KATY Trail 2023 Day 3 - Windsor to Sedalia and out.

 Max and I have decided to abandon this tour due to the oppressive heat and the unfavorable weather forecast. I'm writing this on the train to St. Louis.

We rode 22 miles to Sedalia yesterday. It was the high point of the ride!

Sedalia is a hot and dusty small city. I actually like it. It does not look half-abandoned, and has some cool stuff, like art commemorating it's contribution to Ragtime music.

This is in front of the historical MKT freight depot.

We checked in early to the fabulous historic Hotel Bothwell, and hid from the heat all day.

I love old hotels that still have nice restaraunts attached. The restaurant here was the Ivory Grille, and it was terrific. The hotel is next to the town square by the courthouse. We had lunch at a tavern on the square that had excellent pizza. We also killed an hour drinking smoothies at a cafe a block over while waiting to check in.

My plan was to make a short day of it and see how we feel. The weather forecast said solid rain tomorrow (not great on an unpaved trail) and then right back to the hot hot heat. Amtrak said plenty of room on the morning train to St. Louis for us and our bikes. So we are done.

You might wonder who rides a train line that goes between St. Louis and Kansas City twice a day. The answer is it's basically a party wagon for obese Missouri ladies making a day trip halfway across the state for a birthday party. They are all pounding Bloody Marys, cranking Shania Twain music, and having a great time. This is what America gets for the Amtrak subsidies. LOL. The conductor is great and is fully supportive of their efforts.

The car we are on is brand new, and it has a place to hang bikes at the end.

However, you are supposed to hang the bikes from those hooks, and we couldn't figure out how to do it without putting all the weight on the front wheel spokes! This is a really bad design!

The conductor said to just put our bikes in the vestibule at the end of the car. The next car is the engine, so  nobody is going to go up there.

I feel bad ending the ride early, but Max doesn't mind, and physically I am just not feeling it. Max is having no problems, this is all me being undertrained and intolerant of the heat. 

The KATY trail is cool, and I will make another go at it someday. Just not in summer.

KATY Trail 2023 - Day 2 - Lee's Summit to Windsor

 We are camped in Windsor in the hot, hot heat. It's 7:00 and 86 degrees out.

Windsor is where the Rock Island Trail from Kansas City meets the KATY trail. Before you get to the Rock Island Trail, you get to do a bit of the Mo Pac Trail, which I think is another rail trail, named after the Missouri and Pacific Railroad. There are Missouri and Pacific cabooses parked around the area here and there.

We did the full 46 miles of the gravel Rock Island Trail, plus the gravel MoPac, plus some random gravel roads. Our 60 miles of riding today was almost entirely gravel.

The Rock Island Trail looks like this the whole way. Yes it is flat and tedious.

There are also very few services. We stopped for breakfast at the start of the Rock Island Trail trail at the Big Creek Cafe, in Pleasant Hill. Max declared it to be the most country cafe ever. Check out the model train hanging from the ceiling.

Pleasant Hill has this nice marker to get you excited about riding the KATY, which is still 46 miles away.

The only other place we stopped was in the booming metropolis of Chilhowee, at the Chilhowee Corner Store. That's the building in the foreground with the plywood window. We had snacks and a half-hour cool down. Chilhowee was 20 miles from the end.

The heat and humidity were pretty oppressive by noon today. And it's supposed to be worse the next two days. I'm really feeling it. I have no appetite. We may cut the 60 mile plan for tomorrow into two days, and hide in motel rooms in the afternoon. It's supposed to cool down after that. We shall see how tomorrow goes.

Here is the Strava track for the day.

KATY Trail 2023 - Day 1 - Kansas City to Lee's Summit

 Max and I are at a Super 8 on the outskirts of Kansas City.

There is a Perkins Pancake House and an Aldi across the parking lot, which covers dinner for tonight, and filling the snack bag tomorrow morning.

