Day 27
Granite City IL, 36 miles
Ride Summary:
- 24 riding days
- 1,208 miles
- 50.3 miles per day
I’m pretty happy with those numbers. I think the average is going to go up after I get the new cassette and chain installed.
The iconic route into St. Louis from Illinois is to follow Route 66 over the famous “Chain of Rocks Bridge.” The Bridge was built to cross the Mississippi River in 1929 and was an engineering marvel in its’ day. Because of hazards to navigation on that stretch of the river (from which the bridge takes it’s name) the bridge had to be built with a unique 30-degree turn mid-way across the river. In the 1960s, the Army Corp of Engineers built a low-water dam, so you can’t actually see the “Chain of Rocks” in the river any longer. It has been closed to traffic for some time but it is open to walkers and cyclists. The bridge is listed on the national historic registry.
The first six miles out of Belleville I was on the St. Louis Metro Bike Link Trail. I could have caught the light rail and gone all the way to St. Louis, but of course that would have been cheating…
At my lunch stop I chatted with a local cyclist that has done a fair bit of touring. He asked me if I was planning to do the Katy Trail. He was asking me a fair question. It might be hard to divert all the way to St. Louis, only to bypass the opportunity to do the Katy. I’m going to have to give that some serious consideration.
You do miss your friends back home from time-to-time when you’re on a long distance tour. To be a bit more precise, there are times when you wish your friends back home could be experiencing the things you are experiencing. The reality is, that’s not the nature of the beast. A long distance tour is, to a large extent, discovering new things on your own. Taking those new things and making them a part of who you are. When everything is said and done, it just gives you more to share once you do get back home. There are other benefits. I think it makes you stronger and also a more tolerant person, not quite so quick to form opinions, and with luck, more gracious about those opinions you do form.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be going over the Route 66 “Chain of Rocks Bridge” into St. Louis. I stopped early today to get my bike cleaned up for the big day tomorrow!