Nebraska: Part 2 (and still more miles to go)

Beatrice - Hastings: 108 miles
I left Beatrice at 5:30AM, a half-hour before sunrise. The first several miles had no wind and the sun rose in a clear sky, clear on its side. The west was increasingly dark with lightning and the wind, after its sudden arrival, increasingly strong.

I could hardly pedal and at one point dismounted. I reached a farm and approached the house just as a woman peeked through the drawn curtains to check the weather. We exchanged waves and when she opened the door I asked if I could stay in their shed until the storm blew over. She said the shop would be better and opened it for me: clean, well lit, and chairs. The shop was large enough to hold shelves of tools and supplies, a work-bench, a weeder, an ATV, and a pick-up and still be only about half full. A while later, her husband, who had been doing chores and did not know I was there, came in to turn off the lights, thinking they had been left on accidentally. I stood and began to explain how I got there. At first seeing me, he glanced down at my hand, back up to meet my eyes, then, back at what I was holding in my hand: ah, just a book, just a book. He smiled, gave his name, shook my hand, then excused himself for having to keep moving, needing to take pigs to a stockyard: "If you're a corporation, you can bring your pigs any time you want; but the small farmer has to be sure to get his in when he can."
    I wondered about my luxury of time and continued to read. About three hours later, I continued on though the wind was still strong. One gust knocked me off the bike. Within an hour, the sky was completely blue though the wind continued throughout the day. When I was going north, it would push me along several mph faster than my usual rate but heading west I would lean slightly into the wind to keep balanced.
    I got into Hastings, a town of around 24,000, around sunset. The campground I found had no trees for a hammock and more storms were possible so I stayed in the $35/night Rainbow Motel.

Hastings - Elm Creek: 65 miles
I rode on dirt roads for the first time in this trip, taking county roads V, 38, W, 34, V again, and 30. One of these took me through Lewiston (I think that was the name), now composed of  a couple houses at an intersection of dirt roads. For a few years in the later part of the 1800's, it was a rail terminus where cattle from Texas were brought: "It was a town of 30 saloons and 15 hotels," before the railway was extended a person from the area told me. He also advised me of a side-road I could take to see a restored house from that era.  The dirt roads, like all the paved ones in Nebraska up to this point, are between corn fields.
     I had thought of staying at Kearney (Kar-knee) State Park but read my stopwatch that had been running for a while rather than the regular setting so thought I had more time than I did, position of the sun irrelevant at that point (heatstroke danger signal?). I ended up sleeping in the bush near some back-water of the Platte. Mosquitos swarmed as I set up camp, making me all the more appreciative of the hammock's netting.

Elm Creek - North Platte: 81 miles
I stopped for breakfast in Lexington, about 20 miles from the camping spot, then went to the library to check email and post some progress reports on the blog. When I came out, I saw two guys inspecting my bike. They were especially interested in--impressed by, actually (making my day)--how I'd rigged two knapsacks together to make saddle bags that sit over the waterproof bag with clothes and bedding, as an alternative to spending a couple hundred bucks to realize the same functions. They had just graduated from college and are on their way from Minnesota to Arizona, where one of them will do volunteer work "in the desert". Real nice kids and we enjoyed sharing our biking experiences.
    After they had gone in to the library and I was repacking my water bottles, filled from the library's water fountain, I heard two guys speaking in Swahili and ended up talking with one of them for some time.
     There was no head wind and the roads were, surprise surprise, mostly flat so I had easy riding to North Platte. I had about ten miles all to myself since that section had been closed to automobiles due to a low-lying bridge having been damaged by the flooding.
     The sky was storm dark as I approached North Platte so I decided to stay at a cheap motel. The first one I went to had a No Vacancy sign but I parked the bike and started for the office to see where I might find a similar motel. Before I got to it, the owner, reminding me of my Korean aunt, came from a nearby group of people around a couple tables and said "Have some fruit." I stood and watched her fill a plate with a salad of fresh strawberries, blueberries and melons and bring it to me. She motioned to a seat and was off as I thanked her. Before I finished the salad, she brought me a dish of baked beans, potato salad, and a big, thick, juicy, barbecued steak. No explanation. But an older lady sitting across from me explained that this was Nebraska Land Day and the motel was providing a meal for its residents--and anyone else lucky enough to come by just before things were put away.
    I made it to another motel as wind swung signs and blew papers and branches across the streets and a few minutes before the rain came.
    I found out that the "Buffalo Bill Ranch" campground where I had planned to stay was under water.

