Kiki Bikes Across America

Tuesday, June 16th: Carbondale, IL to St. Mary’s, MO

Woke up rather late this morning compared to normal – got up about 7:30 and slowly the guys started waking up. Last night Rachel met two more cyclists who ventured into the Long Branch cafe where she works. She offered to let them stay at her house as well and they showed up around midnight and then everyone was talking, hanging out, listening to music and such. I was pretty tired and just wanted to sleep especially knowing we’d be back on the bikes in the morning. Finally, sometime around 1:30 I fell asleep. I then woke up again around 3, I think and saw Rachel and Colin were still up out on the porch. I luckily fell back to sleep again. Woke up again probably sometime between 4-6am to see/hear the thunderstorm/lightening going on outside – looked like a pretty big thunderstorm. No one else woke up during the night to the storm…

But anyway, the two other cyclists were Michael and Colin, two music students who just graduated from JMU (one from undergrad, the other from graduate). Michael just finished his graduate degree and plays the piano and says he’s planning to stick around Harrisonburg for another year. Colin did his undergraduate in classical guitar, I believe. They’re biking to Oregon and seem to be enjoying their trip thus far and doing some detours and such when they feel like it.

Anyway, so a late start was had. George made us omelettes this morning which were good; I went to the co-op to go online and find a post office further down the route so Mom can mail my insurance card to me. So I found a post office in Pittsburg, Kansas where she’ll mail me my card. We’re aiming to be there no later than Sunday evening and I think we should be able to make it by then with a few good days of biking. We’ll probably take a half-rest day then and do laundry and such again, I imagine.

We rolled out from Rachel’s about 10:30 this morning and the clouds were rolling in and thunder was making its presence known. We were probably riding no more than 10 minutes before the rain set in and it rained the entire way to Murphysboro (about 6-7 miles from Carbondale). We rolled in and I stopped to put away my solar panel in one of my bags since it was useless at this point, so I was just going to use the battery from the panel. No more than a minute or two later and it started to really storm – really dark skies, torrential downpour of rain and loud thunder and lightening. We had taken cover under an overhang at a Citgo gas station and probably stayed there for 30 minutes or so. During this time I was beginning to feel the pain in my back again and it was very painful and uncomfortable. Any movement hurt – stretching and bending, etc. I went into the gas station and asked if there was a chiropractor in the town – the lady knew of one, so I went in search once the rain let up and the storm had passed. The guys went to the library while I went to a chiropractor and luckily was able to be seen within 30 minutes and on a walk-in basis. The doctor readjusted my back and did a small neck adjustment and I am already feeling better thank goodness. It looks like I’ll have to go to a chiropractor at least once a week to make it thru this trip without going insane with all the lower back pain. It’s really frustrating because I think it’d get better if I could go regularly two or three times a week and get the adjustments, but the major towns/cities are so far apart that I really don’t/won’t get the opportunity to even do that. Anyway, for now, I’m feeling much better and am going to continue the stretching and exercises I’ve learned from the past three chiropractors thus far.

I guess my new goal can be to see a chiropractor in every state along the course of route and just see how they are all different and what not. Each experience has been quite different. Today’s visit was more like the chiropractor visits I have had back home with Dr. Anna – just adjust and move on. I kinda want a deep tissue massage though – I think that’d definitely feel good on my back. Anyway, the chiropractor today said that most likely my pain is resulting from an imbalance of muscles and my hips are rotating in different directions and it’s causing some sort of pull in the back muscles, which causes the horrible pain.

Anyway, the day was a bit slow to begin – I left the chiropractor’s at 12:30 and went to meet the guys at the library. We then went to Diary Queen for lunch and then left Murphysboro at 1:30 (only 7.5 miles into the day’s mileage). We had to try and ride 55-60 miles after lunch. The day went pretty well, but for some reason right after lunch I felt really sleepy – my eyes kept wanting to close, but I had to stay awake while biking. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that felt sleepy – George did too. It was weird, but we stopped about 23 miles into the day at a gas station in Ava and got ice cream and refilled water bottles. We continued on biking and the roads were slightly rolling and had a few bends/turns to them. In the last town in Illinois before crossing the Mississippi River, Chester, we saw Popeye the Sailor Man’s statue. We stopped there and took a few photos as well as faked our “Welcome to Illionois” photos since we couldn’t get any when we entered Illinois the other day (we were driven across the border because the bridge was not good for cyclists to ride on).

I played around and took some video as we crossed the bridge to Missouri and then we stopped again for the mandatory “Welcome to…” signs that we reach at each state. We also had to get ice cream again. It was then where we stopped that we met another cyclist, Lawrence. He was biking from Manhattan, Kanasas to his hometown somewhere in Kentucky. He’s doing the transamerican trail in sections since he can’t get all the time off from work at once, so he does 2 weeks each year. At this point, we were 19 miles from Ozora, where we were planning to overnight (camp). We had a good pace going, about 17-18mph and were covering ground quite well. The roads were extremely straight and you could see for miles – it was weird. Also, the roads here are named using the alphabet, like “Hwy H” or “Hwy K” which I find a bit odd, but kind fo cool  since it’s different.

Into Missouri we go

We rolled into St. Mary’s (8 miles from Ozora) and decided to look for a place to camp here. There wasn’t much of anything here – one little bar/restaurant open and that was it. We went up to this church and were lucky enough to have talked to a member of the church across the street (asking if we could camp in his yard). He said he could do better than that and said we could sleep in a hall in the church, so he grabbed a key and unlocked it for us and is letting us stay here. It’s definitely nice to not have to worry about setting up the tent and just being able to stay dry and such. Once we got settled in, George and I walked down the bar/restaurant to order some burgers/fries to bring back to the church. Chris waited here since we didn’t have a key to get back in. We ate, cleaned up, and are now all about to hit the sack for the night.

The church in St. Mary where we got permission to sleep inside a hall

GPS Stats:
57.9 miles
04:50 moving time
11.9 avg speed
40.6 max speed

Computer Stats:
59.41 miles
04:50:03 moving time
12.2 avg speed
42.0 max speed

Snake count: 1 dead
Dog chases: 0, but saw the cutest yellow lab puppy tonight – the cutest!