Day 20: Chillicothe to Kirksville, Missouri 82 miles. something beyond 5000 feet of climbing (depending on who's Garmin you believe)

This was the day everyone warned us about.  The 300+ hills we'd be climbing today.  I'm so glad it's over.

The bright, blue skies of the morning gave way to clouds, winds and a light drizzle by the end of the day's ride.

The day started as a sunny, cool morning with temperatures in the upper 50's when we rode out of Chillicothe.  Only five miles into the ride, we had an omen of how strange the day would go.  The bridge road that crossed railroads tracks and would take us out of town was under construction.  Some quick thinking by the ride leaders got us on a parallel road and we were soon back on course.

We got some sad news about an hour into the ride.  Two dogs were chasing Franz and Louie, two of the faster Dutch riders, through a fairly quiet intersection out in pasture lands.  The chase actually caused both riders to miss their turn off onto yet another of the alphabet soup of county roads.  Twenty minutes later, when many of the rest of us came up to that same intersection, one of the dogs was lying by the side of the road, apparently having just been hit by a car.  The owners were on the scene and soon were carrying the dog to a local vet.  Hopefully, it survived.  Franz and Louie finally figured out where they were and recovered the route.

This is an example of the Barn Art I've been riding by for days.  Finally stopped to take a picture.

No more than ten minutes after everyone left our first SAG stop, an annual pilgrimage to a local convenience store called PB5, so named because it sits at the intersections of County Roads P and B and State Road 5, the sun disappeared, the winds shifted from WNW to due North and the temperatures dropped about ten degrees.  According to one of the riders with a Garmin, the average temperature for today's ride was only 61 degrees.  And with strong crosswinds, it felt much colder than that.  We normally hope to avoid the hot Missouri summer temperatures.  No one expected this cold weather today.

I've seen these plastic-wrapped bales of hay and couldn't figure out how they did that.  Turns out it's just like making sausage, only with bales of hay.  The irony in all this is that the cows who eat all this hay will, themselves, be turned into sausages!

While the nearby park is called "Thousand Hills Park," the best guess (done by a rider two years ago and taken as gospel by all rider leaders henceforth) is that we rode over 300 hills today. The elevation route map for today's ride looks more like a seismograph of an earthquake.  This afternoon, there were a number of riders all comparing their Garmin readouts with each other.  The consensus was that the total climb was over 5000 feet and that we faced way too many 12-14% grades on the steepest climbs.  Two riders said they registered a 15% gradient at the same climb, but it was barely a 30-feet stretch along the entire climb.  It's amazing when you are thankful for a mere 8% or 9% gradient!

Isn't that just like a man…to hide behind a woman!

The steepness of some of those climbs really fooled me much of the day.  As I'm riding along the road, I can sense the ease of the tires rolling on the pavement.  Smooth pavement means I'll get another mile per hour or so on my speed.  Chip/seal pavement means I'll lose a couple of miles per hour.  When I'm climbing, I'm trying to gauge which gear to be in so as to make the climb up the hill the most productive.  Not having a Garmin, I can only sense what the road feels like as well as what I perceive the incline to be.  However, on many occasions today, I thought I'd either gotten a flat tire or that I was just losing my energy as I was struggling so to get up certain climbs.  Turns out, those were the 12-14% climbs.  Also turns out, everyone else I spoke to after today's ride had the same sensation.  You're pedaling as hard as you can and it just feels as though you're still not moving.

The one most remembered moment during today's ride was not the climbs.  Instead, it was during a bit of downhill run when four hawks were circling over my head.  I've been seeing hawks flying nearby for days now.  But today, they seemed to be playing with me.  The four would circle in front of me, then take an updraft, then swoop down again, always about 25 feet in front of me.  This cycle repeated itself about three or four times.  While the sun was still out, it was a spectacle to see these majestic birds so close.  There was no way I could stop and take a picture that would do justice to what I was seeing right in front of me.  As I came to the end of the descent and started up yet another climb, they flew off, done with their play time.

Tomorrow, we cross the Mississippi River into Illinois.  Another 90+ mile day.