North Platte - Big Springs: 62 miles
Corn in the flats giving way to cattle in the hills.
Another evening thunder storm. I had a great tail wind for several miles and thought it might be pushing the storm clouds away. But then the wind shifted and the lightning neared.
    I stopped at a house that had an abandoned one in front of it and asked the owners if I could wait out the storm in the abandoned house or in their tractor shed. No, it was better to wait it out in their shop, they said: a shop much like the one I had taken shelter in the day before.
    Cameron, his wife and two young boys had moved into this house a couple years ago. It is located between the ranch that he is taking over from his grandfather and parents and the school where he teaches VocEd. He had thought of doing ranching only, but after a bad year thought he better use his college degree and have a supplemental source of income. His approach to ranching--and the system within which his small ranch ("only 2000 acres") operates is very much in keeping with Michael Pollan's excellent New York Times article "Power Steer" (March 31, 2002). During his college days in Wyoming, he worked with cattle in an area near "The Hole in the Wall" where Butch Cassidy et al. took refuge. One elder from the area remembered stories from her grandparents about the gang, about, for example, realizing that some of their horses had been taken but then having them show up later, sweating from hard riding but otherwise fine. No questions, no problems.
     While we were talking, as the worst of one storm passed over, the wife came in to say that another storm was coming so I shouldn't try to continue on. Hail to the north, tornado warnings to the south. I spent the night in their shop, two barn kittens napping on my stomach.

Big Springs - Sydney: 62 miles
Only sixty miles but this was the most exhausting day of my trip so far: 20-30 mph sidewinds from the north the whole way. When I stood to pump the pedals, I sensed the wheels of the bike might wrap around my left leg. The wind, combined with a flat and a spare tube that had a hole in it early in the day and with rain as I neared Sydney, also blew away wispy thoughts of camping out tonight. Thank-goodness for budget motels. Today's "is not a junky motel", the clerk assures me. Neither is it a target for petty thieves, I hope, since the plywood door's latch can be made immobile by a turn of the key but is not long enough for that to make any difference to one wanting to gain entry.

Nebraska: Part 1

KS-Nebraska border to Beatrice: 57 miles
The first town past my entry into Nebraska was Pawnee City, population 1033. A Sousa march (couldn’t remember its name) played on a loudspeaker from a bank on the edge of the town square. Offices and small stores lined both sides of the roads forming the square. As I slowly biked around the west side of the square, looking for the “Tourist Info” place referred to by an earlier sign, I was greeted by a man who asked where I was heading. After talking a bit, Vic treated me to a cup of coffee at the VFW hall on the square’s north side. The manager, who added “Of course, of course” when Vic introduced him as Mr. Ed (get the allusion, kids?), brought us complimentary pan cake.

Vic was brought up in Ogallala, which, he informed me, was featured in Lonesome Dove, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1985, and would merit time spent when I pass through. Vic moved to Pawnee City after getting his law degree and has practiced law there for about forty years. Vic enjoys biking and participated in most of the Tour de Nebraska rides of about 500 miles since its inception in the 1986. He noted that my gear was quite “compact” compared to what he would use on the Tour rides—the organizers providing transport of the overnight gear.

After coffee, I cycled around the fourth side of the square back to the first side to get to his office where we exchanged contact info and I got the road map from the info center, just across the street. Vic's friendliness was a great way to start through this state which I knew hardly anything about.

Since it would be more than 40 miles to Beatrice, with no commercial centers in between—apart from two gambling casinos, I stopped at a service center on the outside of town to get pizza and donuts and to have two water bottles topped off. While eating at the store’s shaded side, I looked over the ’65 Thunderbird at the pump. When the driver was about to take off, I called out something original like “Nice car!” “Thanks,” he replied, “Do you want the tour?” Sure. He parked it away from the pumps. “Before the tour, you’ve got to see this,” he said pulling out a scrap-book. It had pictures documenting its restoration, from the junkyard to now.

