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The first days are the hardest [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-28  

Months after being hit by an SUV, fortunately with only minor physical injuries, thanks a lot to my helmet, Busta and I got back on the repaired bicycle and new trailer, survived a tip over in the second mile, and got back on again to ride for the Katy Trail, the longest developed rail-trail in the United States, and part of a growing network of increasingly connected opportunities to bicycle around the country.

Feeding mosquitos

It was late May in Missouri. We could ride until around 9 pm in daylight. Plus the the moon would be nearly full. Batteries were charged and we have lights. We left home after 6 pm, got through the city, and crossed the Missouri River just after sunlight faded in the west. The goal was to set up camp along the trail. Greens Bottom was a good place to try just a few miles in.

Tomorrow was a low mileage day, 27-32. We just needed rest to prepare for 5-6 hours on the bike. So, I thought maybe I could cut a camping corner to make it even easier the night before. This brilliance saved maybe an hour of unpacking, setting up and packing the tarp. I stuck the shade cloth to the ground with a couple of tent pegs on one side, draped the other side over the bicycle and trailer, laid our ground cover underneath, and plopped down for a night of rest.

What's left of Busta after mosquitos got their fill

This flimsy design did little more than beckon clouds of mosquitos swarming in to take blood. There were so many mosquitos that it seemed as if they were trying to carry us into the woods to complete the draining. Clearly, my next notable mistake since tipping the trailer in the city was to think that we could get by with minimal coverage from a shade cloth. Plus, in all of my gear, I didn’t think to carry mosquito repellent.

I huddled as best I could under light covers while Busta laid out exposed. The mosquitos were voracious. Neither of us could have nodded off more than a few minutes.

We lost sleep and blood that night.

Paying the price

Marthasville, I told myself. We could make it 32 miles to Marthasville on day two. There were good places to stop along the way. Defiance, Augusta and Dutzow have restaurants and ice water a block off the trail. Should have been easy. The first 15 miles through Defiance before 10 am seemed that way. It was early enough that the restaurants looked closed. We were down to our last two liter bottle of water, and halfway to Dutzow. We could make it there for a 1 o’clock lunch, I thought. I didn’t pull off to look for water refills. That was my next mistake. I had to relearn the hard way not to push without confidence in supplies.

When we are feeling good, we cover three miles in under a half hour. When we are tired, we can still go three miles an hour. I can walk the bicycle and trailer for that long if I have to. I can stop, roll out the ground cover and rest for as long as I feel like it. The prerequisite being that we have to have water.

We passed Augusta before noon. Didn’t see anything open. Should have tried to fill a water bottle at the trailhead. Don’t know why I didn’t. Lack of sleep probably wasn’t helpful for responding to dehydration, but I still had a few drinks left, along with an apple. It was less than eight miles to Dutzow, where the Dutzow Deli is right on the trail.

I am aware enough to stop and take breaks throughout the day. I’ll pedal for a while, stop, take a drink and stretch for a minute. The less perky we feel, the more we stop.

We finished our water somewhere about 6-7 miles short of Dutzow. It was afternoon, getting warm, and that stretch of trail goes past some beautiful sunny fields. I was keeping Busta in the trailer most of the time due to the sun and lack of water.

Less than five miles to Dutzow, I went downhill pretty quickly, and not in a good way. I went from striving for miles between breaks to giving all I had for hundreds of meters between stops and bites of apple. If I had water, I could stop any time. Without water, all of my focus and effort had to be making it to Dutzow. Fortunately, I wasn’t cramping up, yet. Still, the exhaustion and dehydration caught up with me. I hit the wall. The last five miles to Dutzow took two hours.

Rest and rain

The Dutzow Deli closed at 2 pm. We arrived after that, but there were still a couple of people working inside. Lucky for us, they opened the door, filled our water bottles and let me buy a prepackaged sandwich, soda and dessert.

Having barely made it to Dutzow. I dropped the plan for Marthaville and set up to rest in Dutzow, this time with the tarp tent.

We have good cover when we unfold the 10 by 20 foot tarp, roll the bike and trailer over one end and wrap us all up in the tarp. All it takes is a few velcro straps to secure, a couple of plastic shelf legs to act as tent poles, and a couple of tent pegs or weight to pull it out and make space inside.

We ate and drank. I set up camp. We rested, at last. Sometime after dark, it started raining. The tarp tent was keeping us dry. I wasn’t worried.

Then the rain runoff started flowing. That is when I noticed that I set up in a low spot at the bottom of an incline. We were going to be in the middle of two inches of water.

Here is the bicycle and trailer covered by tarp and shade cloth. It works pretty good when I take the hour to set it up on high ground.

After a bit of muttering and wishful thinking, I came to terms with the fact that I had to take up my tent and everything on the ground. I piled it all on my bicycle, trailer and the trailhead benches. Then, me and Busta watched from the benches as the storm went through and filled our camping spot with water.

With all of the water on the ground, I could see that 10 feet made the difference between dry ground and the wading pool. I sat on the bench regretting my mistake and wondering if we would have another sleepless night.

Sometime after midnight, I made the wise and fateful decision to set up the tent again. I was exhausted, but couldn’t rest without laying down. I wasn’t going to make the shade cloth mistake with mosquitos again. I took the time and wrapped us up in the tarp again. It must have been after 2 am when we laid down to sleep.

Another day, another rain

People started using the trailhead in the morning. We laid down as long as we could before getting up to clean up our stuff. It’s a small town, and the few people we encountered at the trailhead all kindly spoke with us about the trail, our destination, and weather.

I was feeling much better. With sunset around 9 pm, there was no hurry to leave. We packed up and had a nice big lunch at the Dutzow Deli. Busta and I relaxed on their nice porch as we ate and drank our fills.

Then, rain clouds blew over. There was no point in leaving before they passed. We sat and watched more rain until about two in the afternoon. It was getting late to start.

Here we were, three days in. We survived two exhausting nights. It looked like there would be rain most days over the next week. One storm just passed over us. Our stuff was still mostly dry. Could we keep it that way?

It was mid-afternoon. One way was towards home. We could make it back home in a couple of days, and be satisfied with an 80 mile round trip over several days. The other was was further down the trail into unknown weather, uncertain in how many miles we could ride. The Pedaler’s Jamboree was in three days. If we could cover the 100 miles to get there for the start, then we might be able to enjoy the festival with thousands of other bicycling enthusiasts. But home was the other way. I have too much work to take much time away. Family needs me too. Was getting out worth risking days of soaking in rain and being eaten by mosquitos?

Which way, home or the unknown?

Which way should we go? Which way did we go? That will be in the next part.

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