Day 17 – Carbondale, KY to Farmington, MO

So they say you should enjoy the journey, not the destination. Today, we crossed the Mississippi, which was mostly enjoyable. Otherwise, I’m not sure this part of the journey is something I’ll look back fondly on. Hint: rain is a bummer.

Somehow, when I looked at the weather last night, it looked like we might get a few passing showers but otherwise it would be a nice, cool day. I woke up, got dressed, and went to the lobby of the hotel for breakfast. “Ready to get rained on?” JP asks… You’ve got to be kidding me. We check the radar and sure enough, the low pressure center that was sitting just to our east yesterday was still there. And now it’s ramped up. It’s going to be rain all day. Awesome.

It was only sprinkling when we geared up to leave. You can see below I was all decked out in full rain gear. JP was the same. I honestly thought about taking some rain gear off before we left. Within the first 10 minutes, the sky officially opened up and I was glad to be all dressed up.

So it rained. And rained. and rained. Oh, and there was wind too. We were hoping to put 100 miles in today but that was clearly in jeopardy from the moment we started. Our route took the “Mississippi Levee” path, which while a few miles longer is very flat and runs along the flats near the river. About 20 miles in to the ride, the route cuts down in to the levee area and that’s where things got exciting. There was a flood warning for the area and as more rain fell the situation started to get a bit more tense. As it turns out, a lot of water flows in to the Mississippi and the area near the river is really flat. As we rode through the rain, it was clear there was water places where water normally shouldn’t be… like, right up to the road.

At one point, there was a section of road covered in earthworms…. like you know that smell when you open a container of worms that you bought at a bait shop? Imagine that times 100.. cars running over them, wind blowing the stench around. Seriously, it wasn’t pleasant.

About 35 miles in, JP and I SAG’d our way out of the levee area. The roads were deteriorating and honestly I didn’t want to deal with flooded roads if I didn’t have to. So we got back up on to IL Rt 3. It turns out, that’s a major road for heavy truck traffic going back and forth across the river. As we rode up 3 towards our river crossing, we encountered more and more standing (and running) water on the side of the road. After battling that situation for about 30 minutes, we decided it was too dangerous to be on the roads. Between the rain, wind, blind corners, ponding water, and heavy trucks doing 60+ mph in each direction, it was seriously time to get off the road.

We SAG’d up to Chester IL for lunch. For those that don’t know Chester is the home of Popeye. How do we know? The signs they had everywhere and the statue of Popeye of course!

While we were in the RV talking about next steps, JP said “I’m crossing the river with my bike today even if I have to walk over the bridge.” So that was that. After lunch we jumped on our bikes (and back in to our cold, wet shoes) and headed for the bridge.

It was still raining, it was still windy, and there still more trucks than seemed physically possible, but we rode our butts across the Mississippi river. I’ll be honest, I really didn’t take time to enjoy the scenery… I scooted across that bridge as quick as I could 😉

Here’s the sign as proof. Mr. Blurry Cam at work again.

Safe to say JP was stoked to make it to Missouri. That’s a nice shower cap he’s got, eh?

It’s unfortunate because on a nice day this would probably have been an amazing beautiful ride. But since we’re on a schedule to make it to DefCon and beyond, we can’t really take unexpected rest days. So we pulled the belts tight and went for it. I said at the beginning of this post that I wouldn’t look back fondly on this day. That’s a lie. Days like today are what I’ll remember. It kicked our asses and we didn’t hit the mileage we wanted, but it sure as hell was memorable.

Tomorrow, the weather man says it’ll be cloudy and cool. I’m getting my rain gear ready just in case.