Our morning was a little weird today because we had a short ride. At 6:30 we had an amazing sponsored breakfast, they came to the high school we were staying at with camp stoves and made eggs and bacon plus some fresh fruit, the real treat was they were cooking up fresh homemade donuts for us, cinnamon and powdered sugar, they were too good. After breakfast we had another hour and a half before we actually needed to be on our bikes so most of us went back to sleep for a while, I just organized my stuff, uploaded pictures from my phone, and put route maps for all the days on the blog.
Once we got on the bikes I rode with Dean and Randy. Dean and I have been trying to ride together for a week now so I'm glad that finally worked out. The first half of the ride was pretty easy, it was 27 miles to our stage up at a gas station just off the highw. After that was our 25 mile long police escort to our lunch at a country club. It was so much fun riding in a double pace line for that long, we could talk the whole ride, it was hilarious. The area we rode through had some amazing houses, very wealthy area. We also passed a lot of other cyclists, two guys were going in the same direction as us and actually joined our pace line and talked with us for a while about riding and what we are doing, they were really cool but eventually our crew said they couldn't be in our pace line so they took of ahead of us. Finally we got to the park by the club and had lunch with the family of the project manager on North route. Brantley's girlfriend Shelby who we have all heard so much about drove up from Mississippi to meet him here and she showed up at lunch with her friend Hannah. It was awesome to meet her and I am glad he got to spend time with her, I know exactly how he feels. After lunch we did another double pace line to lodging but this one was not as enjoyable. Our police escort for this one never came through which made it a little scary since we were going through downtown and the back end of the pace line had to run red lights to keep with the group, the front would catch the green but it would turn red before we all made it. We didn't have any close calls with accidents though and made it to lodging which is the downtown Hilton just a couple blocks from the Arch and river, I have a great view of it from my room.
The best surprise was waiting for us when we arrived too. We had to keep it off social media until thibgs were sorted out but everything is good now. So a few days ago TJ took a turn too fast and ended up riding into a ditch on the side of the road on the ride out of Olathe. He landed pretty bad and smacked his helmet on the ground pretty hard. He was racked the rest of the day and iced his head and figured he had a concussion. When he went to the urgent care to get it checked out they took some scans and x-rays and said they he had a stable fracture in a vertebrae in his neck, this means the fracture isn't going to cause damage if it is allowed to heal. That was really scary for us an him. They gave him a neck brace and he continued on with the team. After talking to his parents he decided to keep traveling with us and get another opinion from a friend of his family in Saint Louis who is a spinal specialist so he went there while we roade into Saint Louis. As we make the last turn and see the hotel TJ is standing on the corner with no neck brace wiggling his head and neck all over the place. Turns out the doctors were all wrong and he never had any damage to his neck, it took the doctor here 5 seconds to figure that out. Whole lot of stress and fear for no reason. He will be with us the rest of the way and back on the bike on our next ride.
After we moved into the hotel we went to dinner with the same family at a pizza, pasta, salad buffet. They cooked us any kind of pizza we wanted and had amazing pasta including toasted ravioli which was incredible.
They also got us all tickets to City Museum which we were at first skeptical about but turns out it is a giant playground essentially. Outside is a huge metal structure with tunnels and ladders and slides, it has a castle and plane you can crawl around and walk through. Inside is the same with caves and tunnels that I could barely fit through but go under the floors and come out of the ground in random places. It was so wild and unreal, whoever came up with this must have been crazy. It was a lot of fun until the humidity and heat got to me.
When we got back we showered and went to go check out Saint Louis. We went to ballpark village which was across the street from our hotel and went to PBR, Professional Bull Riders Bar. It was very different than anything I've seen. Stayed there for just a bit before heading back to meet up with the guys who didn't go out amd we walked over to the arch around midnight. The arch is absolutely incredible, looking up at it all lit up was amazing, I can't wait to check it out during the day and hopefully ride the pod that goes through the inside around the whole thing.
Tomorrow is crazy busy, breakfast, two friendship visits, van cleaning, sponsored dinner. Hopefully we don't loose all our free time so we can enjoy more of Saint Louis.
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