In the waning months of 2020 I was burnt out to a crisp, charred and blackened from nine months as an “essential” worker. In desperate need of something to look forward to, I had requested - and was granted - a week off around my early March birthday.
Ultimately, the final decision to bail came with the snow forecast. I had been aiming for the relatively affordable smaller “resorts” in southern Colorado, namely Monarch and Wolf Creek, but the forecasts were pure bluebird, without even a slight chance of precip in the forecast. To some I know that sounds marvelous, but I’m going to feel ripped off skiing through anything but a visibility-limiting dumper of a storm.
At the same time, the forecast at home was looking pretty favorable for staying put. The first week of March is a wildcard in eastern Kansas. I’ve spent most of my life there and I can recall birthdays with ice and snow in below zero wind chills and at least one or two where the mercury pushed 90, the air sickeningly thick. A nice medium had been forecasted; daytime highs in the 50s and lows hovering just above freezing overnight.
With the time off work already booked, it seems like it was a perfect opportunity to do something that I had always dreamed of, but for which I never had made the time, typically electing for out-of-state adventures. I would go bike camping.
For nearly a decade I had been sitting on an enormous pair of second hand touring panniers. Occasionally I’d pull them out of the garage and make a grocery run with them when I felt like adding some adventure to my errands, but they had been largely neglected and underused.
The only question was where? Kansas is not exactly known for its wealth of outdoor adventure. It’s there for those willing to seek it out, but it’s far from obvious. It’s not the West, with its seemingly endless tracts of Forest Service and BLM lands. Most of the state parks are built around reservoirs; fishing and boating are the biggest draws.
The dream had always been to load up the bike and push out for my own driveway. There were two state parks within a day’s ride that would have allowed me to do just that. They had been on my radar for an overnight bike camp for a while, but a big reason why I had never attempted them was because I knew each route would require significant miles riding with traffic.
Over the years I had done a respectable amount of bike commuting in the Kansas City area, a metro with ever improving bicycle infrastructure, but still no Portland or Minneapolis. I was comfortable enough riding with traffic without 30 pounds of camping gear, but was afraid of the slow down with all the added equipment.
In my experience, that’s how you pissed off a motorist – you went slow. The heavier the traffic, the more you have to push it. You have to show them, I am busting my ass. One’s legal right to occupy a lane of traffic at any speed isn’t as reassuring when you’re actually out there doing it, with your physical welfare on the line.
I began to open my mind to the idea of altering the dream. Maybe I could use the car to get out of town a little ways first. Then I discovered something I never knew existed: the Flint Hills Nature Trail, a rails-to-trail project that had been hiding right under my nose. The eastern terminus was just 40 some miles to the south in Osawatomie, Kansas.
I had found it the way I found most of my bike routes, looking at satellite imagery from the well known map app people. The distance the trail appeared to run from was impressive. The trail even had its own website, which upon first glance appeared to hold a wealth of information. As I poked around however, it was apparent that the website had apparently been abandoned by its creators. Just about every link on it was dead. I couldn’t exactly tell just how long it had been abandoned or just how out of date the information was, but the trail seemed nonetheless very promising.
The trail has a length of 93 miles (according to the website). Near the halfway point, the trail runs just a mile or so south of Pomona State Park. A few miles from the western terminus was Council Grove Lake, whose shores were dotted with a handful of recreation areas and campgrounds. The plan came into focus. I would drive the loaded bike to Osawatomie, ride 40 some miles to Pomona state park, camp, get up the next day and make a near 50 mile trek to Council Grove Lake, and come back the way I had come. It was so simple!
This all came together just a few days before my days off where to begin. At this point, everyone thought I was still going skiing. I had decided I would enjoy a nice weekend with my wife, spend Monday packing and preparing the bike and shove off Tuesday morning, to be home Friday afternoon and to spend another weekend with my wife.
It was shaping up to look like a pretty darn good week off work.
On the Wednesday before my week off, my boss came to me with a not so common serious look on his face.
“Kevin I have something I need you to be aware of,”
Oh my fucking God, what? I bit down on my tongue and clenched my fist below my desk.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, trying to play it cool.
“Yeah, so, there’s a lot of speculation that copper prices are going to skyrocket soon. One of the largest copper mines in the world down in South America is supposedly about to shut down for a while because of Covid, so we are stocking up – big-time. I just got done placing a huge order of wire. Two truckloads. It’s set to deliver on Tuesday of next week.”
