Category: You Ran Over What?

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It’s Mother’s Birthday Season

Warning: non-biking content

We’re right in the middle of my mother’s 87th Birthday Season. “I’ve never had a bad one,” she says.

When we were home last year, we noticed that her washing machine was leaking. The leak had turned into a flood because the drum was rusted out at the top. When it would start to spin, the water level would rise and go out the hole. Fortunately, the washer is in the basement near a floor drain. Still, water and electricity don’t mix.

Coming Clean in 2008

Elaborate ruse.

Bro Mark and Wife Lila and I decided that we’d like to keep her around for a little longer, so we hatched a plan to replace the machine without her knowing it.

Lila found a suitable machine and arranged for it to be swapped out with the old one. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be delivered until shortly after 8 A.M. on Thursday.

Bro Mark was planning to come down from St. Louis so we could ride over to Kentucky Lake to check on mother’s mobile home Hurricane Ike damage. We had him call her Wednesday night to say that he was going to have to drop something off at his office and that was going to make him late.

We told her we’d like to go to breakfast and take a ride to look at the river to kill time until he could get into town. I snuck out to the car to give him a five-minute warning.

We ate breakfast and I called Mark to see how things were coming. He was “stuck in traffic” or something, so we put the “look at the river” plan in operation. Finally, he said that he was just about home.

2006 BDay

That darned Murphy

Before we could all get downstairs to call her with some kind of excuse, she headed down to the basement to get some blue thread and stumbled right over it.

She pretended to be cranky, but I think she liked it.

Over to Kentucky Lake

Bro Mark, Mother, Ken

It was a lousy day to ride anyway – cold front moving through with rain and wind – so we weren’t too disappointed to drive over to the Lake. Turns out the damage to the trailer wasn’t that bad, at least to our inexperienced eyes. We didn’t see any water leaks on the inside, so we think that’s a good thing.

While I was taking pictures, a neighbor wandered over and asked if we’d like one taken of the three of us.

Yep.

My mother is shy and dignified

Mother keeps a fire going in the basement fireplace to heat the basement.

BDay Season 2004

The flue goes up through the center of the house, so it keeps the kitchen and living room toasty.

She had been using a little tippy (and dippy) garden cart to haul the wood in from outside. I was afraid she was going to dump a load on her foot, so we picked up this wagon. Mother is so shy it was difficult to get her to go along with this picture in 2004. Continue reading “It’s Mother’s Birthday Season”

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Flush Twice, Cape Needs the Water

That was the common graffiti in St. Louis gas station restrooms in the 60s, when the solution to pollution was dilution and raw sewage was pumped directly into the Mississippi River to become someone else’s problem downstream.

Cape Bicycle worked magic

The good folks at Cape Bicycle dug through their shelves and came with a replacement left shifter and got me back on the road late in the afternoon. (See yesterday’s post.)

While there, I was really impressed with a Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike on the floor. It’s highly thought of by the phreds. I can see why. It’s a lot of bike for the money.

Time for a test drive

After getting a $20 flu shot, I just barely had time to get in a 12-mile ride before a cold front moved in bringing rain with it.

I used the Cape Recreational Trail to get to the south end of town, where I took city back streets to get down to the site of the Old Mississippi River Bridge which was torn down when a new bridge was built in 2003. It was a shame that the old bridge couldn’t have been left up like the Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis.

I got there just in time to see a barge push by.

A quick ride to the riverfront

I hurried to get to an opening in the seawall on Water Street, but the barge was moving faster than I could. I had to content myself with a quick shot before it made it past Cape Rock.

The Mississippi River has always been a special place for me. The ocean is neat, but I can sit and watch the river flow by for hours.

As a cub reporter, I had to interview the guy who had been reading the river stages in Cape for 100 years, or so it seemed. The poor fellow had probably been interviewed by two dozen cub reporters like me.

What have you learned about the river?

“If a little boy pees in the river in St. Louis, the river will rise in Cape Girardeau.”

The Southeast Missourian was a pretty conservative paper in those days – one editor would even censor Ann Landers columns – so I’m not sure THAT quote saw print.

