Alton, Illinois to Pere Marquette State Park- and Back
Dateline: Alton, Illinois, September 13, 2014
What a day- get up before the alarm, get breakfast, haul bike downstairs, and the key fob is dead! Not just mostly dead, DEAD. No way to start the car. No key to put in the ignition and go. No back up system. I yearn for the old days. Now a new activity comes to the fore.
I start calling dealerships and leaving messages. Meanwhile, the hotel manager, Kashif, arrives for his day, and immediately says, “You don’t need a dealer. We will take care of this for you. I need my coffee, but don’t worry, I will fix this.” An engineer by trade, he gets his hotel up and running and then takes my key to Walgreens and buys me a battery, puts it all back together, and in the time it took me to eat breakfast, he has put Illinois back in play for me. Just the first person of many to go out of their way to help me on this special day. I don’t think this happens in NYC.
I decide to go for it, heading for Pere Marquette State Park, Illinois, for a 40 mile out and back ride on the Sam Vadalabene (Ba-da-Bing!) Trail. I cross the Missouri and Mississippi rivers- and find the southern terminus and after the inevitable false starts and difficulty finding the trail (inevitable for me…) I start up in the shade, only 42 degrees, strong headwind.
The trail was muddy in spots and not well maintained in the early going. Slightly uphill, right along the Mississipppi. Limestone bluffs to my right.
Eventually, I made it to a town, seemed too early, and of course there was a sign for Visitors’ Center, supposedly my destination, but it was just for the town- nothing for the park. All bikes were supposed to stick to the trail. I tried, but was right along the river maybe, couldn’t find it and the water was high. I returned to the road, losing time, then saw the trail and birds and flooded wetland, and I went right through it and got my feet wet in the bathtub warm Mississippi. Felt like a little kid.
As I approached the park, 17 miles in, I got the first real hill (short, but I felt it), and a few other bikers. Made the park and the Mississippi’s confluence with the Illinois river in 4.5 miles and stopped along the river to talk to some birders, who were on purple martins, and there were egrets as well.
Beautiful cool windy day. I felt the urge to really push myself as I headed back, riding hard, think I made 20.4 miles in around an hour and a half- saw 4 huge fish jump up right next to me along the 8 mile stretch of shared roadway, and a procession of great blue herons. Got to the Haselton point of This Needs to End- and then it did. Illinois bagged.
I hopped back in the car, tired, happy, drove back to the hotel, gave the car to Dante- washed up, got ready to meet Emily for a late-ish lunch. Dante brought the car up and said, “It feels rough…” And we looked, and the right front tire was completely flat. Flopping.
Immediately Dante said, “I’ll change that,” but he couldn’t get the lug nuts to turn and the jack was dry. I called AAA, and they came in 10 minutes, and I was just thanking my lucky stars I didn’t have a blowout and die. A Missouri family overheard my troubles and gave me the name and phone number of the nearest tire place. Two new tires later, I finally met up with Em- after 4 pm. We shared delicious chinese food at a storefront restaurant and famous Ted Drewes ice cream and spent the rest of our time together shopping for hot sauce and coffee for Kashif to thank him for making the whole day possible. I dropped her off at University City, crawled home, showered, had a glass of wine, 5 cookies for dinner and the day was done. I am the fortunate one.
There are some very nice people in this world. Never forget that.