It was a total of 30 miles on bikes today, and 6 1/2 hours on the train from St. Louis to Kansas City. We rode about 6 1/2 miles to get to the train station from our AirBnB, and then 23 1/2 miles to get here from the train station in Kansas City. 

I left the truck by our AirBnB in St. Louis, parked on a street in the neighborhood. They have No Parking signs up that say parking is banned for 1/2 day at the end of each month. I take this to mean leaving my truck there for a week is no big deal since, implicitly, parking is allowed every other time. Also, many of the vehicles parked in the neighborhood have out-of-state plates, which suggests they are students. Who probably left their cars here for the whole summer.

Putting the bikes on the train was about as easy as it gets. The panniers are in a big pile behind the bikes.

The train ran late due to some issue making the fancy new bathrooms on the fancy new cars work. So we got in at 3:30 instead of 2. No big deal, we had plenty of time to ride through Kansas City to get to our motel. The coach cars in the train were new, with charging ports between the seats and free WiFi! This was the "Missouri River Runner", which just goes back and forth between St. Louis and Kansas City. It was pretty full, and I think new rail expansions like this are viable.

Kansas City is very run down and gritty, at least the part we rode through. I wonder if there is a nice part. We saw no signs of any nice part. other than the train station. This is quite a nice classic train station!

Half the ride was through city, then we picked up the Rock Island trail which took us the rest of the way.

This is a pretty new rail trail. Part cement, part smooth crushed stone. I think they use the cement wherever the ground is wet and soft. Definitely easy riding. The Rock Island Trail is basically a spur off the KATY Trail that connects to Kansas City. 

I'm feeling it a bit after this ride, due to being off the bike for the last two weeks from putting the garden in at home and going to Blues Fest. We had a good meal at the Perkins and a good sleep at the Super 8.

The Super 8 has had a superficial renovation, but the bathroom is a mess, fixtures barely work, so this is definitely in the 2 star category. I like the picture of the Gateway Arch over the bed though.

Here is the Strava track to the train station in St. Louis.

Here is the Strava track from the train station in Kansas City to here in Lee's Summit.

KATY Trail 2023 - Getting There

Max and I are going to ride the KATY trail across Missouri. I'm writing this on the Amtrak train to Kansas City. This is basically a college visit road trip, where I convinced Max he should check out Washington University in St. Louis so I would have an excuse to ride the KATY. Might as well since we are out there anyway, right?

We were also going to visit the University of Chicago and Northwestern, which I talked them into doing on the weekend which just happens to be the Chicago Blues Fest. Might as well go to Blues Fest since we are out there anyway, right?

I drove out to Chicago on Wednesday, and Max and Debra flew out on Sunday morning, because Max had training for his summer job on Saturday. So I got three days of Blues Fest, and Max and Debra only got to go on Sunday. Debra flew home last night.

My base for the Chicago visit was my sister's house. She lives in Winnetka, which is an hour north of downtown Chicago.

Winnetka is a crazy place. Friday was the last day of school. They have a tradition of holding a community festival in the village park for the kids on the last day, which is really nice. But in Winnetka, the festival included camel rides.

On Saturday, we went to the Farmer's Market, where I got these fabulous treats (which I plan to make for myself with food from my garden.

Bread and butter Jalapenos are brilliant!

The Blues Fest was fantastic, I have wanted to go for years and years. It's in Millenium Park by The Bean.

There are three stages. The main stage is a huge seating bowl, with a giant lawn behind it. It has an impeccable sound system. There are two additional temporary side stages on either side of The Bean, the Visit Mississippi Juke Joint Stage, and the Rosa's Lounge stage, which is inside a big tent.

I explained to Max that the music sounded much better on the smaller stages since blues should be played very loud (and it sure was!) in front of an intimate audience, and not before a huge crowd in a fancy pavilion with a perfect sound system like it was a Taylor Swift concert or something. Max wore earplugs and said I am going to lose what hearing I have left.

