning behind me. Once I finally rode over the river, I was completely relieved and all was well.
Missouri wasn't terrible, but it was not my favorite state. The last 30 miles that I rode in the state were easily the worst. The knee pain may have contributed, but the hills/bluffs along the Mississippi are terrible. I might even go as far as to say they were worse than parts of the Rockies. The Rockies have passes with 1000-3000ft. climbs...but they are over 5 to 30 miles Missouri did not have any concern for cars, bikes, or anything else that might find its way onto a hill, and as a result has some very steep grades. There were multiple climbs where my front wheel came off of the ground! This has been a painful stretch of road.
The only person/touring cyclist that I have seen in the past couple of days was a British guy. He is riding from Boston to Los Angeles and has been on the road for almost 2 months. I am not sure when he was planning to finish or how many miles he has done so far, but that seems like a long time to have only made it to the Mississippi. I suppose I have no room to speak though, as I have been on the road for over 2 months and still have 1700 miles to go, I finally calculated it. Tomorrow I will ride through Iowa and begin my ride along the Northern Tier trail, the final 1600 miles of the trip. I am excited because for the first time, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The next few weeks are going to be tougher with less sunlight, but it is starting to cool down which makes a BIG difference, especially at night. The past couple of nights I haven't been sweating in my sleep.
Leaving St. Louis, I had to stop at a Verizon and have them replace my phone. The charging port and the select button were both broken. As a result, I have to apologize to anyone who may have tried to call or text me in the past week or so. If you have not received a reply, it is because I didn't receive whatever you may have sent me. If you were expecting a call from me and haven't received one, it is because I no longer have any contacts in my phone...I love my Verizon Crackberry.
My 20 minutes at the public library are up, thanks for reading and thanks for the support! More to come as soon as I get into digital service.
-Marcus
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