For eight years, whenever they would pass the junkyard, his wife would asked him to take on this project. Her brother had had a black one of the same model and year before he went to Viet Nam, from where “he never came back.” A metaphor of regeneration befitting this Lutheran pastor; perhaps also a not-so-Lutheran prayer for the dead.

After the tour of the car—its low-slung wide-swinging door on “the lady’s side”, the massive engine which can consume a gallon in eleven miles, the line-spreading rather than needle-pointing speedometer, the bucket seats, the spacious trunk—our talk turned to his passion for studying the Greek New Testament. I checked my impulse to question his claim that one can’t truly understand the Scriptures unless they can read them in the original; I’ve known too many whose claims to understand the original are to support their particular understanding of religion—quite different from the next to make the same claim. But I agreed that working with the biblical languages was a wonder-full experience that can point to dimensions of a text that we might not have explored or appreciated if we just read translations. (Of course, our reading of “the original” is a reading of copies of hypothetical originals and interpreted via two thousand years worth of analytical tools, commentaries, histories, and theological and cultural traditions.)

Speaking of exegesis. Before this trip, I could define and grammatically analyze “wind swept plains,” and explain the variants “wind-swept…” and “windswept”, using the expression in appropriate contexts. But I’m thinking that only in the last couple days have I started to understand what this expression refers to—especially when a headwind is involved.

Beatrice (“Be-at-triss”, stress on the second syllable): Rest Day
Before the trip, mom gave me her copy of “Mennonite Your Way”, a directory of Mennonites and others willing to host travelers. The directory suggests a donation of $10 a night, plus a little extra if you use the laundry and have breakfast. Ms. Letha accepted to have me stay in her house for two nights.

Letha’s and her husband’s parents were immigrants from Germany and she has lived here her whole life. “The world doesn’t end in Indiana,” she says. She lives in a big white house on the town’s main street, the furniture, carpeting, and homey feel reminding me of our Houghton home. Her husband’s parents lived here along with his aunt. After they passed, the aunt kept boarders upstairs. Then the house became Letha’s husbands. He renovated it—making a full cellar, taking out the false wall in the entrance way, painting, etc. in 1986, the family moved in. He died three years later. Since then she has been practicing hospitality, especially for international students, most recently one woman from Zimbabwe and another from Nigeria finishing up nursing programs in the local community college.

My first night here, she invited me to accompany here to a picnic for families of those in a “Mother to Mother” program that provides mentoring for mothers with various challenges. I sat with a state senator who told of a biker coming to their front door and asking if he could stay on their porch. “We decided he might as well stay inside.” Hmm. He said he almost lost the last election due to his stand against capital punishment especially since “it discriminates against the poor “.

For breakfast, Letha served semmels, a little heavier than dinner rolls and slightly crisped, with various toppings including her own mix of Velveeta cheese, Limburger cheese, and carroway seed. For supper, we went to a benefit supper for Habitat for Humanity.

In between, I wrote, read, talked with family, and repacked my bags with laundered clothes and a replenished supply of granola bars, oranges, and Gatorade powder.

I leave all the more grateful for people like Letha, hoping to grow in their spirit of kindness and courage.

Kansas Expanses (Expands Us?)

Atchison – a couple miles from the Nebraska border via Seneca: 85 miles

I biked around Atchison for a bit, before leaving it. The bridge over the Missouri River to Atchison is named after Amelia Earhart, whose birthplace is here. It is the home of Benedictine College, “one of the top ten private colleges in the US,” the young woman at the Visitors’ Center told me, though a banner on its campus more modestly quoted US News’ rating as “One of American’s top colleges”. The light-colored brick buildings of the campus, like those throughout town fronted by large shade trees provide a sense of stability, serenity; perhaps the prayers of the abbey’s monks contribute to this sense as well. I considered seeing if I could stay in the abbey a couple of days but decided to continue on in my mobile hermitage.

