Day 33 - Erie, KS to Golden City, MO

78 Miles / Day 33 of 50 / Erie, KS to Golden City, MO

We woke up this morning with a tune in our heart and a ringing in our ears, "We're not in Kansas anymore." Oh, how we looked forward to being able to exclaim that with pride.

Alas, we had a few more miles until we reached the show-me state; the Missouri border.

5 down, 4 to go.

After getting a good start, we hit Girard, KS and met as guy who was going East like us. It's something that's pretty unique, as we're traditionally pretty late in the season to be going East. We've almost exclusively been meeting people going West.

In comes Louie, riding from Portland to NYC. Hailing from England, this was Louie's first time in the United States. I congratulated him, as I personally think there's no better way to see the United States than at 12 mph.

We got into Pittsburgh, KS (no Pirates or Steelers to be found, unfortunately) and for once I was the one who had to have my bike serviced. Seth sure got a kick out of it, as usually I've been the one sitting on my hands while Seth is getting his bike fixed. In Pittsburgh, the bike shop we went to was pretty unique. The main bike mechanic was the crew chief for a rider who had won the Race Across America in the 90s. Race Across America (RAAM) is the exact same thing that we're doing, except bicyclists do about 400 miles a day, A super-competitive race, where bicyclists are supported with vans, riders hit it for over 20 hours a day. No thanks, I'll take our pace.

Anyways, the mechanic was telling us how his rider took just over eight days to cross the country. Pretty impressive when you think about it. And We're doing just over 50 and I think we're tough stuff. He trued my wheel after having two broken spokes and we were good to go.

Finally, we were able to exclaim we weren't in Kansas anymore and passed the border into Missouri. As soon as we got into Missouri, we met a guy biking West named Garrett who told us of an A/C church we could stay in at our final destination for the day, Golden City, MO.

Thank you Pastor Dave.

We got to Golden City, a nice little town and met up with Pastor Dave when we got there, the man who had the church we could stay at. He opened the doors, and Seth and I were in hog heaven. Displayed before us was a full court basketball court and couches we could crash on. As soon as Pastor Dave left, we found the closet with all of the basketballs and started getting our game on.

We had heard of a place in town called Cooky's that the locals (and far away) raved about. A great place with homemade pies and down home cookin'. Loved it. We were sitting there eating dinner, and who else but our Brit friend Louie came in. We caught up on our days, finished our meal together and we invited him to stay in the church with us.

Louie is the man, and is a postman back in the UK. Seth and I have had a great time together, but it's been fun to add a friend to our little twosome. We've laughed about the differences between the UK and the US, what Britain's think of Americans, etc. All good insight from our boy, Louie.

Getting to sleep was a difficulty that night, considering that we had an entire court to ourselves, and of course Seth and I had to play a few games of pickup, pretending we were the Buckeye and Hawkeye lores of yesteryear. For some reason, I could only think of many Hawkeye greats, except for Adam Haluska and Jeff Horner. Sorry, Seth.

Prettiest shot on this side of the Mississippi.

Lesson #71: Don't live at a basketball court and think you're going to sleep.

We stayed up too late playing ball and recounting some great memories of our trip we've had so far. On to the next ones!