OK I thought, he wants me to do some prep work maybe? Clear some aisles in the warehouse before I leave? Maybe train one of the other guys on checking in wire orders…
“I just want you to be prepared,” he continued. “Maybe clear some time in your personal schedule because there will be plenty of overtime available if you want it.”
“I’m off next week,” I said very matter of factly. “Remember?”
All at once the color drained from his face. I didn’t actually say anything else, but I’m sure you read my face loud and clear:
I’ve been here every damn day since the pandemic started. I’ve worked my ass off for almost a year and I requested this time off almost three months ago. I. Won’t. Fucking. Be. Here.
“Oh yeah.” he mumbled, clearly having forgotten. “ Well, we will work it out I guess…”
I clocked out on Friday with the exuberance of a freed prisoner of war. I had nine days off – NINE! My wife and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend and I slept in till damn near 10 o’clock Monday morning and spent my day tuning the bike and packing my gear.
The next morning I had packed the car, loaded the bike and was on the road about nine. Thirty minutes later I was wondering if I had ever been so far south on this particular highway before. There had simply never been any reason to go down that way for me in the past. It was hilly and pretty despite the late winter brown-ness of the foliage-less vegetation.Kansas gets written off as a flat, barren wasteland (OK – so the western third of it mostly is), but never gets the credit due for what (two thirds of it, at least) actually are: beautiful rolling hills and lush woodlands.
I made Osawatomie in a cool 40 minutes. I missed my turn onto the main road leading west out of town and had to backtrack along a residential brick paved street. Some better than others, the houses were looking pretty rough. One in particular stood out, a large, surely once grand Victorian on a corner lot with peeling paint a sinking porch, a yard littered with sun bleached plastic children’s toys and a large FUCK BIDEN flag swaying in the breeze a top a twenty foot flag pole. Yikes.
The aforementioned website put the trail head on the west side of town, just outside the city limits. I found it with no problem, but arrived perplexed as the only place one could possibly park a vehicle had a NO PARKING sign posted. The trail appeared to go both directions where I was. Surely this was not the trail head. I was able to trace the trail back east on the map app to a large municipal park with baseball fields and tennis courts. I drove over there, starting to get a little anxious about burning daylight looking for the trail head. Luckily it was there at the park, the rather new-looking Karl E. Cove sports complex. A large sign announced the trail head. I parked and spent some time attaching the panniers, loading the rear rack with my tent poles and sleeping bag and neurotically double checking to make sure I had everything I could possibly need.
It was my first time doing this on a bike, but certainly not my first self-supported travel. I felt like I had too much, but there was nothing in the panniers that wouldn’t be in my backpack for a four-day trek except some spare inner tubes and a small bike pump. I had decided to omit the water filter and pump, reasoning that my destinations each day were state parks and develop campgrounds where water should be available. Each pannier had a liter Nalgene bottle packed in the bottom of it. Each of my two bottle cages on the bike frame had a 750 mL bottle, giving me three and a half liters for a day of travel in cool weather. I was all set.
I pushed off at first quite excited. YOU GUYS I’M DOING IT, I’M ACTUALLY DOING IT! Then I grew slightly terrified on a brief but rather steep downhill. The bike, specifically the rear of it, felt quite heavy. It would take some getting used to.
Is this insane? I asked myself. I told myself to give it a few miles, there be no shame in turning around, if it felt unsafe. I started to tick off the miles, mile marker sign posts popping up every now and again. I was getting a feel for handling the heavy ended bike, getting further and further out of town. The trail was in pretty good shape, and the bike handled the crushed limestone surface with little trouble. A few miles in, the trail began to parallel the Marais Des Cygnes river. It was here, enveloped in the woods, river below me that I stopped questioning the sanity of the trip. This was not insane, this was glorious. It was Tuesday, I was 39 and one day old and most importantly, I was not at all concerned with some monster delivery of copper wire.
The first town on the trail heading west is the tiny Rantoul, which the website warned had no amenities other than an old Coke machine outside the shoebox sized post office. I could see the post office down the way from where the trail crossed Main Street, but saw no Coke machine. There was some evidence suggesting that perhaps at one time Rantoul might’ve been a tad more substantial of a stop on the trail, maybe the eastern trailhead. There was a faded sign asking people to not treat the empty lot just west of Main as an open toilet and another one, quite faded, almost unreadable, celebrating Rantoul as a trailside community. There were zero signs of life. I stopped and straddled the bike frame for a minute to look around. A pick up truck blew by down Main Street, but other than that I might’ve been the only person around. I shrugged my shoulders and pushed on.
