Oct. 17 – Cheap Breakfast and Conspiracies

It was a chilly morning in Girard! I was not motivated to cook breakfast, so I packed up quickly and then made a beeline to the closest open restaurant – The Hiway House. This was an old-school diner, with beat up furniture, plywood walls and lots of guys in overalls. No complaints though – the coffee was hot, people were friendly, and I got fueled up for the day for only $6.74. Now that is a deal!

Then I was off to the public library to use their wifi and get my blog caught up. With all the messing around, it was around 11am before I actually pedaled out of town! A late start. Within an hour or so I passed through Pittsburgh, Kansas and then crossed the border into Missouri! I can’t prove it, however, because there was no sign welcoming me. What the heck? Doesn’t the governor of Missouri realize that we cyclists count on taking photos of the sign welcoming us to every state we ride through? Unforgivable. Speaking of signs – looks like I have bigger problems to address…..I have observed some suspicious activity. The only thing I can figure is that Utah is still upset over me re-naming all those summits and is collaborating with Missouri to track me down. How else can I explain all these signs I am seeing?

I pedaled hard to throw them off my trail and I may have succeeded. Haven’t seen a sign all day today. I set my sights on Golden City – not only does it sound cool, like the sister city to the Emerald City.…but there is no place to stop for about 30 miles past it, so it was the logical place to rest. They have a nice park where cyclists can camp. Unfortunately you have to get a code for the restrooms from City Hall, and I arrived 15 minutes too late. I was hoping for a shower….but I guess not. There was water and a nice big covered picnic area where I could set up that had electrical outlets, so that was a plus. The park backed up to houses and I struck up a conversation with a local guy, Mark, who was working in his yard. He is a recently retired CPA who has lived in Golden City since the 70’s. Super nice and knew a lot about the area so we had a good conversation. Nothing was open in town except the Dollar General and a local convenience store – so it was dinner in my tent as it was still pretty cold.

Ok Jeff, I can hear you saying, when you are reduced to photos of food and descriptions of the weather…..then you must not have seen anything unusual or interesting today. Well, I will leave you with this image:

You never know what you will see along the road!