The Blues Fest has amazing music. Here are some standouts:

1. Ivy Ford, my favorite act of the weekend:

She sure looks like she got lost on the way to Honfest in Baltimore and wound up in Chicago. This getup is great. Shimmy dress, jewels, crown, red sunglasses, POLKA DOT GUITAR! I wasn't sure what to expect here... Turns out she is an incredibly kick-ass guitar player, and she has a very, very strong voice which is not overwhelmed by her incredibly loud band. This was in the Rosa's lounge tent on Sunday, when it was 50 degrees and rainy out. It was plenty warm in the tent by the time her set was over! Ivy is only 30 years old...

2. Duwayne Burnside. He's from northern Mississippi, on the Juke Joint stage. He's the son of the RL Burnside, and he used to be in the North Mississippi All Stars. He did some great Mississippi primitive drone/stomp numbers, and a couple songs by his dad and by Junior Kimbrough. 

3. Dave Weld and the Imperial Flames, at Rosa's Lounge. This guy got his start playing with Little Ed and the Blues Imperials 30 years ago. Super high energy nonstop whaling away on his guitar. He was actually much better than Little Ed, who played on the main stage the next day. I now think of Little Ed as "Little Ed and his Geriatric Sidemen." I saw Little Ed 30 years ago, and it was like Dave Weld is now, not like Little Ed is now.

4. Lynne Jordan and the Shivers, also at Rosa's Lounge. She's an amazing singer with an amazing tight band. She did a great version of "I'd Rather Go Blind" by Etta James. I've seen Etta James, and Etta singing "I'd Rather Go Blind" is the best vocal performance I've ever witnessed in my life, so usually when somebody tries to do this song I am horrified because it will dilute my memory of Etta James. But Lynne Jordan can sing it. Other highlights were "Fine Brown Frame" from the 1940s, which Ruth Brown recorded, which is ostensibly about a woman who sells antique furniture. It goes "If I can't sell it, I'm going to sit on it, why should I give it away." Lynne Jordan had the whole crowd raucously singing along at the top of their lungs, it was awesome. 

She also paid tribute to Tina Turner with a couple of her later songs, including "Simply The Best." Note that Ivy Ford also paid tribute to Tina, but Ivy did not mess around and knocked it out of the park with "Proud Mary" while both singing like Tina and playing guitar like Ike.  (I've also seen Ike Turner live. He's an incredible guitar player, and also probably the most scary evil guy imaginable. If there was anybody you would believe sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads....)

5. Jontavious Willis. He performed on the main stage with just him and a standup bass player. He plays slide. Imagine if Elmore James showed up at Elvis Presley's Sun Studios sessions. This guy is only 24 years old. 

6. Vasti Jackson. He's a young guy from Mississippi, on the Juke Joint stage. He started shredding away before he finished climbing the steps onto the stage. Sometimes his guitar sounds like Hendrix, sometimes like Prince. The music is pure blues though. Except for the gratuitous I-can-do-stuff-besides-blues tune, which was Bob Marley reggae in his case.

Other performers that were very worth it were Mud Morganfield (Muddy Water's son), Little Ed and the Blues Imperials (Max's favorite), Los Lobos (legitimate blues/Chicano/Tex-Mex! not an 80's nostalgia act like you might think!), The Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra featuring Terrie Odabi (a real orchestra with horn section, on the big stage, as it should be).

There was sufficient food and drink on site, although they pretty much ran out of everything on Saturday when there were 70,000 people there. Food and drink was expensive, with a default 20% tip for ordering at a counter and this:

I'm looking forward to the day when proper wages and benefits for the workers are built in to the tab, and the profits for the vendor are an option added by the customer when paying.

Home from Maine 2022 Day 15 - Delta PA to Home

We have ridden home from Maine

The last day was one of the tougher ones. It was 53 miles and 3250 feet of climb. The weather was beautiful, and we overcame obstacles, persevered, and finished around 6 PM.

