Katy Trail

Today we are in Marthasville, MO. Our Milage is almost 1200. Pretty Awesome.

It's gotten hot, windy, and stormy, but in some ways that makes the days more exciting. We ran into some pretty bad storms our last day in Indiana and through most of Illinois. The storms made everyone be creative when finding shelter. One day I hung out in a Wendy's, on day under someones porch, and another under a bridge.

The day of the storm under the porch was great. Right before the storm hit I was hanging out in Amy's yard, a wonderfully nice lady that gave us grape koolaid, which was delicious. I took off down the road with Mary, Kevin, and Cory. We had to stop 3 miles later to wait out a crazy windy storm under another generous person's porch. George joined us and so did a boy dog named Ginger. I really enjoyed that day.

The next storm was on our way into St. Louis. This time we sought shelter under a wooden bridge which we later found out all the water leaked through. There were about 7 of us under there waiting out the storm for about 1/2 hour. Durning this I looked down and there was a black snake on my foot. I will admit I freaked out a little bit. I screamed threw my bike down, which landed on Alana, then tripped over the bike and fell down. At the time it wasn't funny, but afterwards the other people's versions of the story made me laugh. It's going to take a while to live that down.

We had a great build day in St. Louis. We helped with a group called Rebuilding Together. We repainted a house and did yard clean up. The house looked really nice when we finished.

Today we rode from St. Louis to Marthsville. It was supposed to be a 60 mile ride but much to our suprise and delight it ended up being only 50!! Also we spent bout 40 miles of the ride on the Katy Trail, which is the longest rails to trails project in the U.S. I know I really enjoyed being on a traffic free trail, in the shade, with very little wind. It was pretty wonderful. We stopped for lunch in a little place called Defiance which had great ice cream and a sweet bike shop. Many people acquired biking hats and bells and horns for their bikes. (Sonya's hamburger bell was my favorite). After lunch I rode with 7 of the girls singing and being silly for the rest of the ride into town. We rolled in to the church around 12:45. The afternoon was spent taking showers, getting in an extra lunch, and napping. All in all a great day! Tomorrow we have a 90 mile ride into Jefferson City and another build day coming up on Wednesday.

I really enjoy everyone's comments. If you want to see photos there are some up on the bike and build website.