October 1, 2009

River in the Rain

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. There, you will now have good luck for the next month. No you don’t have to thank me, I’m just such a thoughtful guy.

I left Keokuk, with three K’s not two as some have previously reported, under skies just filled with Iowa sunshine. After crossing the Mississippi Bridge into Illinois, much to my chagrin things were no better in the Land of Lincoln.

I turned right, not left as some have previously reported and pedaled six miles to Warsaw, Illinois a city of 1,800 where I immediately became lost. But it was not my fault. I was supposed to turn on Mill Street but there was but one street sign in all of Warsaw and that was for Grunt Street. Funny no houses seemed to front on Grunt Street. Can’t you imagine the first letter home, “Hi we’ve moved into our new home, it’s a three bedroom and Bud says he can convert the family room into a garage. We’re in Warsaw at 316 Grunt Street.”

Anyway after a six-mile detour, that’s a polite way of saying “lost” I wound up on Highway 96. Just me, the rain, and conservatively speaking 6,392,421 eighteen-wheelers headed for Quincy. After the first fifteen miles of constant rain I really began to concentrate on making the precip come to a halt. And as it did, unfortunately, up came a 20 mph head wind.

After a workout, Jan headed out of Keokuk around noon. At that same time I was soaked to the bone, riding uphill into a head wind. All of a sudden, Jan pulled up around the 45-mile mark and asked if I needed anything. “Damn right,” I thought, “What I need is a ride to Hannibal.” So, actually, I have to say it was her fault I didn’t ride the 63 miles to Hannibal, MO.

I only know two people calling Hannibal home. Both are named Dennis. Denny Herzog, the Imperial Wizard at the Daily Sentinel, and Dennis Derreaux the Western Slope Grand Kleagel for Pinnacol. I expected the motel desk clerk to be Denise. It wasn’t. But the waitress at the Mark Twain Dinette was.

Denny Herzog has long maintained the MT Dinette serves the world’s best Maid-Rite. As a connoisseur of all things Maid-Rite I said I’d be the judge of that. Actually I put it up to an independent panel. Jan and I. Jan said, as tasty as the Mark Twain Dinette Maid-Rite was she didn’t think it measured up to Taylor’s Maid-Rite in Marshalltown, Iowa. And I would have to give my vote to Brad Brehmer at the Blue Moon in Grand Junction. My friend Big Gear Bob claims there is no good Maid-Rite. Forget about him. He’s from North Dakota, possessed by demons and a Maid-Rite infidel.

Hannibal, Missouri is a most pleasant river-city that is all things Mark Twain, Samuel Clemons being a native son. It has done a wonderful job of restoring the Mississippi River waterfront with buildings dating back to 1836.

Tomorrow it’s off to Troy, Missouri, seventy miles and a hundred hills away. The forecast calls for rain and a headwind. Oh joy, oh glee, oh passion.

Not that it was a bummer day. Not when the Rockies clinch it’s not. Go Rox and take the Dodgers with you. Could “Rocktober” get any better?

And since today’s rainy ride stretched along side the

Mississippi what better way to close than Roger Miller’s “River In The Rain”

from his Broadway production of “Big River”.

An Iowa Beginning...Just Barely

Tonight we sleep in America’s funniest city. At least in Neil Simon’s eyes. His 1975 movie “The Sunshine Boys”, a story of an elderly vaudeville comedy team who loathe one another, had the Walter Mathau character saying, “Funny words have a k in them. Pickle and ketchup are funny, mustard is not. Kumquat is funny, pistachio is not.” Forget Poughkeepsie, tonight Jan and I wrap “the draperies of our couch about us and lie down to pleasant dreams” in Keokuk, with two ‘k’s” Iowa.

Keokuk, named for a famous, or so they claim, Indian Chief and, in fact, the Keokuk High School athletic teams are called The Chiefs, is a most pleasant community on the banks of the Mississippi at the southern most tip of the Hawkeye state.

Iowa tourist board's latest slogan to attract Minnesotans

Northern Iowa from the car

We motored the entire length of Cornland today. From Northfield at Minnesota’s edge to Keokuk on Missouri’s door, the Maynards took in all the sights Iowa has to offer in early fall. That would be corn. From Mason City to Charles City, Rockwell City to Iowa City it was corn to the left and corn to the right.

While Jan is an Iowa native, I’m not. Although I attended Iowa’s one true institution of higher learning, Iowa State in Ames, I was raised across the Mississippi in Illinois. Jan is fond of telling people her husband is a social climber, an Iowa wannabe envious of all that Iowa offers, because I was raised in the Land of Lincoln. Therefore, I am required to watch my mouth when it comes to her native soil. Only the native born are allowed a discouraging word about Iowa, where they put the heart in the heartland. Well, that’s what she told me. While the scenery was never changing, as they say here in Grant Wood country, “We made real good time.”

Central Iowa from the car

Tonight, dining at a table overlooking the Mississippi we enjoyed another of Iowa’s benefits. At “The Cellar” in Keokuk I reveled in a big Iowa pork chop, grilled to perfection. Plus, a baked potato and the ever present “all you can eat salad bar” while Jan attempted to down a half rack of ribs. With our two glasses of wine the entire dinner priced out at less than $25.

Iowa State Homecoming Queen 1958

Southern Iowa from the car

Some things, however, never change. Despite today’s absolutely perfect 75 and sunny temps, tomorrow’s forecast is for 62 and rain. For those who followed the cross-country tour six years ago you are well aware I’m picking up right where I left off.

