Approaching St. Louis

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Early morning on a frontage road of I-44, traffic is almost nil, but not the hills.  They come one after another as the sun rises.  It’s an early start into the big city of St. Louis, Missouri.  

It’s still rural with a mix of farmers and big city commuters, as fog rises from a pond, and folks are dressing to feed the cows or drive to their office.

Along this semi-rural road, the natives are being replaced.  They lie beside the pavement, casualties to the spread of humans.

I will try to identify these fallen.  Maybe some of you can help.

Meet Mel, the only long-distance solo cyclist I’ve met on this journey.  She started in Ontario, Canada, and is going to Los Angeles.  She’s 25, starting much younger than I did, and after a month on the road, she seems ready for the journey.  I pushed a little harder and rode happier after meeting her. 

Small towns within commuter’s reach of St. Louis, each with a water tower like its flag.  

While many of the traditional crafts are being gobbled up by the spreading city, a sawmill still makes whisky barrels from white oak logs,  But now they do it in two languages.

Traffic increased and hills got steeper as I approached St. Louis.  Some of the hills were so steep that I got off and pushed the bike.  Even the designated bike routes in this sprawling metropolis have no shoulder or bike lane.  I came to Fenton a suburb of St. Louis and got a motel for two nights.

Michael Angerman updates the map of my journey every day.  Find it at:  Google Map Link for my ride from Pasadena to Chicago  

North into Winter

Warm days and nights of Oklahoma are gone now.  Fall colors are just beginning in Missouri, prophesying winter.

Morning sunbeams penetrate the forest, making bright the night foliage. But not for long.  These trees become transparent in winter, and I hope that holds off for just thirteen more days, until Chicago. 

Pine Forest

These pine trees must be the envy of the hardwoods.  They will stay green, with white fluff off and on, throughout winter.  The bird will not lose his summer cover.

Loose dogs can become a menace for cyclists.  Most of us who have ridden long distances in the country have stories.  Mine involves  a little white dog that I ran over a few years ago when it came out to bark.  Little dogs seldom bite, but they like prove they are big by sounding tough.  This little yapping dog ran right in front of me.  I lost control as my front tire bumped over its back with a crunch.  I went down with minor injuries.  The dog yelped and I never saw it again.

The dog in these picture just wanted to play.  He followed me, ran beside me and ahead of me for about two miles, and he never barked.   

Café food in Missouri small towns is about like it is in Pasadena except that portions are larger and prices lower.  In this café I’d say the portions are double, and the price  half.  This is fine for climbing the hundreds of hills in these Ozark Mountains, but not so fine otherwise.

Michael Angerman updates the map of my journey every day.  Find it at:  Google Map Link for my ride from Pasadena to Chicago When you first open the map, zoom out to see the overall picture, then zoom in to any section.    

Missouri

A pedestrian crossing a Missouri road as fast as she can, like a cyclist running away from a loose, barking dog. 

Progress is slower in Missouri, lots of hills and few shoulders to ride them on.  

Sometimes the old road is much as it was in the 1930’s.  But then it hummed with traffic and they had to weave pas teach other on a road too narrow to pass without driving on the dirt shoulder.  It seems the same today for me on a bike.  I often have no place to pull off and let them by, so they weave around me, and most of them are safe and polite.. 

Road Angel
in the Missouri Hills

I learned more about heartland people than their politic when my bike broke down.  It required a repair I could not make.  So I put out my thumb, and a woman came by in a little car.  She was going to Springfield where a bike shop is, a distance of 25 miles.  But alas my bike would not fit in her car.  So she flagged down a truck and two good-ol-country-boys just hefted it on, and off we went to the bike shop.  To make a breakdown even better, the bike shop owner lent me a vacant apartment for the night and the woman who first stopped took me to a fine restaurant.  

The hippie flat I had the privilege of sleeping in.  

Leaving Oklahoma

You remember how terrified I was last May, hunkered in a dark motel room, in a fort I had built with flashlight, bed, tables and chairs, as wind howled outside.  I knew that if the tornado hit, my fort could fall.  I rode the train home a few days later.  

 I returned to Oklahoma City a few days ago with new confidence.  These past five days traversing the rest of this state have spawned a rethink of what seemed like a treacherous state for pedaling on a bicycle.  There are no tornadoes this time of year, and the roads in the eastern part are mostly wider, with paved shoulders.  And people are friendly.  Maybe these factors come with the end of tornado season. 

