Well, the big ride is over. I don’t believe I suffered any permanent physical damage, other than a severely bruised backside, which will hopefully heal some day. And, I think I may have left all my knee cartilage somewhere in Jefferson City. I will offer up a short synopsis here; pictures will have to wait until they are gathered from all sources.<\/p>\n
DAY 1<\/strong><\/p>\n Thursday morning we woke up bright and early in Sedalia, at the luxurious Best Western. We were out the door by 7:30, pedaling by 8:00. The weather was great, the birds were singing, and spirits were generally high. We hammered along the trail at a rather brisk clip, and made good time into Boonville for our lunch break. I had my first hint of trouble when I got off my bike… “Hey, I don’t feel too zippy.” It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch on Wednesday, and that perhaps this was not good planning on my part. No biggie, I’ll chow some lunch and everything will be cool. This was the beginning of the end for ol’ Phil. I picked at my burger for a bit, hoping not to throw up in the middle of the restaurant. Then we got back on the trail, and that’s when things really took a turn for the worst. We were pedaling merrily along the trail when I got a little twinge in my right leg. “Uh-oh, shoulda stretched out a little,” I thought. About 30 seconds later I got an absolutely paralyzing charlie horse in my right thigh. Through the blinding pain, I managed to stop, somehow get my foot out of the pedal, and put my weight on my left leg. This resulted in the same cramp in my left<\/strong> thigh. Man, it HURT<\/strong>. Naturally, some joker comes riding up right then. Probably one of three people we saw all day and he has to roll up just when I’m near death. He brilliantly greets me with “Hey, how’s it going?” Well let me see… I’m laying in the middle of a gravel trail, thrashing around like I’ve been maced, muttering incoherently. My face is clenched in pain, and both my thighs are visibly spasming like something out of the Aliens movie. “Oh, I’m doing great, thanks.” By this time the other guys were 200 yards up the trail, and I could see them fumbling furiously for their cameras, so I had to struggle back to my feet and get back on my bike. The worst part was, we were only half-way into the ride… Still had 40 stinking miles to go. I never did recover either. I can easily label that day “The Single Worst Bike Ride Of My Life,” if not just plain “The Single Worst Day Of My Life.” Every time I tried to go over 12 mph, the cramps would come back, and no amount of water, food, or bad language would make it go away. I literally hated each and every turn of the pedal. Not to mention the other guys had to rock-paper-scissors all afternoon for who was going to hang back with my dead butt. It was a painful and miserable experience at best, excruciatingly humiliating at worst.<\/p>\n DAY 2-3<\/strong><\/p>\n After Thursday, I would term Friday and Saturday rousing successes. I did have what I termed my “Malady of the Day”: Namely my back on Thursday and my knees and butt on Saturday. Tolerable ailments though, compared to Thursday. The weather could not have been better on any of the days, aside from pretty solid head winds. We had a few “interesting moments,” like the bizarre Bed and Breakfast Lady the first night, and the “Bridge Dash of Death” at Hermann. There weren’t any other major incidents though, other than Todd’s bike breaking down in Hartsburg. The local mechanic performed the last rites on it, and gave him an awesome Pee Wee Herman rental to ride for the next two days. This performed the dual function of 1) forcing him to ride all the way to St. Charles with us, and 2) providing us endless amusement watching him ride it. All in all, I am pretty sure I had a good time. The total damage was 201 miles when Doni and Dakin picked us up in St. Charles. Three weeks from now, it could well be the best thing I’ve ever done; Get back with me when I quit hurting. Will we do it again? Well, that also remains to be seen. I do feel that I am somewhat wiser for the experience, and I am now qualified to offer up these tidbits of trail wisdom: Well, the big ride is over. I don’t believe I suffered any permanent physical damage, other than a severely bruised backside, which will hopefully heal some day. And, I think I may have left all my knee cartilage somewhere in Jefferson City. I will offer up a short synopsis here; pictures will have to wait […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nWell that’s kind of a long entry so I will have to detail the rest of the weekend later. Obviously I have skipped some detail of the trip, but “What happens on the trail, stays on the trail.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"