Immediately out of Rantoul the trail got kind of rough, and became more of a larger stone gravel. I could handle it, but worried about what miles of this rougher surface would do to my energy stores. Thankfully it mellowed out rather quickly. At mile marker 10 I stopped to water a tree off trail and had the realization that not only did I fail to do any stretching before this journey, but that I hadn’t even been on a bike for more than a mile or so in five or six months. I did what I could about it and did some stretching, but was helpless in the face of being well out of good bike shape.
The trail veered away from the river, passing through farmland for the next 10 miles or so. It was shaping up to be a stunner of a day, warming considerably. Temps were only in the 50s, but just a few weeks before it had been impossibly cold with a two week stretch below freezing, with record breaking overnight lows below zero. Fifty-something and sunny with a light breeze felt downright glorious.
The mile marker posts vanished after numbers 12 or 13, so I no longer knew exactly where I was. At about the same time as I was starting to get a little hunger rolling through my belly I came across a comfortable looking bench and decided to call it lunch. As I munched on almonds and beef jerky I checked my progress on the map app. I was right outside of the city of Ottawa, nearly halfway through the day's ride. I did a little jig, feeling quite good.
In Ottawa the trail parallels First Street for a stretch. Seeing as how there was little traffic, I took First Street, pavement being a nice break from the limestone. The trail then veered away from First into another complex of ballfields and then crossed the river at quite a picturesque spot. I stopped again to take in the view and distributed water from one of the packed Nalgenes into my cage mounted bike bottles. Shortly after, the trail abruptly ended at a large orange sign. TRAIL CLOSED - FOLLOW DETOUR, an arrow pointing north. The overgrowth beyond the sign looked serious, indicating to me that this section must have been closed for quite some time. I headed north onto a gravel road, and not a smooth one either. The gravel was made up of larger pieces of rock and the going was rough. I began to worry about the length of the detour.
Half a mile down the road there was another orange sign directing me west onto another large stone gravel road. I had to yield to a surprising amount of traffic in order to make my left hand turn. The sun was high now, right overhead and I was starting to get quite warm. Large dump trucks another traffic shot past me while the rocky road bounced me to and fro while I climbed a gentle incline.
Suddenly I wasn’t having as much fun anymore. The truck traffic calmed some and right as I was busy beginning to regain my confidence and composure who should come running my way but two large loose farm dogs. I was still climbing and there was no way I was going to lose them. As a dog lover I worried about potentially injuring them more than them injuring me, but still the thought was there. I feigned enthusiasm and called out to the dogs.
“Oh hi guys! Hello! How are you today? Are you being good, huh?”
They ran circles around me, jumping up and barking as if I were wayward cattle. My own dog is a sheepdog and she’ll nip at the back of my legs to get me to go where she wants me to go. more and more fear that these two were going to knock me down as they continued to dance around me.
“You guys know this is the road right? Why don’t you go home so you don’t get hit right by a truck huh?”
As I crested the hill the dogs wandered off, apparently bored of me. For the first time that day I got to do some coasting downhill, refreshingly cooling me off a little. At the bottom of the hill there was another orange sign directing me south on my detour, which I was estimating to have only been two miles though the trucks and road conditions and dogs made it feel more like ten. The signs continued for another half mile on some slightly better roads and I was quickly back on the trail, a few hundred feet away from the BNSF line. I stopped and dismounted for a minute and watched the train roll by, drinking some water, happy to be off the road.
At this point I was starting to feel pretty tired and more worrying than general exhaustion was the state of my ass (or to use the proper bike term, my “sit bones”). There’s nothing that is going to fix your sit bones except for proper training of them, which I had foolishly neglected. I looked at the map, charting my progress. I told myself, oh, it’s not that bad, there isn't that far to go. It was pushing two o’clock at this point and I cut my break a little shorter than I would’ve liked and got rolling yet again.
As I tired, so did my upbeat attitude. My estimates put me 10 to 15 miles away from my night's layover. The trail was still pretty, but I was beginning to care less about trailside aesthetics and more about my aching muscles, dropping energy levels and my increasingly painful sit bones.
