Day 48 (7/19): Jefferson City, MO; 70 Miles

Woo for waking up at 5:30 after goin out the night before…though none of us were feelin quite as rough as Country! Had some crew chief breakfast and hit the road with Donde, Jake, Todd, and Cramer…we were movin pretty smoothly all day long. Road conditions were in and out and we hit some more intense rolling hills…but a little cloud cover kept the heat at bay and we actually had a tailwind on us.

Highlight of the ride was passing through Donde’s childhood stomping grounds: the small town of California, MO. For some reason cities in the Midwest love to use names of bigger places (like when we passed by Manhattan, KS). When we passed the sign for California it seemed like we had taken a serious wrong turn on the Journey of Hope. Donde nostalgically pointed out his old hangouts and even took a pic by his Grandma’s old house…awww.

Before long we reached Jefferson City, the capital of the great state of Missouri, and did a double pace line arrival up to the capital building…had a sweet ONE car police escort so we were following the rules of the road….the cop even got stopped at a stoplight that we rolled through haha. One light stopped our line in the middle of an absurdly steep hill which is always fun. The Capitol building was actually really cool with a big ole’ statue of Tommy J. out front…several aides of Missouri legislators were there to greet us with resolutions from both the house and senate which was cool.

After the arrival we walked over to a nearby church for some lunch. I sat with Kelly and Matt…director and intern (respectively) of the “Leadership Office” …referring to the fact that they work for the minority party leader. Had a rather politico style talk…turns out MO approved a crappy plan for transportation improvements years back, and when the state realized it sucked and asked for more money the voters said no because they had already approved the last plan…ahhh politics.

Rolled on the bikes over to lodging at Lincoln University after lunch…using their pretty sweet gym facility. Had time to shower up and unpack before we headed over for some ice cream sponsored by Chuck Howard, Regional Governor (advisor) of the Pi Kapp chapters in Missouri and all around hell of a nice guy. We were all treated to cones and malts at the “Central Dairy” …a nice old fashioned shop.

With the downtime before dinner most of us hit up a nap. Got totally faked out by Sollner when he woke us up: he blasted music and said “let’s go to Union, boys!” as if we were getting up to ride….I totally fell for it thinking I had passed out in my clothes, haha. Dinner was a little barbeque provided by Chuck and Jerry Dowell, another Pi Kapp and campaign manager for the Lt. Governer of Missouri (not much of a conversationalist, this one). Grubbed on some burgers and dogs and played with Chuck’s kids Emma and Jake…pretty cool cats.

With the rest of the evening free it was high time for a hair cut…so Farley and I tested each other’s barber skills which thankfully turned out pretty well. Gonna catch up on some correspondence now and hit the sack before we ACTUALLY get up to ride to Union tomorrow.