“Anything else?

“Big rains make big river.” (That one got in.)

Riverfront is popular

Even though downtown Cape has been in a serious decline since the seawall was constructed, the riverfront is a popular stopping place.

An impressive set of official murals grace the front and back of the wall, but chalk artists have added their own decorations.

With the sun setting, a couple leave the river front and head out toward the Common Pleas Courthouse, built in 1854.

This was just a quick hit. I’ll return to historical downtown Cape and its river later.

Thursday is going to be a non-biking day. Bro Mark and I have to go over to Kentucky Lake to check on our mother’s mobile home that took some limb hits when Hurricane Ike blew through.

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A Piece of Family History on Highway 61

I mentioned that my mother and I journeyed down Highway 61 while scouting out the New Madrid Earthquake bike route.

On the way south, we looked for a piece of property that my dad’s construction company owned in the late 50s.

Dad BUILT Route W

Steinhoff, Kirkwood and Joiner built roads and bridges all over Southeast Missouri in the 50s through the 70s. When I read Southeast Missourian Speak Out folks griping about cyclists on Route W, I think to myself, my dad BUILT Route W. I guess that gives me some right to ride on it.

Needed place to store equipment

Before long, SK&J needed a place to store equipment and a garage big enough to work on bulldozers and other earthmoving equipment.

They bought this land between Scott City and Benton and put up a mechanic’s shed / garage, a shed and several tool buildings.

Dad always wanted a big pond, so they built one on the property and stocked it with bass, crappie, blugills and catfish.

Water moccasins, turtles came on their own

I was an avid fly fisherman and loved to spend hours at the pond. The only bad thing was that you risked sharing your catch with the turtles and water moccasins.

I remember one day that dad and I had a huge stringer of fish we were looking forward to eating. One of us pulled up the stringer to add a new catch and discovered a good-sized moccasin hanging from it.

(1) It doesn’t take a Steinhoff long to look at a snake. (2) We decided that he wanted that stringer of fish more than we did.

We finally found it

After passing by a couple of likely candidates, we doubled back to a property with a pond, a mobile home, a huge brick home and a hundred plastic Halloween pumpkins in front of it.

Jim Pinkston and his son, Jamie, 20, were picking up some limbs when we pulled up.

Jim knew right away what we were talking about and he was kind enough to share this colorized aerial photo taken shortly after his father built the house at left.

“My dad bought the property in 1969 or 1970. It included the garage, shed, some tool sheds, a loading dock and 7-1/2 acres of land with the pond,” Jim said.

“He had a trucking business, so the garage was a perfect shop for him,” he continued. They hauled Styrofoam sheets for Dow when it was in Cape. They used damaged sheets on the inside of the garage for insulation. Continue reading “A Piece of Family History on Highway 61”

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Withlacoochee Trail Full Moon Ride Oct. 11

Regis Hampton, a bike shop owner in Floral City, FL, has been sponsoring a Full Moon ride on the Withlacoochee State Trail for years. I’ve done at least three of them.

Here’s his latest note:

The Withlacoochee trail moonlight ride will be Saturday, Oct. 11, at 7:00 pm.  Will start at the same place as always in Istachatta, however we’ve moved the bike shop to Floral City so no parts, lights or rentals from this location.  Lights, flashers and helmets please. Going to Las Lomas Mexican Restaurant. 26 miles round trip.
Regis 352-419-4809 or 352-799-4979

Snakes Alive! in 2003

My son, Matt, and a friend from the office, Chuck, decided to take advantage of the great fall weather in Nov. 2003 to ride the Withlacochee State Trail, a 46-mile rails to trails in west central Florida.

Chuck and Matt were only looking to do about 50 miles, so Chuck got a motel room in Inverness, about the half-way point. That was going to be the bail-out spot in case anyone wanted to quit early. I was really hoping to get in a full century.

Matt and I started at the south end of the trail near Trilby and were clipping along at a great pace except that my gears were shifting all by themselves. It was like they were hunting between three cogs. Played the devil with trying to set a cadence.

