This morning started out with some sponsored breakfast which is always good. Hopped in the back group with Jay and Chad Small for what would be a pretty easy ride. Only had to go about 35 miles or so before we staged up for a long string of arrivals into St. Louis, which is Jay’s hometown. Some family of his were waiting for us at stage up with some delicious pastry treats.Our first police escorted arrival was through the suburb towns leading into St. Louis. Probably went a good 15 miles before our first stop: a Saturn dealership that was providing lunch for the team (Saturn used to be a big corporate sponsor of the Journey of Hope but stopped due to finance issues apparently…now just a few dealerships still sponsor the teams along the way on their own). We rolled up to the dealership to the raging crowd of just Steve and Jay’s family…Steve did a mock “please help me welcome the Journey of Hope”…pretty hilarious and a tad awkward. So we went inside and ate some deli sandwiches and chips in the little back office room while the Saturn staff went about their days.
Hopped back on the bikes for arrival round 2…this time it was about 10 miles the rest of the way into St. Louis…which we affectionately came to refer to as “The Jay Pride Parade.” It was absolutely hilarious…one of Jay’s neighbors hopped in front of our paceline on a motorcycle with a huge American flag flapping behind him, honking his horn the ENTIRE way…Jay’s family kept driving ahead to corners and hopping out to hold up signs for him…a couple of people even came out to say hi, including one guy working at a car dealership who ran up to give Jay a high five and an old man who held up a sign that simply said “Hi Jay” (which moments before he apparently was holding backwards on accident, haha).
Finally we reached the city and were riding directly toward the arch…totally awesome. Arrived at a beautiful city park area with a big fountain right out in front of the arch, and a representative of the Missouri government welcomed us with a proclamation. Afterwards as we racked up our bikes to zip over to lodging an old rasta-ish man came up to us and introduced himself as “P-Funk” and told he use to roll with George Clinton, and even had pics of himself and Rick James…he simply asked us to “bring back the funk, brothas.”days…sooo glorious to be in a hotel room with beds and a tv. Had some downtime before dinner so Snyder and I got caught up in watching the Devil Wears Prada…definitely a defining motion picture of our time.
Jay Stuckel, an alumni from Missou, had our team and the Build America team to his house for dinner…it was weird rolling up to the house where 4 other Push America vans were already parked. Right there at the front door was good ole’ Andy Brown, man it was great to see him. We all caught up with each other over an incredible spread of food…the BAM guys were really a nice bunch. Andy’s been loving every second of the trip…they had just completed a huge warehouse-type structure at one of the camps…BAM really does some incredible projects.
After dinner we rolled back to lodging to get changed up…then pretty much everyone went out on the town. Matt, another Missou alumni and a TransAm Pi Alpha was nice enough to ferry us downtown. We met up with most of the BAM boys in an area of town called “the Landing” which is a great little strip of bars near the Rams stadium. Had ourselves quite the fun evening…even tried to make it over to the Arch at one point but never quite got there. Matt got us back home with time to spare and after some pizza and shenanigans (like putting noxema on Small’s chest…he was upset at first but then admitted it helped him breathe better that night) we were all out like lights.
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