July 10, 2012
Day 25: Chariton, IA to Allerton, IA
(By Joy)
The Royal Rest Motel had given us what we wanted—air conditioning and proximity to a gas station for lots of drinks and snacks, but it was (guess what?) hot as we left in the morning. In “if you can't beat them, join them” fashion, we had decided to stop trying to beat the heat (that plan wasn't working anyway) and have a leisurely breakfast at a coffee shop in town. We also knew we had a shorter day planned, so we didn't get a bag of ice. That turned out to be a bad decision...
Our route out of Chariton was to be on the Cinder Path, Iowa's first rails to trails conversion from back in the 1970s. We loved the path, at first. It was shady, and even though some of the trail structures were in need of some repair, particularly a few of the bridges, the surface was pretty good and there were plenty of things to photograph. Jeff stopped on one bridge to take a picture of his bike, but it had no guardrails, and I was afraid it was perched pretty close to the edge. He quickly took the pictures he wanted and gingerly got the bike back on solid ground.
The trail has its own covered bridge, but not long after that, it started getting a bit rougher and more overgrown and tougher to ride, so we were happy to see a pop machine in the tiny town of Derby. The Gatorade we got from the machine was so cold that it was slushy, so we took a break at the nice town park and contemplated whether we could camp there. Since it was barely 10:30, though, since we'd done only 12 miles, and since we had reservations for a place with air conditioning up the road, we decided to push on up the trail.
Leaving Derby, the trail was a strip of mowed grass and kind of hard to ride on, but soon we were back in the woods. We were starting to question whether the trail actually saw much use when there was a downed tree across the trail that had clearly been there a while, but we pushed on as the trail became weedier and weedier and was soon more like an idea of a trail than an actual trail. I was once again thankful for my high bottom bracket that kept my legs out of the worst of the dry, scratchy weeds, but as we stopped in the shade for a break, the brand new tube in my brand new front tire suddenly popped and immediately went flat. It wouldn't hold any air, so Jeff held the bike up while I took off the tire and soon found that the problem was that the bike shop had used the wrong sized tube in the tire. There was a big hole in the tube by the valve where it failed. I was very lucky it blew while we were just sitting there instead of going downhill at 30 mph, but it was still annoying to have to change it so soon. I should have changed the tire myself back in Chariton where I could have done it in our air conditioned motel, but I was tired and decided to pay them to do it. Big mistake. (They did refund the tube and installation charge, but they shouldn't have made that mistake in the first place.)
Soon after we got the tube replaced, though, the weeds started getting taller and taller and were towering even over my head. I could see only glimpses of Jeff's yellow jersey through the vegetation up ahead. At first, it was kind of an adventure and we were trying to press on to the end of the trail just to say we did the whole thing since it obviously doesn't get much use, but eventually, the surface returned to mowed grass, and I was averaging something like 5 mph on it, so we took a detour off the trail onto a gravel road and into Humeston.
Humeston's city park has a campground, and I availed myself of the water pumps there to get totally wetted down for the last 17 miles of the day, which would be mostly in the sun. Because of where we were staying, we had to ride on US 65 for a bit, but the traffic count was fairly low, according to our Iowa bike map, and avoiding it meant adding 10 or more miles, so we just went for it and pulled off to ride on the wide gravel shoulder when we saw a big truck coming. That brought us to Liberty Road, which must be Old Highway 2, one of the quietest roads of our trip so far, but I was getting hot and stopped in the shade a couple of times to try to cool down and to reapply sunscreen that seemed to be dripping off my face instead of staying where it was supposed to be.
The last few miles of the day, though, into Allerton were very tough. I was very hot, pushing hard to get there where we could get out of the heat, and facing a headwind while dealing with the most traffic we'd seen in a while during a nearby factory's shift change. I started not feeling well about a mile from town but I didn't want to stop since what I needed was in town and stop for the day. Jeff said I didn't look too good when I got there, so he grabbed me a Powerade and I got a slush and sat down to cool off. Some rude customer of the gas station we'd pulled into tried to start a conversation with me by loudly telling me, “You got burnt!” I assured her I wasn't burnt—just hot. She agreed that it was, in fact, hot outside. One thing that's gotten on our nerves a bit during the trip is listening to people complain about the heat when they're only out in it to get from their air conditioned house to their air conditioned car and then from their air conditioned car to the air conditioning in wherever they're going. Whenever we got to a gas station to buy ice and drinks, it was us and the construction and agricultural workers getting ice to try (usually unsuccessfully) to beat the heat.
I finally recovered enough to make it the final three blocks to the Inn of the Six-Toed Cat, where we were the only guests. The proprietor gave us an upgrade on our reservation, and we spent the rest of the afternoon getting cleaned up and rehydrated. We eventually moved away from the air conditioner and back to the gas station for an unsatisfactory dinner, then it was back to the AC where Jeff pounded out a few journal entries and I worked on modifying our route to see how to get from air conditioned place to air conditioned place in fewer miles on our way to the Katy Trail and then home.
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Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 1,054 miles (1,696 km)
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