Katy Trail

Last Saturday (10/27/07) I went on a bike ride. Not your normal ¾ mile cruise around town with the family. I went with Chris Sumpter, Ken Lanning, and my father on a 44.7 mile Katy Trail ride. We had been “planning” this trip for several weeks. It started when Ken, Dad, and I took our families on a five mile ride one evening in early October. We thought it would be great to get some guys together and do an overnight trip on the trail which goes from Clinton, MO to St. Louis.

Our original goal didn’t pan out as none of my friends could be convinced that they were in any kind of shape to make this trip fun. I would give them a harder time but for what follows.

Ken did get Chris on board, and we shortened it to a one day trip where we would ride out from and come back to Clinton. We left about 9:00 in the morning and started out strong and fast. Dad set the pace at about 9.5 miles/hour. I don’t know how that compares to what you all bike at, but it is much faster than I was accustomed to. At about 40 minutes in, I started to feel overdressed on the cool morning. So we stopped and Ken and I took off our sweatshirts and we all took in some water. At that point I realized I was in trouble. I just didn’t feel quite right. We started again, and I fell behind. I told them not to wait for me. I was just going to get another drink. As soon as they were out of sight, I lost the egg Mcmuffin I had consumed that morning as well as half a liter of water. Five minutes later my stomach decided there was nothing more in there and it calmed down. Dad called my cell phone asking what was going on and I told him. At this point I had decided I was going home. I had already tried to call Jill to pick me up from whatever little town was up ahead, but she was out of the house. Dad came riding back and gave me the keys to his truck. I said that I felt better and would probably ride to the next town before turning back. I meant it, too; I was done.

We rode on and found Chris and Ken had waited for me. I will admit I wasn’t happy to see them. I knew that I couldn’t turn back as long as they were stopping for me. And they stopped every time.

I will say here that neither of them seemed real upset about the new pace we kept for the rest of the day. I should say, though, that neither of them gave me a hard time about throwing up, either, so I should be grateful.

We made it out to the highest point on the Katy Trail, which gave us the psychological lift of thinking it was downhill all the way back. Moral of the story: McDonalds and physical activity do not mix (also, as Chris pointed out, “Maybe we didn’t properly prepare for the trip by riding 0 miles Monday, 0 Tuesday, 0 Wednesday, 0 Thursday, 0 Friday, and 45 miles Saturday.”)

It is now Sunday afternoon. Cannon is down for a nap, I am sitting at the computer, and where is Jill? She is outside standing over a ditch with a leftover sausage, trying to trap a neighbor’s kitten that wandered onto our property. If she tells you that she did it because she wants Cannon to see it; remember, Cannon is down for a nap.