June 26, 2019
By: Erin Leydon
So St. Louis is the first major city we’ve been to in a while, so we were pretty excited to spend some of our time there doing things we don’t usually get the opportunity to do. We had asked a lot of people we met for suggestions of what to do there, and the common thread between all of their suggestions was the City Museum. People kept describing it as if it was this magical place, and we all wanted to find time to do it, but we didn’t know when we would have time. Sometime yesterday, someone came up with the idea that we would go to the City Museum this morning and then bike the 85 miles in the afternoon. One by one, we convinced the other Spokes members that this wasn’t an awful idea.
So this morning, we all got ready for the day and went to the City Museum, which was awesome. It was not a museum at all, but was instead a playground built for adults. There were tubes to crawl through, slides to go down, and plenty of other things to do. Throughout the day, I crawled through an plane, slid down a ten story slide, and rode a ferris wheel. It was amazing, and here are some pictures from that:
By 11:30, we all met to go back to our host’s house and get ready to bike. By the time we drove back and were all ready to start biking the 85 miles for the day, it was 1:00 PM. We figured it would be a long day, but it would be doable. We’ve had some pretty long days, but this wouldn’t be too bad. So we started biking.
We spent a lot of time on the Katy Trail, a gravel biking/pedestrian trail through Missouri. The Katy Trail is pretty nice, and has some great scenery. Gravel does tend to slow us down a little bit though, so we weren’t exactly making great time. But we kept going. We usually have a lunch break midday, but our break for today ended up being more of a dinner break, as it was around 7 PM by the time my group make it to the agreed upon spot. We ate quickly and kept biking.
This is when the sun started to set. As it started to get a bit darker, the frogs emerged. Suddenly, the trail was covered in frogs. Fun fact: It’s not fun to run over frogs, but there was no avoiding them. Soon, the frogs were jumping into the air. They were hitting our legs. In the other group, one frog jumped into Devin’s wheel and was flung about four inches from Bill’s face. There were also clouds of bugs that made the ride just a bit more unpleasant. Eventually, my group got off the Katy Trail and started biking on a nearby road, which was much more pleasant.
Eventually, we realized that we would be getting into our host’s house pretty late, so we made the decision to get picked up in the van. It was such a relief to get to our hosts’ house for the night. Lee and Keely, our hosts, were extremely nice, and even stayed up late to greet us.
So, it was a very long day, but it was also really fun. We got to play and explore the City Museum, and we got to bike all along a bike trail, which is always fun because we can bike side by side. If I had to make the decision of whether or not to go to the City Museum again, I’d still choose to go, but I’m really tired right now. Goodnight, and thanks for reading!