Ok. Today was/is pretty nasty. I got as far as Rolla, Missouri and had to call it quits. I’ve never ridden in rain this heavy. They’re saying that some places got 5″ of rain. That is ridiculous.

But let’s begin where I left off this morning. At Panera.

The skies looked a bit threatening and there seemed to be some storms on the horizon. According to the weather, maybe a storm around 1pm. No problem. I’ll ride through it and live to tell the tale.

And for awhile, it was a really nice ride. I checked out the town of Eureka. Not much there. It looked like they took a lot of pride in it and it was nice, but nothing for me, really. But the ride to the next town, Pacific, was nice.

Where they cut away parts of the mountain to make the road, there are caves. That sentence was weirdly worded. Sorry. But there are caves, nonetheless. It was pretty cool.

Rittenburg¹ said that there was a historical marker here describing that the Confederates came to this point. The marker is now gone. I wonder what happened to it.

He also mentions there being an overlook with stairs going up to it. I’m betting that’s where the caves are. This area will now be a strip mall, ok?

I passed Gray Summit, where Old, old 66 and Old New 66 meet. I was on Old New 66, by the way. My original directions had me going the Old Old 66 alignment, so I was a bit out of sorts. Also, for some odd reason, Historic 66 isn’t marked. There were no signs.

I finally figured it out, taking a picture of a funky old motel sign while doing it. Off in the distance I could see the clouds getting thicker. But the weather guy said no rain till 4ish. It was about 11.

The stretch of 66 between Gray Summit and St. Clair has some lovely curves. There’s a section of it that slides away from the interstate. A few old motels and a dead gas station or two make the ride a bit more memorable than not.

Which is nice, because not too much farther down the road, Route 66 becomes nothing more than a boring frontage road. The interstate is mere feet from it.

In St. Clair, I stopped at R & R Ace Hardware to get an extension cord for camping tonight. The weather guy said that there wouldn’t be too much in the way of rain over night. No problem. I’m ok with rain over night. Just not when I’m trying to set up the tent. Give me 10 minutes and then you can rain all you please. Till morning, when I need 10 more minutes to strike the tent.

Just west of Stanton, around 11:30, the skies took to looking mighty nasty. Several rather large bolts of lightening stretched from black clouds to the ground. You could literally see the rain falling from them.

It wasn’t anywhere near 4pm. Did the storm come early? Did it expand? I had no way of telling. So I pulled over, quickly through on my rain gear and rode into what I knew was going to be a pretty big storm. However, I thought, storms out here are quick. They last a few minutes, maybe a half hour and they’re gone, replaced by sunshine like you’ve never seen before!

That’s not exactly how it happened today. About two miles later, I was in a heavy down pour. My face shield fogged up (or perhaps it was my glasses), but it didn’t matter anyway because the rain was so hard, I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t really pull over anywhere because both sides of the road were basically rivers. I slowed down and kept on going.

The rain gear certainly helps. Without it, I would be soaked head to toe within minutes (within seconds in this rain). But it’s not very tight around the wrists. I’m not really sure what to do about that, but the sleeves of my jacket and my shirt were dripping wet almost immediately.

By the time I reached Cuba, around noon, the rain has slowed to just a steady deluge. There was no wind, thank god. But riding in a driving rain is tiring. I figured that it couldn’t last long. This was a wave. Once it passes, we’ll have some sun and sure, maybe it will rain again, but that’s ok.

Cuba has a ton of great murals. I wanted to take pictures of all of them, but the rain was making my camera suddenly shut off. I’m not surprised and it does seem to be working fine now, but I had to keep taking it out and it was getting rained upon. I did take a picture of every Civil War mural in Cuba, though.

[As I’m writing this, my camera is now turning itself on and off as if having a mind of its own. This is not a good sign.]

