Oh, to Hail With It!

Well, it's a good thing I spent a few days racking up extra mileage because today and tomorrow are short ones.

I meant to do 106 miles today. I thought that once I was through the serious hills, I'd be able to make up the time on the easy stuff. Of course not.

I got through the hills (the first ten miles this morning which took almost two hours) and then the weather showed up. At this point, I still had a pretty full day ahead of me and I didn't really want to sit out, so I kept moving for a little while. It didn't really amount to anything more than a sprinkle, so I wasn't even getting that wet. Along the way, I came across two other guys headed the opposite direction. I'm in the part of the route now where the east-bounders and west-bounders are starting to cross. One was from San Diego and the other from New Zealand. The guy from New Zealand had the same bike!

Anyway, things were going smoothly and the rain even stopped completely for a while. Naturally, the temperature dropped a bit, but the humidity was lingering around 99%. A few more miles and then the real stuff showed up. The sky opened up and unloaded a biblical amount of rain for about 30 minutes. Luckily, I had already applied my rain guards to my bags, but it just wasn't safe to keep going. Off to the side of the road, I noticed a friendly looking house with a car port, so I quickly veared in and sought refuge under the tin roof.

After leaning my bike up and removing my helmet and gloves, I thought it would be appropriate to knock on the door and make sure the owners were ok with me hiding under their structure. No one answered. I figured they must not be home, so I took a seat on the cement next to my bike and watched the rain fall. I was careful not to touch anything or sit in the chairs they had out because you can never be sure how someone might react to pulling in and finding a stranger having made himself at home. I almost dozed off, too. Between the usual fatigue and the sound of rain pattering on the tin roof and ground, I started slipping. Normally, I don't have a chance to fade out during the day, but in that situation, everything was in place to knock me right out. Short of a pillow, that is.

I knew that the five minutes of sleep I would get sitting Indian style on their driveway would not be worth the grogginess and headache of jumping back up when the rain stopped, so I stayed awake.

The rain did stop, and I did continue. I made it about 60 miles total and stopped for some snacks at a feed store. The guy working there was really nice and had seen pretty much every biker that has ever done the route. His place was the only food or drink stop for a good forty mile stretch, so everyone stops in. He had seen those two other guys earlier, and even more people that I didn't see.

He and some other local guy told me about some shortcuts and flatter roads ahead, so I took ther advice and went the next sixteen miles off route to Mountain Grove. The road was really nice and basically flat. It had some hills, but they covered the same elevation over two miles that my earlier hills cramme into one tenth of a mile. Much easier. I really felt like I was covering ground.

I had a few more animal encounters. I saw one regular turtle and one enormous turtle. This guy was by far the largest I have ever seen outside a zoo. He must have been sixty years old, too. I know these guys live for over a century, and the one I saw had moss growing on his back and looked like he had seen it all. I'm not an expert at reading the expressions on a turtles face, but I could tell that this one had plenty of stories.



I also saw an armadillo's coat of arms abandoned by the side if the road. Somewhere there is just a dillo walking around. Or maybe the rest of him was just cleaned out and all that remained was his scaley cloak and helmet. What a crazy animal. Armadillos and turtles both seem like they are lost in time. I would expect to see those walking around with dinosaurs.

Anyway, just as I was completing the last few miles today, it started to rain again. These were big drops and they even stung a little. I took one right on the nose and thought, "Geez, Missouri really has some fat rain drops."

After about a minute of being subjected to these ridiculous rain drops, it occurred to me that what I was experiencing was not a rain storm at all, but hail. See, I had my head down so as not to take any more direct hits to the face and was not able to see the bigger picture. I looked up for a second and noticed the pellets bouncing up off the pavement. Since they didn't hurt to badly, I decided to keep going. My only other option would have been to stand there in a field and take it anyway, so I figured I might as well cover some more miles and try to enjoy it. In the words of Chris Feist, "Earn your rest day!" Even though I'm not taking a rest day, the point still applies.

Mountain Grove is the biggest town I have seen yet. There are actually businesses and services here. Most towns that I have passed through have the one place to eat, the one place to buy gas, and the post office. This place has all of the chain restaurants and big stores. I got free pizza when I was talking to those guys back at the feed store, so I won't need to patronize any of these places tonight. I might stop over at the grocery store and get some juice though...

76 today, either 70 or 91 tomorrow, depending on how long it takes to hit Springfield. 70 would put me in a pretty nice town, but 91 would help me get back on track and I'd still end up in a decent enough town. It all depends on the weather I guess, and I hear it's supposed to rain for a couple days.





You probably can't make out the hummingbirds, but one place I stopped had a couple hummingbird feeders and there were about 20 of them zipping around.

Location:Mountain Grove, MO