Chain repair isn’t brain surgery

About five miles down the trail, I was looking down trying to figure out what was going screwy when I noticed that a chain link looked like it was bulging out on every pass. There is a great bike shop about 10 miles out, so I figured that I’d drop in there and get it looked at.

That’s when we hit what’s probably the high spot (literally) of the trail: an old railroad bridge that goes over I-75. I had climbed about 20 feet when the chain parted. The good news is that I had bought a Park chain tool a couple of summers ago when I had broken a chain in MO. The bad news is that I had never used it. It wasn’t brain surgery, so the kid installed a new pin for me.

I got up the bridge about 20 feet then the chain parted again. OK, so the kid is a Unix administrator, not a brain surgeon.

This time he took out the link that was bent and tried again. Not only did it work fine, but it actually seemed to shift better than ever. While we were working on it, a very nice park ranger came by to see if we needed help. He carries a set of bike tools and spare parts and actually seemed disappointed when he found us making our own repairs.

Be patient, we’re going to get to the snake eventually.

We hooked up with Chuck in Floral City, had a great lunch and kept on trucking.

The trail goes through some fairly desolate country and some tiny towns. We didn’t see as much wildlife as I had on some other rides, but there were a few snakes, a gopher tortoise, something in the distance that was too big to be a squirrel and some of the biggest bunny rabbits I’ve seen this side of jackalope land.

When we hit Inverness on the return leg, Matt and Chuck decided they’d had enough fun. It was about 60 miles for Matt and about 50 for Chuck. I wanted to get in a few miles, although it was getting late and chilly, so my goal of a century wasn’t likely to happen. The trail is supposed to close at sunset, and I was afraid that they might close the gates where we had parked the car.

I’m all alone

Matt and Chuck headed off to get Chuck’s car to pick up mine. Matt and I had GPSs programmed with waypoints along the trail and we both had Nextel radios to keep in touch.

Between the rapidly ending day and overhanging trees, it was getting dark enough that I had to turn on the my lights. I didn’t have to worry about traffic, so I was just running off my Schmidt hub. I kept my NiteRider in reserve just in case.

I hadn’t seen another rider in an hour and was in the darkest part of the trail when I decided to take a close look at my GPS to see which would be a logical pickup point to meet The Kid. Except for some frogs and an odd snake or two, there wasn’t much to dodge.

OK, What’s THAT?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something mottled-looking stretched two-thirds of the way across the 9-foot trail. My brain told me that it was just some leaves that had been stacked up against a curvy crack in the blacktop to a height of about 2-1/2 inches, a width of about four inches and a length of about six feet (and that was just what was on the trail.)

My instincts, however, caused me to grab the radio and say, “Kid, I just passed something that was either a pile of leaves or a bleeping python. Either way, I ain’t going back to find out.”

Making me wonder even more about it was the fact that I don’t recall seeing anything obstructing the trail when I rode north and Chuck didn’t see anything like that when he rode the same stretch on Sunday.

I decided that I’d try to hook up with the kid in front of a general store in Istachatta. When I got there, it was like a scene out of the Twilight Zone just before Rod Serling shows up. The general store was closed and dark. The few houses around were dark and quiet. The only sound came from some dogs howling in the distance.

“Uhhhh, Kid,” I radioed. “You ARE on your way, right?”

“Yep.” He replied. “Just a couple of miles from the turn-off. Won’t be but a few minutes.”

I had my bike set up by the side of the road with all of the taillights blinking and the NiteRider headlight strobing away at a roadside sign. There was no way he was going to miss me.

Ten L-O-N-G minutes went by. No Kid.

“Kid,” I radioed again. “Do you have any idea what kind of sound a python makes slithering through wet grass? Well, I don’t either and I’ve seen enough of those movies to know that I don’t to look over my shoulder.”

“I didn’t notice that the battery in my GPS had died.” he replied, giving me much comfort. “I was wondering why the little arrow on the laptop wasn’t moving. I’ve changed the battery and figured out that I missed my turn. It won’t be long….”

That was easy for him to say. He wasn’t python bait.

Maybe I didn’t get a picture of the python, but here’s a picture of Matt with a shark we spotted along the trail.