Owensville--> St. Louis
St. Louis will be permanently pronounced St. Looey in my head because that's how Melina fondly referred to the city. We worried that the resident St. Louiseans would be offended at her pronounciation, but to the best of my knowledge she did not say it out loud within the city limits. Which is unfortunate because it's a much more endearing way of calling the city.
Along the way to the city, we stopped at a bike shop where Sean got a chance to get his rear wheel trued (straightened) and I bought a spare tire that future Nate tells me was quite a useful purchase. The shop owner was also in the business of rescuing Australian shepherds (Luke & Carolyn--Linus would have loved it!) so there were a few carousing in the shop. We all felt better given the chance to wander around a bike shop, talk to some friendly folks who helped us out, and pet some beautiful dogs.
We had to leave to re-enter the heat--it's been consistently over 100 for a very long stretch of days now. I think we've adapted to some extent, but those first few minutes in the heat after being in AC are always hard. As we neared St. Louis (see, I know you pronounced it in your head differently) we hit some more urbanized areas, which gave us overwhelming visual stimulus after the fairly regular and rural terrain we have been seeing. Person! Car! Places to buy things besides gas! I had some caffeine before so I felt like I was in a video game, which was fun but the potholes still were pretty painful.
Sean's Dad pulled through for us again by lining up a Marriott. We had favorable impressions of St. Louis as we biked through in the evening and some beer and food at Schlafly Brewery only re-affirmed that. Originally we were considering a rest day here to explore some more, but with the promise of cooler weather tomorrow we decided to push onward and eastward.
At the Mississippi,
Nate
No comments:
Post a Comment