After the hills of Missouri, the gradual slopes of Kansas were a welcome change, especially when the tailwind from the northeast pushed me along. For one stretch of seven minutes, I did not pedal once: the tailwind combining with the momentum of a long decline to push me over the next rise to the next decline.

I had planned to look for a camp site as soon as I passed the KS-NE border but a couple miles before it, I saw a barn thirty yards off the road with no house in sight. The drive into it was overrun with tall grass. The branch lying across the entrance-way seemed to say “No cars should enter here but bikers are welcome as long as they leave the place like they found it.” The barn’s center was long enough for a tractor and baler from the era when family-owned and run farms were the norm. On each side were small stalls and lofts still holding some hay baled long ago. The roof was still good and the beams along the central area still solid, allowing me to sling my hammock between them on the south end away from the wind.

In the near-sitting position that the hammock allows, flashlight resting on shoulder, I was reading Chang Rae Lee’s The Surrendered when I got a text: “Hey Tim! How’s Kansas? How’re your legs? Bill Rochester would be proud of you.” No name, but the reference to our high school coach who in a Phys Ed session on wrestling slammed me to the mat because I couldn’t remember the names of takedowns, indicated it was from my good friend Kent. He hadn’t known about my trip until calling the house and talking with Christine. It was the first time for us to communicate by text. The soundless exchange hallowed words of friendship in this sanctuary and allowed me to hear, as I read one of his texts, a deer snort its alarm as it passed through the weeds near the south entrance.


Modesty Pays. In Kansas, and later in Nebraska I would find, one often does not have a good hiding place just to the side of the road to do what should be done in hiding. Cousin Roger tells me that his bike mate was in such a situation, desparate, so decided to just do what had to be done at the side of the road when no cars were coming. Well, we don't always know how long a task may take and a car did come. A sheriff's car. The bike mate got a ride into town in the sheriff's car where he was fined $100 for indecent exposure.  Remembering this, I followed a dirt path that wound around behind a large stand of bushes. While emptying my vessel, I looked around and--dang!--those are blackberries in those bushes-nearly-trees! (You can make them out in the picture if you look closely enough.) I feasted on them until my fingers were stained a deep purple that would remain the rest of the day. So, children, be modest, keep secret what should be kept secret, and you will be rewarded with fine things.

Missouri: Muzuri!

Missouri most certainly can be described by the Swahili word muzuri meaning "Good, nice, pretty."

Cape Girardeau to past Ironton: 82 miles
I arrived at the bike shop CycleWerx at 7:30AM to see when it would open: 9:00. But the door was open. I called and a guy came from the work area in back. I asked him when he might be able to get to my bike. He replied that he could do it now. And he did. I greatly enjoyed talking with him as he worked on the bike, taking the time to explain what he was doing. I had called ahead to ask that they replace the rear cassette (unit of 7 gears) and chain. He did this and more at a very fair price: actually, I suspect he charged me less than he could have. He did a great job and I was able to continue on my way by 9:30 a.m--the bike not just purring, but gliding.

Around noon, a woman in an economy car stopped to ask if I wanted a ride to the next town, some 15 miles down the road. She was delighted to hear about my reason for declining the offer and said how she would love to go on such a trip some day.

A guy in a pick-up truck stopped to say he was headed to Jefferson City and would be glad to carry me.

My break from the heat of the day was in Fredericktown, a town of a couple thousand people. What a delightful rest! Everyone I talked with was friendly, smiling, welcoming: the woman coming out of the drug store who directed me to the ice cream shop and library, the middle-aged women at the ice cream shop who said they thought Robin Williams was getting off his bike, the librarians, the man on my way out of town who said he didn’t know the area real well but enough to point me in the direction I wanted to take and, chuckling, that he did know it well enough to say “Ironton” rather than “Irontown” as I had pronounced it.

The head librarian was himself a cyclist and gleamed when I told him about my trip. I think he would have given me the keys to the library if I had asked; he did assure that I have access to a computer for as long as I wanted and let me fill my bottles with the water from the cooler. An assistant librarian told me that about thirty years ago a nineteen-year-old girl biking through with a group went to her husband’s garage to get help in repairing her tire. The girl ended up tenting in their back yard and thus started a friendship that has become a close one to this day.

