meet me in St. Louis

I was really excited about riding over the Mississippi River. When I woke up on a church social hall floor in Salem, Illinois, it hit me: today was the day. We'd had two days of beautiful flat riding since Bloomington, and one more 80 miler would take us to the Mississippi. At breakfast though, things began to look dark. There were rumors that today would be hilly... really hilly. We're biking through the Ozarks today, someone said. Aren't the Ozarks in Missouri, not Illinois? Anyway, the elevation chart on the cue sheet confirmed it: big big hills -- mountains really. But I set out determined. I was going to bike across the Mississippi today, no matter what.

Ten miles into the ride, it became clear that yes, the Ozarks are not in Southern Illinois (ha ha Kyle Magida) and an uneventful but pleasantly flat ride brought us to the outskirts of St. Louis. I've been told that this area is unusually cool right now. But that can't be true because it was very very hot. We stopped at a nice air conditioned Dairy Queen (where Oliver somehow downed a blizzard bigger than his head) before heading out down a nice bike path. Biking on the path was really fun -- no traffic to worry about. It felt a bit like we were all just out for a nice leisurely Sunday afternoon ride, not spandex clad biking machines who've ridden over 1000 miles in the last 4 weeks. Well it was leisurely until we realized that the YMCA where we could shower closed at 3:30 -- then we started to book it.

The bike path spit us out into a treeless, baked, neighborhood. Confusing cue sheet directions had us following the arrows chalked by those before us until all of a sudden we were riding onto the McKinley Bridge. I guess I was a little disappointed by the Mississippi. It was much smaller than the Hudson and it was so so very hot and I wanted to shower so badly that we barely stopped for pictures at the Illinois/Missouri line before rolling on. After the bridge we headed south on the "Riverside Bike Path," which was not so much riverside as concrete-wall-and-industrial-wasteland-side. Then the bike path turned and ended in a wall, so we continued on the street, up a hill, past the correctional facility, into St. Louis proper, which smelled a bit like boiled asphalt and vomit. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on St. Louis. Maybe I've just gotten used to the smell. But at that point all I wanted was to be out of the heat and in a shower.

When we rolled up to the church at exactly 3:28pm where Skip Burns met us outside, informing us that the Y had actually closed at 3:00. Luckily, Allie's grandmother invited us to her assisted living home in the burbs to shower, which was amazing. After that, and not one but two dinners, and a nice 20 minutes lying on the grass under the arch, I was finally feeling pretty happy to be on this side of the Mississippi.