Mike and I were up and ready to leave the hostel by 7am. We wished the other cyclist well on his last day eastwards and locked the place up and placed the key back on the telephone phone. What an interesting little hostel.
Mike was riding across the country on a shoe-string budget for himself, he usually ate ramen and peanut butter and juggled for money when his funds got low. I admired the courage it takes to go out on a cross-country cycling trip without money set aside, but as he and I found out, people are extremely generous to touring cyclists and he got a lot of help from those he met.
Mike wanted to get down to Tulsa in time for the Woody Guthrie event, so he wanted to try and get the KATY done in 2 more days, and I was fine with putting in the extra miles if it meant I could spend the time cycling and talking with someone. His tires had seen better days, their treads were separating off the tire and desperately needed to be replaced.
We reached a small town of McBaine around lunch time and decided to take a 9 mile detour into Columbia so Mike could purchase new tires at one of the bike shops. Lucky for us there was a rail trail spur that took us to the center of the city before we had to go back onto pavement.
We made our way to Walt's, a very nicely stocked bicycle shop, and Mike was able to get 2 new tires for his bike at 1/3rd off after telling the shop guy how he was riding for charity. Afterwards we hit up a Subway for lunch and Mike treated me as he was given some Subway gift cards from someone he stayed with previously.
With the hot 100+ temps and the sun beating down, we cycled over to the city library and hung out inside for almost 3 hours till 6pm, trying to seek shelter from the hottest part of the day. We left as they were closing and took the spur back down to the KATY trail and pushed ahead into the evening.
We hoped to make it to Pilot Grove before dark as they had free camping to cyclists in their park, but by the time we got to Boonville it was past dark and we decided that we'd stop to rest and figure out if we wanted to go farther or not. The call of a beer was too tempting to ignore after a 2nd day of long riding in this heat, and not wanting to leave our bikes outside a bar in this more urban town, we grabbed a few beers from a gas station and went to the KATY trailhead and sat down in the dark had a drink and some late night dinner.
After two beers, I was feeling pretty good, and Mike and I decided to just bike ahead a little ways to find someplace off the trail to camp. I put my headlamp back on and we biked slowly into the night. About 3 miles or so later we found a nice grassy area off the trail and decided this would be the place, parked our bikes and threw up our tents, and passed out.
Start: Tebbetts, MO
End: Boonville, MO
Distance: 87.78 miles
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