I had arrived in Fredericktwon hot and tired. I left refreshed and encouraged. It reminded me of how my spirits have been lifted, thus giving my body new strength, when members of my family cheer for me in the late miles of a marathon.

That evening, the woods were pretty thick with underbrush but, after sunset, I found a dirt track into a thinned out area where water pipes were being laid: perhaps an abandoned project but a fair enough place to sling a hammock.


Ironton – Vichy: 85 miles
Camped in a nice clearing in a state nature conservation area.

MO=More Ondulation, using the French spelling of the second word in honor of the French heritage indicated by the names of towns I passed through or near: Girardeau, Vichy, Versailles (pronounced ‘vr-sails’), La Monte, Platte City.

Vichy – Lake of the Ozarks State Park: 44 miles
Distance-wise, a short day, though much up and down on country roads. I swam in the lake, laundered clothes, and talked with the camp store’s clerk (there weren’t many customers). He was born and brought up on a nearby farm, which he inherited and still lives on. His main income was working as a mechanic in a nearby military base. He loves the area: the changing seasons (he went over the different colors of the hickory, maple, oak, cedar, etc.), the rural life, hunting and fishing. He advised me away from the "W" route I was planning to take the next day and suggested an alternative. I would take his advice and be glad for it.

I got up three or four times during the night to shoo raccoons away from bags.

Lake of the Ozarks State Park – Knob Noster State Park: 88 miles
I left around sunrise breathing a prayer in the fresh air, “Lord help me to have good thoughts today.” Within a minute or two of that prayer, Ruka called to wish me a good morning and express her love: good thoughts.

That night, a young family invited me to share their camp meal with them, the father being a biking enthusiast. Kindness, hospitality and a prayer before the meal concerning “good and gracious gifts”: good thoughts.

Knob Noster State Park – Smithville: 100 miles
My bed was over a bed: I slung my hammock over a bit of clearing where deer had been bedding down. My entrance to this was via their trail through the peripheral thickets.

Smithville – Atchison, KS: 43 miles
Low mileage but very hilly and I passed by the one place where I could have had breakfast. I arrived quite tired and hungry. I was ready for a long day of rest and stayed in a motel that the women at the Visitors Center would not recommend but was actually quite decent. I showered, stuffed myself at the buffet of the Pizza Hut next door, called Ruka, napped deeply, called mom, watched Dallas thump Miami to win the NBA championship, and slept again, very well.

The river is rising. The state parkground where I had thought of staying is under water.
   

Missouri River

 



Kentucky-Illinois: Pretty Lucky Ol’ Boy

Lucky, fortunate, thankful to be able to make this trip and to have it be going so well. “Ol’ boy”: boyish joy of the bike—especially the roller coaster hills where descents provide enough momentum to fling you over the next rise—and seeing such beautiful country as I’ve been able to pass through. Olding bones.

Paris Landing State Park – Cape Girardeau, MO: 114 miles, if you don’t miss the turn into Cape Girardeau, a few more if you do.

Most of my biking was through KY and IL but \started around 4AM in TN and ended after sunset in MO. This will be the only part of my journey in which I ride through four states.

Cairo (pronounced “Kay-ro”, I learned), IL is a ghost-town in the making. How eerie to ride through this town of abandoned, crumbling buildings and houses with torn screens and broken windows. You can barely make out “Welcome to Cairo” on a four-story sign of cracking and peeling paint on the southern side: a worn-out welcome I guess. I would find out about the widespread disgust that so much land and so many homes and businesses along the Mississippi were allowed to be flooded rather than to provide euthanasia for this decaying and, so I heard, decadent town.

Just before the long, narrow bridge over the Ohio River into Cairo, a guy in a pick-up stopped to offer carrying my bike and me over the bridge. As I pedaled over, I thought of cousin Roger’s story of laboring over a bridge like this and holding up traffic. On the other side, a guy in a pick-up blasted his horn at him, called him a few names, then did a u-turn and headed right toward Roger, sending him crashing into the ditch. Fortunately, I passed at a time when there was not much traffic and none to pressure or curse me.

