We spent the day passing small towns that used to be integral parts of the railroad-system, and now they’re all integral parts of the selling-Snickers-to-bicyclists system. There was a pleasant monotony of bluffs on the left and the river on the right, but we had to break that monotony often for food. We bought PBJ supplies, chocolate and granola on the way out of Jeff City, and we ate on an almost hourly basis. The other stops were for Cameron to stretch his bad knee. We’d have been in the tightest of spots if it gave out on him, so Cameron took advantage of every railroad bridge railing as something to lean on while maintaining his leg as an engine.

Actually, the truth is that we were never really in too much of a hurry. Transportation took a backseat to recreation on the Katy. Taking time to enjoy the views of the river and to buy junk food at general stores whenever either opportunity presented was as much a part of the trip as counting mile-markers.

The Katy Trail is a very American experience. The land along the rail bed is the border where agricultural traditions met the industrial revolution. Most towns grew around the tracks originally, so they naturally showcase the trail today, and each town is an honest place where the baseball field is easy to find and the folks at the service station are glad to fill water bottles. Ironically, it was the highways and the semi-trucks between the towns that starved the railroad of business; in a way, cars and trucks cleared the way for our bicycles on the Katy.

When the sun dipped low, we started looking at our guidebook to decide where we would stay the night. The Katy is known for it’s bed-and-breakfasts at convenient intervals, but a few cell-phone calls told us that the ones within our budget were closed for the season. That’s how we found ourselves in a supermarket parking lot, in the dark, trying to hitch a ride across another bridge into a town south of the river, with another cheap road-motel waiting for us. The guidebook recommended hitching as the only way across this dangerous bridge, but we learned otherwise from the first motorist we solicited; a beautiful bike lane had been added since our guide was published! The protected bike lane, with a view of a passing night-train on the south side of the Missouri, brought us to the German settlement of Herman. Wide lanes, a simple layout, and great Mexican food greeted us with the opposite of our experience in
Jefferson City.

Unfortunately, the morning of Day Three brought more adventures in bike maintenance: we both woke up to flat tubes, thanks to slow leaks. As Cameron inspected his wheel, he found the tire so dried-out that it necessitated replacement along with the tube. Complicating the setback into a fiasco, the yellow-pages informed us that our flats had coincided with the local mechanic’s day off. A woman in the hotel parking lot told us that our only hope of getting out of town that day was to find the shop’s owner, “A small man with a large black dog.” The description was dead-on, and we found our savior walking down the block from his own business.

The Herman Ride Rest and Go Bike Shop is a classic, as is everything else in the village. A kind man from Wisconsin lives there with his dog and a modest stock of bikes, and he was only too happy to help us out of our jam and swap talk about the trail at the same time. He’s a no nonsense veteran of the Katy himself, and when asked what sort of tire he had to sell us, he plainly replied, “One that fits.”

With our wheels renewed, the last stop on the way out of town was the supermarket from the night before, where we stocked up on snacks and a thermos full of coffee for the trail. When all was said and done in Herman, we hadn’t actually returned to the trail until noon – too bad we’d committed to make the final sixty-mile push into St. Louis by the end of the day.

Even the daunting ratio of time-to-distance couldn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves on the final miles. We stopped to play with the floppiest dog in the world when he bounded across a field to investigate us, and we read the trailside placards at historical sites. What really threw us off though,