First thing we crossed into Maryland a couple miles from our motel.

We entered Harford county when we entered Maryland. Northern Harford County is quite hilly, and there are many nurseries that grow plants for landscaping.

Ten miles into the ride, Max yells at me to stop with concern in his voice. "Something is wrong." he says.

See if you can spot what is wrong in this picture.

His front derailleur cable is broken. Max asks "What do we do now?" This is not actually a big deal, I explain. You ride in your granny gear to a bike shop and we get a new cable. Then I told him a long story about how I once did a long randonneuring training ride and my rear derailleur spring broke 75 miles from the end and it was stuck in the biggest cog, and I only had 3 gears. At which point he became very bored and annoyed at me, but then we whipped out our phones and determined that there was a bike shop less than 5 miles away in Forest Hill, just north of Bel Air. 

We were pretty happy that a bike shop was so close and just off our route, and it wasn't that big a deal that we could only use the granny gear since it was really hilly, and we would have been in the granny gear anyway most of the time. But when we got there we discovered it was a motorcycle shop. This was annoying.

Whipping out the phones again, we determined that there was a bike shop that was actually for bicycles in downtown Bel Air in 5 more miles. And as special surprise bonus, half of the way there was the Ma and Pa bike path!



The Ma and Pa was the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, which is a very obscure railroad that was in operation until the 1950s. It went from Baltimore to York via Delta PA, and was famous for running extremely antiquated equipment. It carried milk and the mail. The Stony Run Walking Path that runs behind our Baltimore crash pad is the old Ma and Pa right of way. And today I learned a few miles of Ma and Pa right of way is a bike trail in Bel Air. It sure would have been great if the whole Ma and Pa was a bike trail, all the way from Delta to Baltimore. Then we wouldn't have had to ride up and down hills all day.

The bike shop in downtown Belair was indeed a bicycle shop.

Civic Cyclery is a really nice shop. They let me use a work stand and their tools to install the new cable and we were back on the road in no time.

The whole adventure of the broken shifter cable added three miles and no climbing to our ride, and maybe 2 hours due to riding in granny gear and making the repair.

Max spent the rest of the afternoon talking about getting a new bike.

From Bel Air, we took Harford Road the whole way into Baltimore, then we cut over to Belair Road where Harford is closed for construction by Lake Montebello. Belair Road becomes Gay Street, which means I got to stop and admire one of my favorite buildings in Baltimore.

The American Brewery. When I moved to Baltimore 35 years ago it was a ruin. There was a tree growing on the roof. I am so happy it is restored and beautiful.

Once past downtown, it was our usual route we use to ride back and forth to the crash pad, along Wilkins Ave, Southwestern Boulevard, and Washington Boulevard. 

It's nice to be home, but I'm always sad when a bike tour comes to an end.

And this was an epic bike tour. Here are some metrics:

Total distance - 723 miles.
Number of days - 16
Climb - 36000 feet
States - ME, NH, MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD
Flat tires - 2 for me, 3 for Max
Other repairs - Max: rebuild front hub, replace broken chain & cassette, replace broken shifter cable, replace both tires. Me: replace rear tire.

Camping: 3 nights
AirBnB: 4 nights

Historic hotels: 4 nights
Regular hotels: 1 night 
Cheap motels: 3 nights

Here is the final Strava track.

Home from Maine 2022 Day 14 - Pomeroy to Delta, PA

 It was a short day today, but very, very hilly. We are at the Peach Bottom Inn, which is an old, no-frills motel attached to a really nice restaurant.

There is nowhere else to stay for 30 miles in any direction, and from here it is 50 miles to home. This place is pretty much a required stop, and fortunately it is awesome.

The big part of the challenge for today is we crossed the Susquehanna River.

That means a ginormous climb out of the river valley. And then you have to cross a creek that brings you right back down to the level of the river and you get to climb out again.