Still I pushed on, telling myself that I would stop and take a solid break again at the crossing of Colorado Road which couldn’t be more than a few miles down the trail. The wind picked up a little as I rode straight into it. My pace now seemed ridiculously slow. I had not encountered another cyclist all day and my pride was hoping that it would stay that way.
There are a number of spots on the trail where you ride in a seemingly endless straight line forever, with nothing but more of the same ahead of you. Months later, it is laughable to look at the map and see the three or four mile distance from where I rejoin the trail after the rocky road detour and Colorado road crossing is a major hurdle, but it was on this stretch that my moral started a decline that would not alleviate until I was at camp. After an eternity I had made the Colorado road crossing and took another break.
I was craving honey roasted peanuts, but had to settle for my almonds and beef jerky. I emptied the second packed Nalgene into the squeeze bottles. Though it appeared I was in the middle of nowhere, the map app showed I was but a quarter mile from a Casey’s gas station where my honey roasted nut dreams could be easily fulfilled. The sun was getting lower in the sky and as good as the sweet nuts sounded, I didn’t want to tax my body any more than was absolutely necessary. I still had 8 to 10 miles to go, I figured.
My energy continued to deplete and at an opportune spot on a boardwalk overlooking some wetlands I ate a Clif bar as if it were going to transform me into a new man like Popeye’s spinach. Of course it didn’t and my pace seemed to slow with every revolution of the petals. It was beyond 4 o’clock and the sun was now right my eyes. I had a ball cap buried somewhere in my panniers whose visor would’ve been greatly beneficial, but when you’re exhausted you rarely take the time to do what’s best, so I resigned to simply keeping my head down and eyes fixed to the crushed limestone in front of my tire.
It was maddening. Several times in the last stretch my heart and body gave up and I’d slow to a stop in the middle of the trail and raise my sore ass off the saddle. That’s it, we’re done. A moment or two later my brain would catch up to the terminating thought and poignantly ask: what are you going to do? Just exactly what does being done look like? Are you going to pedal back thirty-some miles to the car? Unless the answer is drop dead here where you stand, your only option is to finish this thing.
I don’t know how many times I had to have this little pep talk with myself, but it felt like every hundred yards or so. The sun kept sinking lower and I began to have anxiety about still being on the trail after dark. I took many breaks over and over for the sake of my sit bones. Every time I settle my ass back into the saddle the pain would return, somehow even worse than before, as if the mini breaks were more detrimental than beneficial.
The trail wore on. I started to think I’d never get there. I consider the option of just dropping dead where I was. At one point I even dismounted and began pushing the bike along, figuring that it couldn’t be any slower than my already dismal pace. That move proved to be a waste of time and I actually managed to rally back into the saddle once it became apparent just how much quicker my glacial bike pace actually was.
Finally, I could see where the trail passed under a road and I knew I was not too far now. I pedaled hard out of the saddle under the road and then another quarter mile to the intersection with Kansas Highway 368. Much to my delight the smooth asphalt was pitched down towards the lake in front of me. I gave the crank some quick pushes in high gear and coasted, standing on the pedals and out of the saddle the final stretch into the park.
The entrance station was unmanned, but I stopped to glance at the park map and located the nearest primitive campsite. There was a self-pay station, but I wasn’t about to dig my wallet out of the bags at that moment. I would pay in the morning. Riding into literally the first campsite I saw, I dismounted and let the bike fall to the ground and allowed myself to collapse on my back onto the brown dead grass. I had made it with daylight to spare.
I laid there a few minutes, the dry grass beneath me scratching and poking through my clothes, looking up through the bare branches of the cottonwoods, above me a clear blue, ever darkening sky. The anxiety of camp chores yet to be done set in. The sooner I could get my tent set up, the sooner I could pathetically crawl into it and sleep. I struggled on my feet. Ahead of me 50 yards, at the end of the campground loop I saw a very welcoming site that I had missed in my desperation to get off the bike. It was an Adirondack style shelter that along with the rest of the campground loop was unoccupied. I walked the bike over. The shelter looked brand new, still smelling of lumber and was impeccably clean. This will do!
Normally I prefer the complete enclosure of a tent over sleeping in the open, but this three-quarter enclosure would make a great compromise. I started to unpack the panniers and checked the stock of my water. There was just enough to hydrate my dinner and have a little leftover to drink on. Still, it would be nice to not have to worry about it.
