Jeff’s Missouri Bicycle Trip Report - 05/20/09
Day 3 - Morning
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 - Destination: Jerseyville (again)!
How could it get
any better than this? Perhaps if I hadn’t camped so close to railroad tracks
(580 feet). Trains, with whistles blowing, passed by at 10:35 p.m., 11:25 p.m.,
3:13 a.m., and 3:53 a.m.! No matter. It didn’t take me long to fall back to sleep, and
I was beginning to think it was funny. I was up at 6:00 a.m. It was a beautiful
morning to be camping by a lake. 
Packed up and ate
breakfast while the plastic ground cloth I used under the tent dried in the sun.
The drink was from the shopping stop at Casey’s the evening before. It wasn’t
hot coffee, but it did have caffeine! 
Received
another email from the ferry company: Subject: Golden
Eagle
Date: Tuesday, 5-19-2009 8:18 p.m. (forwarded to me at
10:15 p.m.)
From: Calhoun Ferry Co. The Winfield Ferry
will be open at 5 a.m. tomorrow, Wed May 20th. The Golden Eagle Ferry will be
open to trucks only and that is only if we have a dock sticking out of the water
tomorrow. We can not trust the prediction for the Mississippi river but if
it is right we will be at 29.3 feet tomorrow. We believe the Illinois river
may be backing up the Mississippi and that may be the reason we did not crest
early today. We called lock and Dam 25 this morning and they said it crested
early today but since then we have raise at Golden Eagle. If we had known
that we would get this much water we would have closed today, but could not do
so once we told people we would stay open. We will give an update tomorrow
as soon as we know something new. Thank You for your patience! The Calhoun
Ferry Company I oiled the bike chain, loaded the bike, and was on my
way out of the park at 9:00 a.m. Here’s a picture of the railroad tracks (looking
east) where the park road crosses the tracks. 
A heading mostly
due south got me back on my previously-planned route. There was still a stiff
wind from the south. I tried to capture its force in this picture of the bike’s
flag. Now I see I should have also taken a picture with the bike facing the
other way to compensate for any preexisting non-vertical slant of the
pole. 
All along the way I found places to stop for a drink and
sometimes a snack. Traffic was nonexistent. 
At 1:55 p.m., less
than a mile south of Route 108, - BANG! The rear tire blew
out.
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