Day 33: Pittsburg, KS to St. Louis, MO (by rental car)

We went to bed last night in the fine $38 a night Holiday Lodge in Pittsburg with the plan to sleep-in a bit before taking our bikes over to the shop at 10 when they open. It sounded like a great idea, but my internal clock just can't seem to let me sleep late. Even after going to bed at 12, I was wide awake at 6.

So, I decided that I better get up and out of the room rather than risk disturbing AK while she tries to sleep-in. Remember when I said she can get grumpy? Well I know what is good for me, so I am sitting in the lobby indulging in the complimentary "breakfast" and writing the start of this message. "Breakfast" includes coffee, some fake tasting OJ (I think it is Sunny-D), and a box from Wal-Mart that is labeled "glazed yeast rings." Yum! Well on closer inspection, these "yeast rings" are doughnuts. I can only imagine that is some attempt to make doughnuts sound more healthy, but actually makes them sound like some contagious skin rash. I don't usually like doughnuts much, but I need to give these "yeast rings" a try to see just how bad they really are. I'll consider it part of my regional food research...

Later...

... I was right, they were terrible.

We dropped off our bikes and stuff at the bike shop and managed to get Enterprise to pick us up at the shop.

From Enterprise, we drove to Wal-Mart to find some "real world" items. I needed a t-shirt, some choners (FYI: Underwear is a no-no under bike shorts; it is just something else to chafe your snesitive parts. As a result, I don't have many pairs with me) and AK needed a bag to travel with.

We grabbed some burgers for lunch and then tried to find a laundromat to wash our dirty biking clothes. We asked the owner of the hotel we had stayed in the night before. He told us to go down Broadway 3 miles and the laundromat would be across the street from "Country Fried Chicken." Well, we drove 3 miles and never saw a Country Fried Chicken or the laundromat. We stopped to ask another person and she told us to go back 3 miles from the direction we came! Well we finally found it, but we got a good laugh about our increasing sensitivty to the mile in comparison to many drivers complete lack of appreciation for the distance a mile covers.

Before leaving town we realized that we had nothing warmer to wear other than shorts and a t-shirt, so we stopped by a local Pittsburg shop called the Jock's Nitch. We scored some long sleeve Pittsburg State University (Pittsburg, Kansas, of course) shirts for ten bucks and were ready to roll out of town.

Just as we were leaving we spotted Sid bikig into town! We stopped to chat with him for a few minutes and gave him a few tips about the businesses we visited around town. It was fun to run into him again.

Then it was on to St. Louis. The drive took us about 5 hours with plenty of traffic.

It was nice to have the chance to listen to the car's radio as it felt like ages since we last listened to music. At one point, AK nearly snarfed a mouth full of water all over the inside of the windsheiled. A variation on a typical radio ad was aired that made us both laugh hysterically. It featured the recorded voice of a listener praising the radio station. "I love listening to Alice FM. I have it on at the office, while I'm in the car, in the tanning bed..." From then on, AK and I heard nothing more of the ad, as we were laughing to hard and AK was struggling to recover from the near snarf. How much time must you spend in a tanning bed to mention it in your praise of a radio station? Someone please give that woman some sunscreen!

During the drive we contacted some friends in St. Louis. We were hoping to park our rental car at Jervis and Jodie's place rather than pay for long term parking. Since my flight was early, we had intended to stay in a hotel near the airport. AK's flight wasn't until 1PM, so she was going to drop me off, return to Jervis and Jodie's and take a cab to the airport. Well, it turns out that Jervis and Jodie live very close to the airport, so they invited us to stay the night, saving us the cost of a hotel. Plus, Jervis said he could drive AK to the airport. Thanks guys!

Anyway, it is strange to write about a day that doesn't include stories about riding.

I was really hoping to travel to Hawaii with a 2 liter bottle of Big Red. I wanted to share its delightfully painful flavor with all my good friends, but all my efforts to find it again went unrewarded. Not even Wal-Mart could produce; I thought they were supposed to be "America's store" or something corny like that. Well, with no Big Red at Wal-Mart, I'm not sure what America will do.

Jeff