Family and friends,
Though our ride on the Katy Trail has been mainly a
solitary undertaking, we did enjoy a kind of comradeship with other bikers. If
you’re stopped beside the trail, passing bikers will often slow and ask if you
need help. At trailheads, folks share greetings and wishes for a safe ride,
compare notes and offer trail advice. We gotten pretty good at telling the
long-distance folks from the day riders, mostly from the amount of gear they're
carrying. We marvel at the stamina of those who are completing the trail in
just a few days and the ardor of those who have ridden it multiple times. There
was the young fellow who fell in beside us one misty morning and talked
non-stop for a few miles before finally pedaling on. We've paused twice to help
folks with flats and it must be earning us good trail karma because we are thus
far flatless. These transitory “acquaintanceships”
have made the ride more fun. Then there are the people we meet who feel like
friends.
Unless you ride it in a single day like that fanatic we
mentioned in an earlier e-mail, covering the 238-mile-long Katy Trail from end
to end is a big logistical challenge. Some folks load up their bikes with 40
pounds of camping gear or tow a little bobtail trailer along behind and camp
their way along. Others overnight in B&Bs, carrying just a change or two of
clothes and maybe a spare tire. We wanted to travel light during the day and
camp in our comfy trailer with a hot shower and our own soft bed. We might have
accomplished this as a whole bunch of out-and-back rides, pedaling a few miles
then turning around and coming back to camp, but the trail is plenty long
without doubling the distance. The solution seemed straightforward: We needed
someone to shuttle our truck and trailer ahead while we pedaled.
What
with the trail being so popular and all, we figured this would be no big deal
to arrange. We were wrong. It turns out that while those who ride are numerous,
those who shuttle are a rare breed indeed. Enter Barbara Gokenbok
and her Show Me MO Tours.
Cheryl
found Barb in the Katy Trail guidebook and after a flurry of e-mails we had our
shuttle service for the west and east portions of the trail settled.
A dozen or so pedal days based from just five campsites
would do the trick, we figured, but the actual logistics of making that happen
can be a real challenge. The nightmare scenario would be finding ourselves at
the end of a long day’s ride with no truck or trailer in sight. We sometimes
resorted to diagraming the moves on paper to reassure ourselves that we’d end
up in the same place as our bed each night.
An
example of how zany this can get: We arose early one morning at Bluffton, left
the trailer at Steamboat Junction campground and drove back to
the trailhead at Jeff City where we’d been only the day before. There we met
Barb and her husband Roy, who took the truck back to Bluffton, from whence it
just came. Then we got on our bikes and pedaled “home” to Bluffton.
What’s
more, Barb and Roy live in St. Louis, so for the shuttles on the western end of
the trail they’d be driving all the way across Missouri to move our rig 30
miles or so, then heading home. A day or so later, back across the state to
move us farther along. Through it all, and in spite of our frequent tweaking of
shuttle points to even out miles between the days, there was never a single
miscue. Thanks to Cheryl’s careful planning and Barb’s patient logistical
support we never ended up homeless on this adventure. And it was fun chatting
with Barb on those days when she hauled just us and our bikes. Her warmth and
natural friendliness were great and we can’t say enough about the wonderful
service from Show Me MO Tours.
There
was a middle portion of the trail, middling for length but with lots of
sightseeing, where we figured we’d linger several days, do shorter rides and
just wing it for shuttles, doing 70 miles of trail from one central campsite.
After spending a frustrating hour calling bike shops up and down the line
trying to find someone to ferry us from our camp at Franklin, we discovered the
solution right in our pocket. Back in Sedalia we’d picked up a flyer for MO
River Taxi and Shuttle. “This is Cotten,” came the
answer in a rumbling drawl when we dialed the number. In a few minutes we’d
organized three shuttles, one to carry us back to Pilot Grove to finish up the
trail as far as Franklin, the other two taking us forward to trailheads so we
could finish all the way to Jefferson City, the mid-point on The Katy.
Marvin
Cotten is as as reliable as
the sunrise and knows every trailhead and shortcut for getting there.