Of course, just after Cuba, rain or no rain, I had to stop and take Ruby’s picture under the largest rocking chair in the universe. The people at the store next to it were looking at me in a bit of disbelief. The rain was pretty heavy at this point. My helmet isn’t totally waterproof, but it does ok. And now my boots were proving just how not waterproof they are. I’m not sure what to do about that.

Route 66 takes a break from being the interstate’s kid sister in St. James, taking you through the town itself. Or rather, it would if there wasn’t a lot of construction. So back to the frontage road for me.

Here, the rain began to fall harder than any rain I’ve ever ridden through before.

Just before the town of Rolla, I stopped in a Love’s Truck Stop. They had a Subway and it would be nice to wait out the storm there.

I walk through the doors and the follow at the counter, in a thick southern accent, asks where I was coming from. “St. Louis,” was my reply. He tells me that the worst is over and that it should be ok soon, if I’m heading west.

Perfect. Just what I wanted to hear. I head for the bathroom, take off the rain gear and found a weird cologne vending machine. It was creepy. I dried off a bit and then ordered a veggie sub at Subway. I figured that by the time I was done with this, it would all be ok and I’d be on my way to Lebanon, roughly 60 or 70 miles west of here.

Well after eating the sub, things were a bit different than I had hoped. I walked to the window and it was somehow raining even harder than it was before. I wasn’t sure that such a thing was possible, but trust me - a VERY hard rain.

A waited about an hour. Nothing. And the Weather Channel on one of the display TVs in the truck stop said that it was going to rain basically forever.

It was about 3:30 and the rain, while far from stopping, wasn’t nearly as driving. I threw on the rain gear and managed to pull together the last bits of desire to ride another 60 miles and mounted up.

About a mile down the road, and roughly a mile to the town of Rolla, the rain picked up, my face shield fogged over, as did my glasses. I threw open the face shield in a pointless attempt to see anything.

It helped a bit, I could see. But all I could see was that the road was taking a weird uphill bend and that a good section of the road was buckling.

The shoulder was gone. There was a wash, filled with about a six inches of rushing water. I leaned a bit, out of the curve, to escape it, but leaning out of a banked curve in a monsoon with fogged over face shield and rain-blinded glasses isn’t as easy as you might think.

And a second later, Ruby and I were bouncing along the “cliff” of the road which quickly disintegrated into a rather large and muddy ditch.

Somehow I managed to keep the rubber side down, so we were both safe. However, we were both also sinking. I revved the engine and the real wheel just spun in the thick Missouri clay.

I was lucky, in a way. If I would have entered the ditch a bit earlier, I would have stuck the front wheel in the much larger gully and flown over the handle bars. Lucky me.

Now what?

The adrenalin was pumping, so I figured that I better take advantage of it. I grabbed the rear of the bike, but nothing. I could move the front wheel, but that didn’t help anything.

A few cars passed, the drivers craning their necks to see the scooterist clearly in a distressed state.

I tried to move the rear again. Nothing.

Thankfully, a family in a pick up truck stopped and their 14 year old boy and I were able to move the rear wheel just enough that I could get some traction on the wet stones. I’d rev the engine and she’d move an inch or so. We did this for about five minutes until I was up and on both wheels.

I thanked them over and over (as one should), took a few pictures and figured that this kind of thing was bound to happen. I reapplied the Cat Crap de-fogger stuff to my face shield and glasses (not a fun task in a heavy rain). But it helped.

It got us into Rolla, but while I wasn’t fogging up, the rain drops were sticking like snot to the front of the shield. I was blind again. If I lifted the shield, my glasses would be covered, if I let it down, I couldn’t really see.

In utter frustration, I pulled over in front of the Rustic Motel. I thought about it for about five seconds and registered at the office.

And that is where I am now. Room 120, if anyone cares to visit.

Today was crap. Pure, utter crap. I saw basically nothing. Rode only about 100 miles and am still 60 (ugh, maybe more) away from Lebanon - my goal for the night. Missing out on my daily goal is no big deal, but I really just wasn’t ready for this much rain.

