People Day

Today’s ride was the first time since the start - 500 miles ago - that I saw someone else on a bike. Let me back up for a second, the day started with me getting the heck out of the Galena Motel as quickly as I could this morning. I didn’t bother trying to find food. Joplin, Missouri was just a few miles up the road.

Today’s route followed historic Route 66. Having driven much of it on the way out here and now having ridden on it for 80 miles, I must confess I don’t get it. For the most part, it seems to traverse unpopulated farming country or barren wastelands. There’s certainly an outsized amount of nostalgia. That said, it was in a town(?) called Perida, MO where I met Mike Dennis from the Palo Alto, CA area.

He had started riding Route 66 back in California on his way to Chicago. We met at an old Sinclair gas station that probably hasn’t pumped a gallon of gas in 30 years - at least. We sat on the porch and chatted with the proprietor, drinking warm $3 Route 66 root beers.

The other major takeaway from today was that riding through a massive crosswind is very nerve wracking and difficult. I It was probably blowing a steady 25mph with bigger gusts. There was a 15-mile stretch with rumble strips on the shoulder and a small drop off to the gravel. The wind was pushing me toward the rumble strips and the traffic lane. I’m pretty sure that the last time I took a long bike trip (1988), rumble strips either hadn’t been invented yet or were not a widely used traffic safety measure. From a cyclist standpoint, this is NOT an improvement!