Monday September, 22 2008 - Day 8

Monday September, 22 2008 - Day 8
Chet, Joe and I leave the hotel mid morning. Looks like taking time off means I get to finish my tea before having to climb back into the saddle. The sun is up today making the asphalt a convection oven. We ride our bodies over it to make sure we get evenly cooked. The late start has Joe in a foul mood and he pedals in order to make up for the lost time. I curse the pain, I curse the heat, I curse because the sweat running off my nose never meets the saliva pieces torn from the inside of my mouth as the oxygen depleted air rushing to leave my body.
Joe accelerates again and I vow a limb before I will let myself fall off Chet’s rear tire. Two gnats manage to get caught in our wind stream and before I can exhale one lodges itself deep in my throat. The second one I don’t notice till I try and cough up the first one. I hack twice and when that follows I try to swallow the little beast like a multivitamin. No luck, my mouth is dry and throat wet. I am the Venus fly trap. I reach for my water bottle, tip it back, squeeze and get a puff of air. Empty. Bo filled up everyone’s bottles but not mine. I look back down to put my bottle in the cradle and clip Chet’s back tire.
The moment I have avoided a hundred times over the past week now becomes real. Under normal circumstances this could have played out many different ways but not this morning. This morning I only have one hand on the handle bars as the other is returning the empty air bottle to the safety of it’s cage. In addition, I still have two gnats partially in my digestive track and a partridge in a pear tree. My front tire goes hard right sending Chet’s rear tire right. Chet was drafting tight and slightly to the right of Joe’s rear wheel. Chet’s rear tire right correction makes his front tire turn left directly into Joe’s rear tire. Remember those 120 car pile ups on L.A freeways in the 70’s? Joe’s rear tire heads into traffic and all Joe can do is hold on to his now traffic bound bicycle and try to correct with his body weight.
St. Louis Monday morning traffic is as heavy as any major city now that school is finally back in session. We are on state road 117 West, just past a Shell gas station and Cracker Barrel. I let out a yelp, Chet looks back to check how much time Joe will have before impact with a car and I open the other eye. The clock reads 7:10AM. I wiggle my feet, lift my head off the pillow and check for Chet. He is happily sleeping in the other queen. I close my eyes and pull the covers back over my tired body. We took the day off.
We leave St. Louis Missouri after a Fairfield by Marriot continental breakfast. Actually, there was a make your own waffle iron and I made a perfect Belgian with the assistance of Stacy the continental breakfast attendant. I sit down and Chet and Bo are still going back and forth between conspiracy theory and international polysomething. I eat my waffle and get a peach yogurt down my gnathole before going back to the room to pack for the day.
Joe treats us all to a massage at some local place and we drive most the day from St. Louis to Salina, Kansas without anything notable to note. We stop at Clinton State Park just west of Kansas City for a late in the day swim. Bo goes for a run and I swim and then jog for about a mile. I am training for a 100 mile run which will take place in less than two weeks and thought it would be important to give my leg muscles a little reminder of what is to come. Instead, they remind me that they don’t agree with what I am thinking of doing and they way I am preparing for it.
I make a mental note to run more in the coming days and then stop to stretch. I turn towards the sun and sit down on the ground. I actually go to sit down three times before actually setting my body down. The first pause I think of dirt on my shorts. The second that bugs will bother me. The third pause I laugh at myself for the first two. There I sat for several long moments as the late day sun’s light and heat brought me a deep and thoughtless moment.
The web weather report for tomorrow is for a 14 mph SW wind gusting to 20 mph. We stop to fill up the gas tank and the flags are humming horizontally. I look at Joe and nod over in their direction. He looks at the flags and then back at me. He smiles. I smile.
I have added a couple new pictures and videos to the site – http://picasaweb.google.com/maltomitch/RideAcrossAmerica
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude - Chris