I Just Want a Little Bit of Everything

With proper shout out to Keith Urban for ripping off his song title, today had everything from a wide array of riding conditions to not one, but two, turtle rescues, to a lunch stop In a place more Trumpy than Mar-a-f'ing-Lago. As

I mentioned in yesterday's post, today was a rehash of my April 23, 2022 ride, but in the opposite direction. I remembered a lot of it, but I also misremembered some too. Fortunately, that was for the better.

For starters, we missed a turn less than a mile from the start this morning that probably added about 2 miles to the ride. After figuring out our mistake, we headed west out of Springfield. My recollection from last year was that there were only two places to stop, and only one had food, for nearly 60 miles in the direction we were going. The first was about 20 miles in and is an old Sinclair filling station that proprietor Gary Parita has turned into a bit of a

memorabilia spot and Route 66 museum. Before we got there, though, Dan screeched to a stop and performed his first turtle rescue of the morning, lifting a slow-moving guy from the road and putting him back in the grass. Also, on this stretch, I became reacquainted with the not-so-fun game of chase. The dogs being the chasers and Dan and I being the rabbits. The pit bull Was the scariest, but there were several

encounters with canines this morning. Enough to bring back bad memories. When we got to Gary's place, he was sitting in the same place he was last year with the same hat on as well. He was the guy that sold me warm Rte 66 root beer for $3 a bottle last year. Alas, he was all out. However, he had a pavilion with snacks, refrigerators full of water and other sodas and a tip jar. We never discovered that last year. Another thing new this time around was his goose. As I was talking to him on his porch, the goose came up and bit (?) me on the knee. I'm not exactly sure what to call the attack, as biting implies teeth, and it was more like he open his beak and pecked (?) really hard.

The next stop would be Avilla, population 125, about 25-30 miles down the road, but before we had gone 1/4 mile from Gary's place, it was turtle rescue #2. This guy was much speedier than the first and Dan more or less chased him

across the road. Only when the turtle turned and started to double back, did Dan swoop and scoop and move him to safety. Shortly after the rescue, we came to the end of our peaceful, quiet, lightly trafficked back roads and had to join the main road, aka Road Kill Highway. An absolutely stunning volume and array of smallish critters were flattened along the next 40 miles of roadway, with our old friend, the armadillo, being primary among them. The other thing the highway brought us was the return of the rumble strips, in combination with an arrow-straight road and a 65mph speed limit. The shoulder was perhaps 3 feet wide with the rumble strips occupying about half of it. Except when the rumble strip maker had gotten drunk on the job and his work product had more randomness to it, always to the detriment of two guys trying to thread a needle between the strips and the gravel on the side. We were managing our way through at the same time we were movi mg headlong into the path of an oncoming thunderstorm. We barely got to the road side collection of abandoned buildings (and an 19th century refurbished schoolhouse) in Phelps when we got the first flash of lightning. We pulled over and found a covered porch in front of the old school to wait it out. Until we got impatient after about 2 minutes. Avilla, with our lunch stop, was 12 miles (1 hour) up the road and the rain wasn't coming down hard. We decided to throw caution and common sense to the wind and set back out. It did rain on us, but not very hard and miraculously, for the next 6 miles, the rumble strips were gone. Then, when they reappeared for the last 6 miles, they were accompanied by a

freshly resurfaced shoulder that was twice as wide.

Bernie's Bar & Grill. I had stopped there last year to charge my phone and prepare for the long, empty ride ahead. I was the only one in the place with the owner. Today, the owner wasn't there, but his daughter was chief cook and bottle-washer. When you walk into Bernie's, you are hit by an absolute onslaught of Trump flags, posters, stickers and signs. My favorite was the one of him ripping off his shirt like a WWE wrestler, except that whoever superimposed his head on to the wrestler's body, did it off-center. I'm sure the rest of the people in that bar today couldn't have cared

less about that minor detail, but Dan and I both noticed and got a nice chuckle. I took a

couple of photos, but I couldn't risk getting caught taking them, so the quality is poor. We kept to ourselves and opted not to discuss politics or any conspiracy theories with Norm, Cliff, Frazier and the rest of the regulars that appeared to glue themselves to their barstools when the place opens. We waited out the rainstorm in the bar and then headed out to finish the ride.

We made it to Carthage and were stopped at a light to make a left. As I start to ride off, Dan calls my name. I turn around to see my pack, which is held in by two straps, laying in the middle of the intersection. I turn around, pick it up, and get over to the sidewalk. Neither strap had come undone. It appears the bagged had simply been bumped and jostled enough to escape. Once I got it squared away, we headed straight into a stiff headwind for the last agonIzing hour and a half.

Just curious about this combo, that's all.

The pavilion at Gary's place. There's now a stick pin in Vancouver, Washington on the wall map in the back

Gary's pet goose

April 23, 2022

September 22, 2023

Dan, at Bernie's Bar and Grill

A bad panorama from inside the bar

My bag in the middle of the intersection. This was actually a reenactment on the sidewalk, as stopping to take a picture in the middle of the road would have been one of the more singularly stupid things I could have done.