As I predicted yesterday, Bruce was up way before me. I set the alarm for 6:00Am and he was dressed packed and out the door to breakfast 5:55AM. I got up at 6:00 Am, got ready and walked over to the McDonald's about 6:20. When I got there the last of the 6:00 group was just getting their food. I placed my order and was served right away. The dark side gets 45 to 60 minutes more sleep and gets served almost as quickly as the pack!!!
Today was advertised to be a very hard day. Meiri and I left about 7:20 under partly cloudy skies. It looked a little dark to the North but we were going Northeast so we never really were threatened by the rain. We rode through Chillicothe with Chuck, Bob, Leigh, Hans and Gerard. It was fun but they dropped us after about five miles or so.
It seems like we were passing abandoned farmhouses every mile or so. The fields are being cultivated so the small farms must have been bought up by the big farms so the houses were not needed. Probably a lot of stories in those houses.
We kept passing Mennonite horse and buggies. One buggy that passed had a young father with his four children. We couldn't get a picture but it would have been precious. There was the father and three little girls all in their bonnets. The oldest girl was holding her baby sister/brother. It would have been a great picture. We also passed two women in a cart pulled by a pony.
The first Sag was in the town of Linneus. Next to the Sag stop was an old jail house which was built in the 1800's. It was open so we took a tour. The man that showed us around told us a little of the history. It was used up until the mid-seventies. The sheriff lived in the jail with his family. We could only go on the first floor so the only pictures I could take were of the family quarters. The female prisoners were held on the second floor and the male prisoners were held in the basement. The guide said his grandmother said that his grandfather was a frequent prisoner. Evidently he was the town drunk! In order to raise money, they were selling off all of their old civil defense supplies. I didn't buy anything but some of it looked interesting, like giant safety pins!
Meiri and I left the Sag and continued on our way. The terrain was rolling but the hills were not bad, we could get up pretty good speed and roll over the top. We came to a little town and saw some picnic benches so we stopped and ate some power bars. We decided to eat every 10 miles or so as we were using a lot of energy on the hills. Just before the second Sag the hills began to get more steep. I was glad my rubber band derailleur was working as I could not have climbed those hills in my big chain ring.
There were mostly cattle farms and horse farms towards the end of the day. Although we saw cultivated fields, they were few and far between. As we continued to cycle along, all of a sudden we were in a forest. We have not been in a true forest since we left California! It felt like home!! As we got closer to Kirksville, we began to see more and more houses in a suburb setting.
Michele had told Meiri and me that there was a Dairy Queen just beyond the motel. We decided to keep going and get our Blizzard. It added an extra four miles to our day but it was worth it!!! A little girl was with her family at the DQ and she asked what I had on my sunglasses. I said it was a mirror so I could see behind me. I took my glasses off and let her see the mirror, she said "Cool".
Tomorrow is a 97 mile day and we will be in another state! Bike on!!!
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