Post-trip
Spent: $514.91 (food) + $669.97 (lodging) + $56.51 (tire gauge, tour fee, donations, trail permit, laundry machines, tubes, compressed air) = $1,241.39 total for trip.
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Laurie and Bill left me as they went off to work the Friday morning after my last day riding. Using Laurie's laptop computer in the quiet house (the cats weren't snoring), I completed my final day report, though it took all day. When they returned home, we had pizza for supper. Bill and I ate ours in Bill's "ham shack". Bill is an amateur radio operator, with call sign "K9EAR" – my dad's old call. While we ate, Bill checked-in with a local amateur radio net. It was fun to hear "K9EAR" back on-the-air. A visit to Bill and Laurie's isn't complete without a stop at Andy's Frozen Custard, and we made that trip later in the evening.
Early the next morning, Bill took off to provide communications support for a local bike ride for MS. On Sunday, Bill was a sag driver for the second day of that event. It turns out those "MS with arrows" I saw painted on Lawrence County roads on my last day were for that biking fund-raiser. Back to Saturday morning. Laurie and I headed off to a nearby IHOP for breakfast. As we were served, Laurie reminded me that I didn't need to take a picture of what I was eating that morning.
I finally got started on my drive back home, after a good-bye hug. Following secondary roads (making it one of my eight-hour trips), I crossed the Mississippi River at Louisiana, Missouri, and the Illinois River at Florence, Illinois. Beautiful old bridges, but neither is bicycle-friendly. This was a fun drive on a pleasant, sunny, puffy-clouds-here-and-there day. And the best part was having my wife greeting me when I arrived home.
I have lots to be thankful for. Thanks go to Bill and Laurie for letting me use their home as my home-base for this trip. I'm especially thankful for Laurie picking me up at the end. Kris once again stood-by for report-posting assistance, which was gratefully received for the Day 19 entry. Many encouraging text and email messages were received from both Laurie and Kris, as well as from my father-in-law and others. I'm thankful also to have experienced so many welcoming acts of kindness from those I met in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
Credits go to these websites: GPS Babel and GPS Visualizer, which I used to process GPS data, and especially, thanks to Crazy Guy on a Bike, which provides this free platform for me to share my touring adventures.
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