I had my lunch in Cairo’s empty park, then continued on, but the 100 heat was too much, so, out of town a couple miles, I walked my bike through bushes between the road and an abandoned house and took a nap on the shaded cement slab serving as its porch. I noticed inside framed pictures strewn on the floor: three generations. The place reminded me of Pilate’s home in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.

Near sunset, I met a father-and-son pair of bikers going in the opposite direction—but, like me, planning to stay that night in Cape Girardeau. I had missed the turn-off a few miles back: the sign for Cape Girardeau must have been taken down by the flood.

I stayed in a campground near the bike shop I had found on the web when in Murfreesboro and would go to the next day. One review of the campground was “Great place: no trees to scratch your RV.” And no trees for slinging your hammock. It was indeed camp ground for my bed that night.

Remnants of the flood; a week earlier, I wouldn't have been able to pass over the route I took.

Crossing over the Mississippi, from Illinois into Cape Girardeau, MO

Tennessee: Plenty Pretty



Murfreesboro to Montgomery Bell State Park: c. 75 miles

I left home at 4:30AM, so that I could arrive at the park before the hottest hours, the temp for the past and next several days to be in the mid-nineties to 100 or so. The three others at home were up to see me off. The song in my head as I pedaled away was “It’s not leaving that’s grieving me; it’s leaving my true love behind”.

My sentimental mood was interrupted with the cell phone going off in my bike bag, just a couple minutes down the road. A bit soon to be checking on me, I thought. Heading for a turn-off where I could look for the phone, I cringed. “Dang! Biking Ace with his tuned up bike, efficiently packed bags, and, my oh my, new bike shorts has taken off without his helmet.” I turned back and met Marlo bringing it to me in her car.
Okay. Now onward.

The rest of the trip went smoothly. The bike purred over excellent biking roads through valleys with horse or cattle pastures, fields of freshly mown hay, or corn a few inches high, and stretches of woods over gently rolling hills.

I arrived at the park before noon. It seemed strange to end my biking day so early but I had decided that at least my first few days back on the road would be at a conservative pace with the hope of building up strength over the first couple weeks rather than wearing myself out. Leaving the bike bags on my site’s picnic table, I biked through the park, with a stop at the inn for their noon buffet which would hold me for the rest of the day. Back at the site, I slung my hammock, took a shower, hand-washed my riding outfit—using laundry soap I had packed and my neato LL Bean lightweight collapsible bucket that I had for backpacking trips, and relaxed, thankful that the camping area was so well shaded.

Montgomery Bell State Park to Paris Landing State Park: 75-85 miles, depending on which Route 47 West you take

Tennessee has two Route 47 Wests, I found. I had planned my trip by drawing a straight line on an atlas between Nashville and Yellowstone and then, via MapQuest, looking for secondary roads that would keep me close to that line while avoiding major cities, preferring county roads over state roads. I keep a print-out of 500-mile stretches of the itinerary on a slip of paper easily stored in my wallet so that I don’t have to unfold a map to check each route change. Well, I didn’t notice the two route 47 Wests while planning the trip so took the first one I came to, which resulted in an increasing sense that I was going around in a circle: I went through a narrow underpass of a rail line that seemed very much like one I had run through several years ago in a half-marathon that started in the park, then passed a different entrance into the park, and then saw a sign pointing to the same town I had biked through the day before. The map is unrolled: ah, yes, 47 west with a triangle and 47 west with a square. Well, at this point, I might as well continue on until the next route north that will gradually lead me back to the way I want to go. A minor bump in the road.

One reason we love to bike: so many fresh starts. A wrong turn, a hard climb up, a dark spot on a sunlit road. All are forgotten when one gets to the top and has a long coast down in the cleansing wind.

Tennessee River

Laundry drying in not so primitive campsite. Ruka came to meet me at Paris Landing State Park, and since there wasn't enough for two in my hammock, we stayed at the park's very nice inn.

Bikers can stop on bridges

Aunt Betty Smiles

Land Between the Lakes