In the morning I’ll cross the bridge, turn left in Hamilton, Illinois, pedal the Great River Road to Quincy and on down to Huck Finn country, Hannibal, Missouri. Tomorrow morning the “Ride to Red Stick” is finally, officially, underway.

And with Iowa once again in my rear-view mirror we leave the land of corn with “Iowa Stubborn” from Mason City’s Meredith Wilson’s “Music Man”.

Ride to Redstick

aka

Pedalin' Past Paducah

C’mon along. The Mississippi is calling, so is the Natchez Trace. We’re off to Baton Rouge on a Ride to Red Stick.

Fall 2009. Time to go for a ride. Or an adventure. Or, how about both? After all, it is a most special year.

Fall 1939 found me joining the ever-changing cast of players wandering the earth. So autumn 2009 works out mathematically to be one of those big-time benchmarks in life’s journey.

The "make it a birthday to remember when it’s a number ending in 0 or 5", began back at 50 when, I know not how, Jan managed to score tickets to the Cubs/Giants National League playoffs in both Chicago and San Francisco. So I sat in a Wrigley Field drizzle with college bud Jim Goettsch, a Chicagoan to the core, and witnessed Will “The Thrill” Clark homering off Rick Sutcliffe, then with other men aboard, enroute to providing yet another game in the un-ending heartbreaks Cub fans have long endured. I followed the teams to San Francisco and sat along Candlestick Park's third baseline with my best friend from high school and Giant loyalist, Ron Lange. Timing in 1989 proved to be fortuitous. A week after the Giants put the Cubs in their rear view mirror, Candlestick trembled and shook. The World Series was put on hold; a devastating earthquake leveled much of the Bay area.

Next up was 55. Maybe I hadn’t recovered from the trauma of the Chicago loss in ’89 or possibly it was the anticipation of ditching the my longtime un-rewarded Cub loyalty for devotion to Colorado’s new National League, the Rockies, but very few memories hang out in my cranium when it comes to turning the double nickel.

Aah but 60. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Cumulus Broadcasting taking over our radio stations for a price that was way more than fair, we entered the world of retirement, the land of constant playtime. The fall of 1999 found us wandering Alabama with friends Dick and Joanne Smith. We played the myriad courses making up the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail; dots on the landscape the length and width of the “Heart of Dixie.” From Huntsville to Dothan, Gadsden to Mobile we managed a 36 holes a day golf marathon that Jan found to be a bit over the top. However, moi thought two straight weeks of eighteen holes in the morning, lunch, another round in the afternoon, followed by chucking the sticks in the car trunk and heading for the next course--where motel check-in led to savoring a gin and tonic before dinner--to be a “spot on” daily agenda.

Five years later the supposed trauma of reaching 65 was more than salved by wandering one of my favorite cities-Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called it “Baghdad by the Bay”- with San Francisco friends Jude and Ron Lange. Somehow the onset of advancing age, decried by so many, is more than mitigated by an “every day’s a playday” existence. Plus, and this is a true over-simplification, one either ages or one doesn’t. And the doesn’t, i.e. an ultimate power-nap in a warm condo, strikes one as a most harsh remedy for the occasional ache or pain inherent in the aging process.

So now it’s time for 70. And an adventure. Why not a bike ride? The personal attraction for 21 gears, two wheels and a hard seat has always been a puzzle. But how do you explain what piques a person's interest, or turns their crank. Some folks on the back nine of life collect antique Coke bottles, others fill their waking hours with the lock-step rigidity inherent in being passionate about their personal political party, while others find great satisfaction in rising early on a weekend morning to wander about the local hamlet and sort through other peoples unwanted trash in search of a yard-sale bargain. With me its bicycles.

For almost 40 years a bicycle has provided this Type A personality with the oh-so satisfying fatigue only exercise provides. Running was the exercise of choice for many years. You can do it in the dark, forty-five minutes to a hour is a great run, and it's much easier to pack running shoes and shorts in your suitcase than it is a bicycle. But, running also brings about a state of constant injury, mostly nagging, sometimes serious. Skinny skiing, (a.k.a. cross-country) is also aerobically outstanding but arrives at a bad time of the year, the downhill ski season. And then swimming, supposedly the perfect exercise, ranks somewhere between liver and onions and cats on the lower rungs of my personal favorites ladder.

Aah but bicycles. When time constrictions are no longer a daily occurrence, the bicycle is perfection personified. Oh, the places you can go! I’ve pedaled Iowa several times, crossed North Dakota riding beside fields bursting with color, ridden the North Shore of Minnesota’s Lake Superior with Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” living rent free in my brain for an entire week, and rolled down California’s Highway 1 from San Francisco to Santa Barbara.

Six years ago was the ultimate adventure. Pedaling coast to coast, Florence, Oregon to Westport, Connecticut’s Campo Beach was the trip of a lifetime. But to once again ride coast-to-coast was not an option. Do something once, it’s an adventure. Twice, or more, it becomes a job.

So how about North to South? Originally the plan was to pedal from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Yet even for the schedule-free retiree, life can get in the way. Plans change. However, the resolve to turn 70 on the seat of a bicycle remains intact. Only instead of setting sail from International Falls the route will now begin further south.

So, c’mon along. The Mississippi is calling, so is the Natchez Trace. We’re off to Baton Rouge on a Ride to Red Stick.

Hopefully Kentucky will be less snowy than Yellowstone in '03.