I shoved a handful of almonds in my mouth, stuffed my wire mesh rodent-proof sack full of my food supplies and struck out on foot with my empty water bottles in hand towards the park entrance where there was an RV dump station and what looked like a portable water spigot. It was not a far walk by any means, but it seemed tragically far away given the shape I was in. The spigots at the dump station were dry, presumably turned off for the winter. Further down the road I could see some RVs and trailers. I debated making the walk down there, where presumably there was water. I opted against it as hunger was growing strong and besides, I didn’t want to risk ruining the solitude I was feeling. Despite being in a state park, and having gotten here on a public trail, I hadn’t actually seen any other humans for several hours and chose to keep riding that high and walked back to camp, ready to ration my water until the next day.
Back at camp I unpacked my kitchen and got some water boiling while I changed out of my bike chamois liners and into some normal undies. What a treat that was. While my freeze dried Pad Thai hydrated I made a half assed attempt to get a small twig fire going in the fire ring. Even as the sun fell behind the horizon it was quite pleasant for the first week of March.
I absolutely inhaled my dinner which was simultaneously the most satisfying and most disappointing Pad Thai I’d ever eaten. As my poor little fire smothered out I smoked half a joint I had thoughtfully packed away and sipped whiskey from the hilariously small 2 ounce Nalgene I had packed (I’m not that much of a drinker – these days, at least).
Darkness set in while cleaning up my dinner mess. I packed my trash into the rodent-proof bag and hung it from a pine tree just downhill from camp. I made my bed in the Adirondack shelter and dug out my trowell and toilet paper stash. Surely, there was a pit toilet not too far away, but like with my water supplies, it was looking like I was going to have to prepare for the complete wilderness experience.
I headed off to the east, following the road in the dark, enough ambient light in the atmosphere to not really need my light. It seemed a little insane to me that this little campground loop I was in did not have a vault toilet, but I figured I’d try the next one over and see if it had facilities of some sort. It did and it was open. Here I absolutely needed my light and was glad that I grabbed it. There was a sink with exposed plumbing. I knew water would be off, but I gave the valve a turn anyway. It was also off for the season.
Food and bathroom needs satisfied, I was too tired to worry about my water supply. There’d be somewhere, there had to be. It’s a state park. I settled into my bed around eight-thirty. The air had really started to cool and I was ready for the over abundance of warmth provided by my down sleeping bag. I quickly discovered a design flaw in this otherwise exquisite Adirondack shelter. The opening faced the marina, directly across a cove of the lake. Through the bare trees the marina’s obnoxiously bright light lit the dock and my campsite. I could’ve repositioned my bed to the far corner of the shelter to alleviate this problem, but I was just too dang tired, and far too comfortable.
I slept fitfully, my sore muscles preventing any deep sleep. The moon rose full and bright and bands of coyotes called out loudly in the still night. I gazed out of the shelter to my surroundings, hoping maybe a deer or a nursery of racoons might wander through my camp and investigate my hanging food bag. There was no action. The coyotes quieted and eventually I slept.
In the morning I woke with an intense thirst. It was a little after seven and I needed water. My plan, formulated the night before, was to hop on the bike, loaded with my empties and find water. Then I’d return to camp for coffee and breakfast and head on further down the trail. That was the plan, but I secretly wanted to go no further, to spend a day recovering and head back home the next day. I loaded the bottles into my panniers and tried to brace myself for getting into the saddle again. As I wheeled my bike out of the shelter I found that I had a flat rear tire. That settled it. I was staying put. Every muscle in my body was telling me to ride no further and the flat sealed the deal. I smiled, relieved by the decision I had made. Rather than another brutal day on the bike, I would commune with nature and recuperate.
I still needed that water though, and there was no getting around that. I set off on foot, eating a granola bar. It felt good to walk. Knowing that there were RVs down at the one spot I had seen the day before, I was still feeling the zero human contact vibe and wandered from campground loop to campground loop, finding only off-for-the season spigots. Holy shit, I thought. Am I going to have to boil lake water? Finally, after nearly 45 minutes of wandering, I resigned myself to the RV campground I had seen earlier. Before I could get there, I passed some sort of maintenance building just as a guy was hopping off a bobcat. He looked confused at seeing me, a guy on foot, in the middle of the off-season, carrying a bunch of empty water bottles. I waved and jogged over to him
“Hey boss, are there any spigots on anywhere in the park right now?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But just at the Burning Heart campground, those are the only ones that are winterized. I can let you into the visitor center here and you can fill up," he said, pointing to the closed building adjacent to the maintenance shed.