We stopped to take this cool photo in the middle of the bridge because Max wrecked and dropped his bike. I braked for an expansion joint, and then hard for a couple potholes and Max ran into me. He's fine, just some road rash, but he was a bit shaken up and we took a break for awhile. This happens every bike tour. It's like despair. His bike is OK also.

 It's a bunch of ups and downs until you get to the river too. If only there were a rail trail from a railroad right of way that was purposely designed to have low grades.

On top of that bridge is the "Enola Low Grade Trail". Unfortunately, the trail surface is unimproved railroad ballast. It's not rideable on road bikes. So instead, it was endless ups and downs on the roads parallel to the perfectly level rail trail. 

The scenery here is fantastic, though. It's Amish country. There are lots of farms and vegetable gardens that are nicer than mine will ever be.

And baby calves by the side of the road in their little sheds. Awwww. They are so cute!

There were lots of Amish people out baling hay.

This is a really cool scene, and also totally irrational. What we have here is a team of draft horses pulling a hay baler. The hay baler has a gasoline motor running it. If you are allowed to have an engine running the baler, why not just get a tractor? This makes no sense. The team of draft horses is pretty cool though. Maybe it's all about having an excuse to have a team of draft horses.

Then there was another Amish highlight for today. In Maryland, there are lots of places that sell "Amish" mini-barns and chicken coops. "Amish" creates this vision of the hard-working, Godly Amish farmer out in the wood shop next to his barn, assembling chicken coops using hand tools and traditional joinery techniques. I bought such a chicken coop, which has no signs of traditional joinery or the use of hand tools. 

Guess what we rode by today!

The Amish chicken coop factory! That dark green coop to the right of the tree is identical to mine. I feel so validated on my cynicism regarding Amish chicken coops.

Here is the Strava track.

Home from Maine 2022 Day 13 - Montgomeryville to Pomeroy, PA

 We are at the Stottsville Inn, which is in the middle of nowhere. It's about 30 miles east of the Susquehanna River, a bit south of US 30.

<photo of end of ride>

This is an old country inn. It has rooms and a nice restaurant, where we ate last night. I'm glad places like this still exist. The restaurant was pretty busy, possibly due to it being Fathers day.

It was a fairly short ride yesterday. We went 47 miles. We are not that far from home, so we can have 3 shorter days or two longer days. We have chosen the shorter day option.

I didn't take many pictures. It was mostly bike trail and a long stretch on US 30, which is ugly and not fun. The bike trail is paved rail trail, and it's really nice. 

SEPTA, the Philadelphia commuter rail, goes clear out to Parkersburg, which is about 40 miles from Philly. The SEPTA stations have a lot of new development. There are entire new self-contained towns with a ton of condos and Targets and Walmarts and chain restaurants. We had lunch at one of these, by Exton, which was an actual entire outlet mall in addition to the Walmart and Target. I am still puzzled about how this works economically. There were pirogis at the restaurant we ate at, which is pretty cool.

Here is the Strava track.

Home from Maine 2022 Day 12 - Belvidere, NJ to Montgomeryville, PA

We are at the Rodeway Inn, in Montgomeryville, PA.
 

This is the only place with a room available on Saturday night, that is not over $400. My original plan was to stay in New Hope, but that turned out to be impossible on a Saturday.

While Max complains about me constantly going on about old buildings, it sinks in. He picked up on the dubious elements of the restoration someone did to the Belvidere Hotel where we stayed last night.

What is wrong with this picture? Vinyl siding. I was on the Howard County Historic Preservation Commission for seven years. I am so glad there is no plaque celebrating a restoration in HoCo that says "Historic Preservation Commission" mounted on a patch of vinyl siding. The whole hotel is covered with vinyl siding.

The porch railings are also vinyl. The porch floor is modern concrete pavers. The windows are modern replacement windows with muntin inserts between the panes. 

Max picked up on the inappropriateness and bad appearance of all the vinyl.