In engineering The Mother Road, it made sense to use existing roads where possible.  Here we see remnants of a preexisting paved road from Afton to Miami that was only nine feet wide.  If a car came from the other direction, you had to go off on the shoulder.  Now called “Ribbon Road” or “Sidewalk Highway,” it rested on concrete base and curbs, with surface of asphalt mixed with crushed rock.  These were the first sections of pavement on Route 66 when it opened in 1926.  

Remnants of the original Mother road decay into the earth beside remnants of the past election.  We Californians sometimes have difficulty understanding heartland politics.  These pictures may help or hinder. 

I parked beside a soybean field, better known in Pasadena as edamame.

A peaceful road for riding across Oklahoma. 

Michael Angerman is continuing a map of my journey as he did on the first section when I arrived in Oklahoma City on May 18 this year. Find it at:  Google Map Link for my ride from Pasadena to Chicago When you first open the map, zoom out to see the overall picture, then zoom in to any section.

Leaving Oklahoma City

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Oklahoma City is  pretty view from a distance, but up close it’s fishing from a bridge, run-down motels, and gas for $1.99.  They don’t try to keep smog out of the air because the incessant wind blows it all to California. 

You can buy this large 3 bedroom house on  55 acres near Oklahoma City for  $465,000 or you can buy a nice condominium in Pasadena for the same price, and pay $3.00 for gas. 

I said good bye to the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath”  as I left the city. They joined Route 66 here on 23^rd Street   

 “The family on top of the truck, stared about at the stores, at the big houses, at the office buildings.  And then the buildings grew smaller and the stores smaller. . . Its bigness and its strangeness frightened them with the fine-clothed people they saw.  They did not speak of it to each other—later they would, but not now.  They saw the oil derricks in town, on the edge of town; oil derricks black, and the smell of oil and gas in the air.  But they didn’t exclaim.  It was so big and so strange it frightened them.”  

It was good to leave the big city and get into the green humid countryside of middle Oklahoma.  An old gas station with its crafted local stones must have been a welcome stop in the 1930’s,  and an ultra-modern gas station might someday be looked on with antique eyes in another century.  

Old Route 66 much as it was in the 1940’s.  Once it carried thousands of cross-country travelers,  now used by a few locals to get to their farms.

In 1889 this land was opened for homesteading, and a great land rush followed.  This round barn near the boom town of  Arcadia was built in1898, before Oklahoma was a state. The farmer who  built it knew about tornadoes and figured a round barn could withstand them.  Apparently he was right. Most of the original barns aren’t here anymore.

Boomerang Diner

Chandler

I rode into Chandler yesterday afternoon, tired after a roller-coaster ride in the green hills of Oklahoma. In the little Boomerang Diner, old-timers sat at a long table talking polite in their drawls, like clones of an ancient homesteader who probably didn’t build a round barn.

It was good to check into the Lincoln Motel.  The forecast was for thunderstorms today, so I decided not to dare the devil, which might carry those little twirly things inside its thunder.  I’m  sitting here at noon in this comfortable room, writing to you and watching the rain.

Michael Angerman is continuing a map of my journey as he did on the first section when I arrived in Oklahoma on May 18 this year. Find it at:  Google Map Link for my ride from Pasadena to Chicago When you first open the map, zoom out to see the overall picture, then zoom in to any section

Return to Oklahoma City

Nostalgia, anticipation, and a sense of danger have won over a peaceful life at home in Pasadena.  Off again this Friday to complete a trek begun last April 5. 

On the first attempt, with intent on reaching Chicago by June 15, I and the bicycle got as far as Oklahoma City before being driven back by tornadoes.  It was weather that drove farmers from the Dust Bowl via Route 66 to California in the 1930’s, and weather of a different kind that drove me home.   

The difference this time is that tornadoes are very unlikely during October.  I should make it to Chicago and arrive home by Halloween.  

Please join me in some way, commenting here on the blog or by email.  I welcome your thoughts and poems.  But, of course, you can ask to be removed from this list, if it’s all too much. (Click on any picture to make it larger.)

Route 66, the “Mother Road” in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” brought Dust Bowl refugees to California in the thirties. I retraced those refugees upstream to Oklahoma City, but I won’t follow them any further, because they joined Route 66 in Oklahoma City or points west.  Instead, I’ll climb little hills of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri and ride through some of the Rust Belt approaching Chicago.  From there, Amtrak will again whisk me home.