“Oh man, I’d really appreciate that, thanks.”
“Yeah, all right. I got to go around back andI’ll let you in. Hold on just a minute.” He disappeared around the back and reappeared in the doorway as promised and pointed me to a 5 gallon water cooler.
“Here, this is a lot better water than you’re going to get out of the spigots around here. You tent camping?” He asked, surely trying to place this strange fella wandering around on foot.
I bent down and started filling my water bottles.
“Yeah, I rode my bike here from Osawatomie yesterday. I had a few days off work, and you know, as nice as it is, I wanted to do something, so here I am, doing it.
“How far are you going?”
“Well I have four days of food, I was planning on going all the way to Council Grove and then working my way back, but I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I think I’m gonna just chill around here and head back in the morning”
“Yeah, that’s a long way,” His tone became inquisitive, a little astounded. “So you carry all your camping gear on your bike?”
“Yep, I got everything I need… Except for water!” I chuckled.
“So what, you got like a bunch of cans of tuna or something?” I put another empty bottle under the spout.
“No, I've got these bags of freeze dried meals. Just add boiling water, wait ten minutes and yourself a hot meal.”
“Sort of like an MRE?”
“Yeah, yeah, very similar.”
“Huh. They any good?”
“Yeah, if you’re hungry enough,”. I said, again chuckling, looking for a comedic audience, getting nothing back but a weird stare.
Back at camp I had my fill of instant coffee and instant oatmeal. My plan to stay the day was now firmly established and being executed. I texted my wife as such and after a short trek to the vault toilet, I leisurely repaired my flat. Again, it was shaping up to be another gorgeous day and I had packed away my puffy jacket by late morning.
I spent some time down by the lake, making notes (that I have since misplaced) and smoked on my joint some more, reveling, despite my soreness, in a day of leisure out of doors. I quickly decided that it would be in my best interest to lighten my load for the next day's ride back to the car and vowed to eat as much as I possibly could stomach. I lounged in the sun, watched the birds and tried my best to simply rest with wild abandon.
Occasionally I would see the maintenance guy drive by in his bobcat and we’d exchange waves. At one point someone in a big ol’ bub of a pickup truck drove by and stopped in front of my camp and stared my way for a while. What in the world? Is that a bicycle? Look at that lunatic. They sat and stared for so long I was about to step up and go talk to them but they were all done before I could make my way to them. Good riddance.
After a hearty freeze dried lunch I wandered up to the self-service pay station, fully intending to pay for my now two nights of camping. The drive up booth at the entrance was still unstaffed. They wanted ten dollars a night, plus a three dollar per night administrative bullshit fee. Now, usually, I am a stickler for the rules, but I couldn’t fathom paying $26 for my accommodations. Maybe if I hadn’t had to seek out potable water, maybe if I didn’t have to hike to a vault toilet. Besides, I only had twenties. I decided that in the unlikely event of a park official shaking me down for funds I would pay up, but until that time, I’d be hanging onto my cash.
Despite my exhaustion, some level of boredom set in and I took a hike around the park’s easy trails, which I had all to myself, meandering into the woods and out into open fields of dry brown grasses. There was hardly any color to anything, even the spruce trees’ green had been dried out into a brown. At one point I spooked a barred owl from its perch and got a brief glimpse of its majestic wingspan.
My evening was delightfully uneventful. I gathered down twigs and made a slightly more satisfying fire than the night before. I cooked two different bags of freeze dried meals and ate until I could eat no more. I sipped my whiskey and puffed on my joint until it was so short it singed the hairs of my moustache.
I slept much better the second night and awoke the next morning feeling rested and rejuvenated. I had a good breakfast of coffee and instant oatmeal and pushed off in good spirits around nine. The day of rest had made little difference to my sit bones. The pain returned immediately after settling into the saddle all of a few yards from my camp. My return journey had just begun and I already was having that conversation with myself about my options (or lack thereof).
Part of the appeal of this trip all along was the safety margin in that I would not be more than a couple hours away from home by car and if absolutely need be, my wife could rescue me fairly easily in the event of a catastrophic breakdown (physically or mechanically).I wasn’t there yet. So long as the bike kept rolling, so would I. And soon as I exited the park there was a fairly solid climb. Aside from my sore ass I felt strong, and the incline was not the challenge that I had perceived it to be from the bottom. Back on the trail I was absolutely flying. On the way in I had not noticed that the trail I was traveling had been pitched slightly uphill, but here now on the way out with a gentle breeze at my back it was obvious that gravity was making significant contributions to my pace.
