Biking Back from the Dark Side

 Route descriptions courtesy of Mark Hansen Champaign to Crawfordsville, Indiana: The last town in Illinois, Danville, lies along the Vincennes Trail (or Vincennes Trace), which extended from Vincennes, Indiana, on the Wabash River 100 miles south, to Chicago, 160 miles north. It was an ancient Native thoroughfare developed into a commercial byway by Europeans and Americans, used for trading furs, driving livestock, and transporting trade goods. All but the northern-most counties in Illinois are underlain by deposits of coal. The state has been a top-five producer of coal since the 19th century. Vermilion Co, of which Danville is the seat, had large mining operations, both surface (strip) mines and underground mines (which can be recognized by their piles of tailings). As of 2014, it was one of 11 Illinois counties with active mining. The route crosses a mining area just west of Danville. Danville was a station on the Wabash Railroad’s route between Detroit and St Louis plied by t...

 Route descriptions courtesy of Mark Hansen Kirksville to Quincy, Illinois : East of Kirksville, the rivers and creeks are tributaries of the Mississippi rather than the Missouri. The route extends east-southeast in Missouri through Adair Co to Knox Co to Lewis Co. Lewis Co was named for the explorer Meriwether Lewis.   Fronting the Mississippi River, it was settled and organized more than a decade before the counties to the west and like most river counties had a stronger southern influence. The earliest settlers, in the 1820s, were from Virginia and Kentucky.  During the Missouri secession crisis in 1861 the area, like the state, was divided in its loyalties between the Union and the Confederacy. (A state convention voted down secession overwhelmingly but the two sides elected rival state legislatures and sent representatives to both the United States Congress in Washington and Confederate States Congress in Richmond.) Lewis County contributed two officers to the Confed...

 (route summary courtesy of Mark Hansen) Topeka to St Joseph, Missouri : The important western trails all originated on the Missouri River around Kansas City. The Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon Trail originated in Missouri in Independence, northeast of Kansas City, and Westport, south of the city (and now part of it) on the state line. The Oregon Trail hugged the south bank of the Kansas River until Topeka, when the wagons crossed on Pappan’s Ferry.   The crossing was just to the left of the Kansas Avenue Bridge, the CrossRoads route over the river. The route crosses the trail on Kansas Avenue at Crane Street, which goes under the bridge a block past First Avenue.  The Pony Express originated in St Joseph, Missouri, today’s destination. Never a paying proposition, it operated for only 18 months before the completion of the transcontinental telegraph in October 1861 obviated the need for it. St Joe has a Pony Express Monument at 910 Frederick Avenue and a Pony Express Museu...

 (Courtesy of Mark Hansen) The Great Plains encompasses most of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, the eastern parts of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, the western part of Oklahoma, and the Panhandle and a little more of Texas. As you’ve already seen, it’s open, flat, and featureless. It has few trees, those mostly in river and creek bottoms. These days, the eastern parts are mostly agricultural, the western parts grazing land. Its greatest significance is historical. It is the actual, historical West (as opposed to the Hollywood West), the land of the great buffalo herds, cattle ranches, and cowboys and Indians. The parts we’re traveling through were the ranges of the Southern Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, and other southern plains tribes. The tribes described as Sioux (Dakota and Lakota), the Northern Cheyenne, Arikara, Crow, and others were northern plains tribes in Nebraska, Montana, and the Dakotas. Their cultures of tipis, feathered war bonnets, beade...

  Wheel dipping at Revere Beach

 Today I walked out of the hotel with the most nervous excited feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew we had a tough day of riding ahead, lots of climbing, lots of heat, but knowing I was going to make it. And knowing this dream had been realized. The timing was perfect. I’m out of electrolyte drink. I’m out of my energy bars. I’m out of my sunscreen. I don’t have any clean clothes left.   And most importantly, we’ve run out of country to our east. After a calm and cool 10 miles to start the day, the climb started.  We went up some pretty steep slopes, including one that was almost as hard as the big climb yesterday. Not nearly so long, but it felt a good bit steeper. I think I didn’t have enough to drink yesterday, or didn’t do a good job of replacing my electrolytes. Because my legs felt really crampy to start. And that is not a good thing when you’re pushing heavy gears up really steep slopes. I think adrenaline did a good bit of the work.… all of the aches and pains...

  That was hot. And steep. And long.  I’m wearing an ice necklace in this picture (nylons filled with ice and tucked under the jersey)…which is the only way I kept my body temp under 105. We started climbing almost immediately out of the hotel.  It was mostly up for the first 42 miles, but concentrated in two especially steep pitches. The first one was 5 miles and the second one was around 10.   I have been dreading that second one for days. The profile just looked so intimidating on the Ride with GPS software. And when you zoom in on the route, there were some parts that were allegedly as high as 17% grades. I got up the first part and it really helped to build my confidence for the second. As I’m climbing, I try to keep my power meter under control and my heart rate under control. I can throttle back on the power so long as the road isn’t too steep.  (for really steep grades, there’s really no choice. You have to put in enough power into the pedals or you slow...