Luckily, most of my bags are waterproofish. Though this amount of rain makes even waterproof things rethink such claims. My camera seems to be dead. There are three or four Chinese places in town and I REALLY want tofu, but It’s still pouring and all my gear is drying out.

Today can rot in hell.

Here are my pics.

Miles traveled: 101
Miles total: 1457

Map of where I was. “B” is where I crashed.

And here was the weather today.

1. Remember him? The guy who wrote the first guide book to Route 66 back in the mid-40’s. [↩]

For some reason the comments on yesterdays post were turned off. Meaning that nobody could comment. That has been fixed. Those responsible have been sacked.

Day Eight is just beginning and there’s storm clouds everywhere.

I don’t think I’ll be getting rain just yet, but the hills are such that you really can’t tell until it’s right upon you.

This morning, I woke up at 6am and it was cloudy. I grabbed some clothes and toiletries and headed up to the showers. As soon as I got there, it started to thunder and pour. Literally, one minute after I got into the bathroom. So I did my thing, showered, etc and by the time I was finished, it had stopped. Joy!

I walked back to the campsite. There’s a lovely stream next to it and a big cliff behind it. The cliff is tall, so I can’t see the clouds coming at me. Suddenly, everything was sunny and beautiful. I looked out over the park and it looked like it were to be a very splendid spring day.

Feeling it was a good time to load up the bike, I started strapping things down and putting things in little pockets¹. And right before I struck the tent, the sky filled with deep gray-purple clouds and the wind shifted and a deep thunder rolled down from the cliff.

What do I do?! Do I unload everything not waterproof from the bike? Do I quickly stuff the tent into where the tent gets stuffed? There wasn’t time to think, there wasn’t time to do anything. So I sort of froze, prayed for no rain and waited to see what it was going to do.

Two minutes later, it was sunny again.

Oh Missouri, you tricky lil rascal!

So now I’m in a Panera Bread - the internets were wonky at KOA. Panera is nice, but right across from me are two people having an amazingly pompous conversation which includes such phrases as “post-consumer culture” and “yes, that is true, however I have always believed…”

They are now talking about Segway Scooters and about someone who rode it across the country while making a documentary. You can have no possible idea how happy I am that they are not trying to talk to me. So so so SO amazingly happy.

Ok, real quick before I go, let’s talk about the weather.

I’ll be hitting some thunderstorms today and I’m pretty alright with that. However, they’re also predicting the potential for tornadoes in the next few days over the places where I’ll be riding. I’m fascinated by tornadoes, but I really don’t want to be involved in their goings ons.

Strong storms will erupt later in the day from northeastern Texas to southwestern Missouri as daytime heating increases the instability in the atmosphere.

The strongest thunderstorms will produce widespread tornadoes, damaging straight line winds, hail and drenching downpours. The Severe Weather Center lists the storm-related watches and warnings that are in effect across the southern and central Plains.

The South Regional News story reports the threat of severe weather on Thursday will shift to the Tennessee Valley. By Thursday night, severe thunderstorms will spread across the Southeast into Georgia.

To the north of the severe weather, heavy rain today and Thursday will renew the threat of flooding in the heartland. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain is forecast today from the Texas panhandle to the mid-Mississippi Valley, while locally higher amounts are not out of the question.
-From Accuweather.com

I’ll be buying a weather radio, but that’s all reported by county. I don’t really know which county is which. It’s easy to find out which county you’re in, but about what is surrounding you? Not really. I’ll have to figure something out.

The route I’ll be traveling today is from St. Louis to Lebanon, MO. It’s along the I-44 corridor. For those who know my number, feel free to text message me (or leave a voice mail) if you find yourself looking after where I am. Tomorrow I’ll be in Springfield, MO. The next day, in Tulsa, OK and the next in OKC. All along I-44.

Ok! Here I go!

1. I spend most of my day doing this. [↩]