In only 50 minutes had made it to the crossing of Colorado Road, where I took a brief break for the sake of my sit bones and removed my jacket. The sun was not just out, but already surprisingly warm. While stashing my jacket in the panniers, I came across my tiny Nalgene of bourbon and jokingly announced to no one “Hell I ain’t driving” and proceeded to finish off the last little swig, you know, to lighten my load.
It truly was a beautiful morning. I had nothing even remotely resembling foul weather the entire trip, but the morning of the ride back felt exceptionally beautiful. The long stretches of straight line riding didn’t bother me in the least. I kept a good pace that felt quick and efficient, but leisurely all at the same time. At one point the trail runs just feet from a BNSF line and I was able to coerce the conductor of a freight train that came up behind me into blowing his horn by raising a fist and mimicking the motion of pulling down on a cord.
I laughed maniacally with jubilation. Soon after, I was taken off trail by the detour and put onto the rocky road that had caused me so much grief two days before. This day it was an absolute breeze, with a little traffic, no farm dogs and some convenient cooling cloud cover that seemingly came from nowhere to make my brief climb that much easier.
Off the detour and back on the trail the sun returned and I was simply shocked by my progress when I again reached the bridge over the Marais Des Cygnes river, just west of Ottawa, the more-or-less halfway point. I settled in on a bench looking up river to the modest dam and picturesque cascading water and had a little lunch. There wasn’t all that much left and when I had finished all that remained was a Clif bar that I would save for later, just in case. I was proud of my ability the previous day to pig out and eat up all my food weight. As beautiful of a day as it was, I was starting to see more people on the trail, even some cyclists here and there. 
I moved along from my lunch spot and easily navigated the passage through Ottawa, this time electing to stay on the crushed limestone trail. Still feeling strong, I kept a good pace all the way back to Rantoul and suddenly hit a wall. Rantoul was still a ghost town. I pedaled all the way down Main street looking for that Coke machine. I don’t drink much soda, and when I do I am staunchly on team Pepsi, but I would’ve drank and a Coke. The machine still seemed to be a relic of the past and nowhere in sight. I drank some water instead and nibbled half of my Clif bar, giving myself a little pep talk.
You’re close, you’re so close. Less than 10 miles. Used to commute 10 miles each way every day. 10 miles is nothing.
My sit bones screamed, my muscles ached again and suddenly I didn’t feel like I was going to make it. The mile markers had started to reappear and it felt like they were spaced six or seven miles apart. The trail began paralleling the river again and I knew I was so exceptionally close. At the two mile marker I took my last break and pep talked myself again. My sit bones nearly had me in tears and I considered finishing on foot. No, I thought, we went over this the other day, JUST FINISHED THIS THING. And somehow I did.
Back at the car I phoned my wife. She said she missed me and for me to hurry up and get home. I threw everything in the back of the car, racked the bike and did just that, stopping for a celebratory second lunch of trash food at a Burger King. By 4 o’clock I was home, collapsed on the couch next to my wife.
The next few days I was still off work and had some time to consider lessons learned. Chief among them, maybe do some training rides before tackling something like this next time. At the very least, consider doing some stretches. Though it wasn’t technically the deep backcountry trip I yearned for, it didn’t feel all that different from one; it was still pretty damn fun and more than satisfied my adventure bug.
I returned to work on Monday. When I walked in the door, the other department head was on a phone call, but he looked up at me with a look that said welcome back, but I am so sorry. A quick stroll around the warehouse told the story of my coworker who, in the words of the company GM, “got his dick slammed in the door.” The place was a disaster. Clearly my presence was sorely missed. All I could do was laugh maniacally.
I wasn’t even there, I was leaned up against the back of that Adirondack shelter smoking a joint watching clusters of black birds fly to and fro under a deep blue sky. The other department had stopped me at one point and asked me if I was OK. I actually smiled, shook my head and told him I was “too blessed to be stressed,” words I’d never actually uttered in my life.
My coworkers asked me about my ski trip, where I had gone, where I had stayed…I told them about the small fortune I had saved and the nearly 90 miles of trail I rode with all my gear.
“You did what? I’m sorry but that sounds miserable.”
“You know, it sort of was. It was also a lot of fun. You should try it sometime.”
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