They Call Me the Breeze

Call me the breeze

I keep blowing down the road

Well, now they call me the breeze

I keep blowing down the road

I ain’t got me nobody

I don’t carry me no load

— Lynyrd Skynyrd

Bringing back one of my favorite things about past trips - finding a song title and lyrics that matches my day on the bike. Today was a great day and the first time in 4 days that I got what I was hoping for when I set out. But before we get to that, let’s take care of some business. Grab your bingo boards and look for “small-mouth bass roadkill”. Indeed, the first (of many) roadkills today was, in fact, a large fish (see photo). According to my source, he says it looks as though it had been dead for awhile. Bonus point tonight if you guessed that exactly halfway through the trip (3 1/2 days) I would be having lunch about two miles from where I started. On my way to meet Fletcher for lunch, I crossed over the street I took from his house on Saturday morning.

As for today, succinctly, it was a great day. Breakfast was better. Fruit Loops were still an option, but fortunately not the only option. Putting on my wet bike shoes and wet bike helmet wasn’t awesome, but at least everything else was clean after hanging out in the hotel guest laundry for awhile this morning. I wasn’t ecstatic about having to cross the Missouri River bridge about 4 blocks into my ride, but despite the lack of a shoulder to ride on, I didn’t have the typical panic attack that comes with big bridges. I was already off plan just 3 miles into the ride when I discovered I’d missed a turn. I even had an early stretch of about 3 miles with the dreaded shoulder full of rumble strips and no place to ride except in the road. Most of that was uphill making it last much longer than I wanted. Those all amounted to minor nuisances. After missing the early turn, I consulted my map and realized my alternate route would take me right back towards Fletcher’s house. We arranged to meet for lunch. It was awesome to see him one more time and thank him for his hospitality and help. He and his family are off to Sun Diego tomorrow, so I’m now truly on my own 😩. The weather was perfect riding weather. Mid 60’s and overcast with about a 15mph breeze. As much as I love the sunshine, it’s definitely not as comfortable to ride in. For once, probably in part because of the wind, the downhills seemed to more than offset the ups. I hit over 40 mph a couple times and many other times over 30 mph. I have not typically ridden as fast or as hard as I can. I don’t enjoy that - except when I’m going downhill. I’m getting plenty of exercise out here, so pushing the envelope isn’t something that drives me. That said, with about 15 miles to go I found myself on a state highway, with a wide shoulder, heading straight downwind. 6 miles in top gear and then a final refreshment break. For the last 9 miles, I decided to time myself. The shoulder was still wide but the quality deteriorated and about 4 miles of steady climbing. Averaged just under 16 mph. Now that’s done, I don’t need to do it again. Ever.

Final destination tonight is Richmond, Missouri. I made a slight miscalculation the previous nights on eliminating contestants, but after today, it makes no difference. I now have 3 days and approximately 240 (probably more like 210) miles to go. While some of the destinations still alive might be outside that radius, if I were to go towards any of those destinations for the next 3 days, it would end up being the closest guess. As a result, here are the guesses still alive:

Any guess in Kansas, Missouri, or Iowa, along with Little Rock, AR, Springfield, IL and Omaha, NE

In all my rides, I’ve never seen this before.

The worst. The rumble strips even cover half these stripe

I didn’t have to carry my bike across, but it was enough to fill my right shoe with water just as it was drying out.

I went to answer nature’s call after lunch and saw this

They named a wildlife refuge after all my friends!