Careening
down backroads and byways on our morning shuttle rides, we got to know him a
bit and enjoyed him immensely. He’s lived in Boonville all his life except for
a stint on the Florida gulf coast as a young man. “It got so crazy down there I
knew it was time to come home,” he said. Making conversation, we asked him if
he or other Missourians think of themselves as southerners. “No, not really,”
he said. “Midwesterners?” we pressed. He mulled briefly, then replied, “We’re
just country!” But this son of Missouri soil who speaks with a pronounced drawl
that’s almost but not quite southern is no back-country rube. He’s wired for
sound with a Bluetooth phone in his ear and his van is equipped with a tablet
and the latest navigation apps. “With this”, he said, proudly holding up a
mobile hotspot, “I’ve got internet everywhere I go.” His wife sometimes fields
phone inquiries and relays messages via Facebook.” October is the busiest month
for biking The Katy and Cotten spends his days zipping
back and forth to pickup and drop-off points, sometimes covering the same
ground two or three times in a day. He even responds to emergency calls from
busted down bikers. Between his in-town taxi service and the bicycle shuttles,
he put 90,000 miles on his van last year. The day he dropped us at the North
Jefferson trailhead, he lingered a few minutes in hopes someone there would see
his van and decide to use his services. “Some of ‘em ain’t all that tired ‘til they see the ride,” he quipped.
No one bit and he finally got a call and drove off, leaving us with a sinking
feeling to see him drive away for the last time. If you’re ever biking The
Katy, get in touch with Cotten. He’s out of
Boonville.
It
was in this same part of the trail that we met Maggie. She’s a walker. Closing
in on Pilot Grove one hot afternoon, glad to be almost done with our day’s
ride, we passed a woman on foot. She was dressed from her chin to her walking
shoes in dark blue, using a walking stick in each hand and carrying a hefty-looking
daypack. She turned to give us a friendly greeting as we passed. “Man!” Keith
thought, “Hot day for a walk!” At the trailhead a mile farther on we were
waiting for our truck and trailer to arrive when here she came out of the
woods. She and Cheryl struck up a conversation and we learned that she’d walked
the 60 miles from Clinton! Neither of us could believe it. Compared to her
walking pace, we’d just zipped across those miles and felt like we’d
accomplished something. And she seemed in no great hurry to get to her B&B
just across the street. We were bushed and eager for our wheels to arrive to
carry us into camp, but Maggie slipped off her pack and sat down to chat. Keith
couldn’t resist and picked it up. Heavy.
Maggie
told us she's taking this walk just to see if it can be done.
Over
the next few days we kept running into her. A bit farther on at Boonville on a
day of rest, we’d just come out of the museum near the trailhead and who should
emerge from the woods but Maggie. “Hey, look who’s here!” Keith exclaimed.
“This woman’s amazing!” he whispered to Cheryl. Her lodgings for the night were
just a block away, but once again she stopped for a chat. We had the truck with
us and offered her a ride. “No thanks,” she said. “I’ll just walk.” We felt like
total weenies. On one of our morning shuttles with Cotten,
he mentioned that he’d picked up a woman who was walking the trail and shuttled
her back to her hotel. Even he was impressed. “We met her, too!” we exclaimed.
And
again near Rocheport farther along the trial, we were cruising along and here
was Maggie, still making her way eastward. Cheryl pulled to a stop and it took
Maggie a few seconds to recognize us. Then her face lit up. Sans daypack
but with both walking sticks, she was out for a morning stroll before retiring
to a local hilltop winery for lunch. The whole thing was getting funny by this
point and we laughed and talked for a convivial half hour. Maggie's got a quick
wit and a glib style of humor, which we came to enjoy. But there would be no
further meetings, at least not on this trip. Having walked nearly half the
trail she was about to head home to begin planning her next jaunt on The Katy
in her project to show that it isn’t just for long distance cyclists.
Encamped
at St. Charles, we're closing in on the end of our ride. Stay tuned.
Regards,
Cheryl
and Keith