In defense of the Belvidere Hotel, Belvidere is a pretty small place, and it may well not be economically viable to restore this great big underused hotel properly. The hotel is probably not economically viable as it is. It's run by a really nice retired guy who is probably in his 80s. He's trying to sell it, and I hope he finds a good buyer.

We crossed the Delaware at Easton.

Easton is a really beautiful town. It was a nice welcome back to Pennsylvania.

There is good bike shop two blocks from the bridge. We stocked up on CO2 cartridges and inner tubes, and Max got a water bottle to replace the one he left at a restaurant a few days ago.

Since our finish town was in Montgomeryville, and no longer on the Delaware River, Max reworked our route to take advantage of a couple lengthy stretches of bike trail. We did about 8 miles of the D&L trail from Easton to Freetown, just before Bethlehem. the D&L was mostly canal towpath, and a bit of rail trail where the railroad once ran along the canal.

This trail is mostly crushed stone in great shape. However, there is this stretch about a mile of single track.

It was much easier to ride than it looked.

After the D&L, we did about 10 miles of the Saucon/Upper Bucks trail, starting in Hellerton. We had lunch at the Hellerton Crossroads Hotel, which is not a hotel and which had painfully slow service. 

These bike trails are a long easy climb out of the Lehigh Valley. They are very rideable crushed stone. This turned out to be an excellent route.

We got in pretty late as a result of the slow service at lunch, and because of a flat tire I got about 5 miles from the end. I botched the job of fixing the flat. Twice. I hate valve stem inserts. I ended up using 3 of the 4 CO2 cartridges I bought earlier in the day.

It was so late that we had dinner before checking in here at the Rodeway, at Michael's Family Restaurant.

Check it out! Max is eating a hamburger! There is a limit to how many times he can have pizza, it seems.

Here is the Strava track. 

Home from Maine 2022 Day 11 - Port Jervis, NY to Belvidere, NJ

 It was a hot one today, temperatures in the low 90s, and we knew it was going to be hot. And we knew that if we got going early, it would be a much pleasant day. However, somebody would not get out of bed until after 8 and we were not done with breakfast and on our bikes until nearly 10. It was hot.

First thing was to ride across the river to Pennsylvania.

We spent almost the entire day riding through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Over 40 miles, I think. We stayed on the Pennsylvania side, where the roads were allegedly paved, but there were miles of milled pavement awaiting resurfacing, which was not fun.

The Delaware Water Gap NRA is quite scenic, and the forest cover helps with the heat. There was not much traffic to deal with either. I would ride again. I did once before, about 25 years ago.

Max hit some road debris and got a pinch flat while descending into the Delaware Water Gap proper. We need to get to a bike shop tomorrow for tubes, and CO2 inflators, and a new water bottle to replace the one Max left in a restaurant a couple days ago. Max got to cool down by sitting under a shady tree while I fixed his tire. He's had 3 flats so far. I've had one.

Since we had just had a break, I proceeded past the much anticipated ice cream shop right before you get to the river. There was another one five miles further along. This did not make the boy happy. "I sure am hungry." "Bike touring is about despair, Dad." On and on.

Eventually, despair was overcome and now everyone is happy.

When we were done with the Delaware Water Gap, we switched over to the New Jersey side of the river.

There is a bike/ped bridge to go across.

And all of a sudden, the shoulders were wide and glassy smooth, and there was no milled pavement anywhere.

And just a few miles more later, we are in our lovely air conditioned historic hotel.

There is no restaurant in this one, so we walked a couple blocks for pizza and a calzone. The pizza place was the only place open where you could sit and eat.

The walk gave me a chance to admire some of the many cool old buildings in town. I especially liked these two old mills.

Max is very sick of me going on about cool old buildings. "Those are just barns, Dad." "No, look how they repaired the brick over the white door!"

The Strava track today is in two parts because I accidentally saved it instead of pausing it like I meant to when we stopped to fix Max's flat tire.

Part 1
Part 2