THURSDAY 10TH MARCH: I AM TAKING A REST DAY IN TAMMIE AND MARK’S

Mar 9th 2011. Burling Junction 5km/3miles west of to Tarkio.  32.1km = 20 miles.

Tonight and tomorrow night I am a guest of Tammie  and Mark of The Wild Horse Bar, Tarkio. Thanking you so much for your great help.

Mar 8th 2011Ravenwood to Burlington Junction( 5km/3 miles west of) 40.6km = 25.2 miles

Tonight I am guest of Ben. thanks for your kind help

Mar 7th 2011  Albany to Ravenwood  41.2 km = 25.6 miles.

Tonight I am the guest of Chris and Sandy. Thanks so much for all your kind help

Total for 115 road days = 5,120.1km  = 3,181.5 miles = 121.34 Marathons.

I have been spoilt by all this great hospitality I am receiving. It’s been over two months since I last camped. Most of my nights have been spent in American homes giving me a great insight into family life in this country.

And then there are the great American breakfasts… Eggs and more eggs!

Before leaving home I rarely ate eggs. I often bought a six pack, ate two. The other four would sit on the egg rack of my refrigerator for a month before I finally threw them out. Here I have at least two or three a day. Scrambled or sunny side up, that’s usually one of my biggest decisions of the day now.

And then there are the pancakes with lashings of butter and maple syrup spread thickly with my knife till it soaks in and then yes pour more syrup on or as Boyd suggested a few days ago…. Peanut butter as well!

When I stay in a motel or other location I just can’t function without my breakfast.

I rarely look at the breakfast menu. I just ask for one of those big hungry man breakfasts of egg, sausages, bacon, hash browns and toast. I hate making that decision too between the ‘ hungry man ‘ and the pancakes so that vital decision is usually resolved by having a couple of pancakes on the side.

On Friday morning I wandered back about 10 minutes the way I had run into town the day before. I was looking for a cafe and hated this walk in the cold. A wasted effort. Today I would run 50km / 31 miles but begrudged this walk back along route 136. All the way back to the Cowboys Grill. A very nice diner which had John Wayne pictures, spurs and other western memorabilia adorning the walls.

I ate my strip lion fried steak in silence drinking buckets of free coffee refills as is the American way. If I don’t die from cholesterol I think I will die from heart disease.

I have noticed in some other restaurants in Missouri that people smoke. They smoke a lot even behind the counter.

After I had finished as is the custom the owners Twyla and her daughter Mary started chatting to me about my journey. They were exceptionally friendly, even snapping some photos and gave me breakfast on the house.

By the time I got on the road for the run to Princton it was nearly 10.30.

The towns are further apart now. Lately I have not been having my usual two stops at gas stations as I may just run through a services less village. If it’s not too cold I will just stop by the side of the road but even then there are not many comfortable places to stop and sit. There are less guard rails here in Missouri. Closer to Illinois I was shocked at some of the dangerous stretches that are unprotected. Dangerous bends with large unprotected drop-offs and dozens of rivers with no side rails. The rivers just ran right up to the hard shoulder where they were blocked out by large blocks, often leaving a large hole dangerously close to the edge of the shoulder.

No night running is not advised in Missouri! There were some very old bridges too. I could see the broken concrete with the exposed rebar.

After lunch there was a lot of urgent bird activity. Thunder cracked, lightening flashed and it rained buckets, Ireland would have been proud of it!

I had about 24km/15 miles to go to Princton. I should have stopped and sought shelter but I didn’t. That would have made it a short day mainly due to my late start. Instead I soldiered on and on in the rain getting to 1 mile east of Princton.

Shells don’t work too well in the rain. In fact they don’t work at all. That’s why when running rain is the weather that I hate most. Most people think it’s the shell that’s leaking the rain in but in fact the body gets saturated because the body sweat can’t escape due to rain remaining on the outside of the shell. The advice is to back off  the effort but with running and pushing Nirvana that is impossible. Walkers can often remain dry with moderate effort expenditure.

So in cold weather the runner has to think about changing into dry clothes as quickly as possible as there is always a risk of hypothermia.

I ran onto Pete and Peggy’s dairy farm. I was cold, wet and shivering. It was scary how this could happen to me in such a short time.

Pete brought me into the office they had adjoining their barn. I turned on the heater, changed clothes and warmed up to some of Peggy’s delicious hot chicken and veg soup as I dried my clothes around the heater.

What will it be like in places like Patagonia and other more desolate spots I wondered. Would I be so lucky to find a farm or house in a wilderness. Perhaps the lesson for the day is to watch for bird activity and other signs of breaking weather and find shelter, even pitching a tent and finishing early.

After the evening milking Pete came in and talked to me about how the unions are destroying the country.

There is a major dispute up in Wisconsin, a state which is nearly broke. The new governor wants to sack 2,000 unionized teachers to make the necessary savings in an effort to prevent a crisis. Well the Wisconsin senators that had to vote on this just up and left the state. They are gone missing so as they don’t have to vote on the issue!

I heard a former Texan senator being interviewed on NPR radio today. He was telling how a similar situation happened in Texas years ago and a group of the Texans just rented a house for a few days hanging around playing cards and drinking beer and whiskey till after the vote. He said one of the Senators was so boisterous that they had to gag him for fear of their hideout being discovered.

Pete’s view is that public servants  have it too easy, especially teachers that only work nine months of the year.

” Years ago people got public service jobs because they had no skills and could do nothing else. Then the union got involved and now they get overpaid for inferior work. ” Said Pete.

” It seems to me the Wisconsin governor wants to break the unions. ” I said.

Next morning I was shattered and despite the clamor of the milking machinery from the early morning milking I couldn’t get up till nearly eight  o’ clock. Pete came in as I was packing up and told me he has 80 cows and each one has a name. he knows them all by name and never gets confused!

I ran the one mile to the local cafe. It was packed with very young children and their parents. Apparently there was a tots basketball competition. It’s just after nine and they are back here celebrating already! It was so busy with all the tots and parents that I drank about 5 coffees and waited an hour for my order.

I finished my breakfast and then all the questions. More photos and just as I am am going a reporter comes in. He had been tipped offed.

It’s nearly eleven o’ clock so I give him the Reader’s Digest short and brief  interview and scarper after a photo!

Up the road a German Sheppard dog runs up to me. He caught me by surprise as he wasn’t barking his head off like every other dog I pass. He runs beside me for about 20 minutes. I am a bit concerned as sometimes he comes a bit too close for comfort. I do 180′s with Nirvana to fend him off. He probably meant no harm but I can’t afford even one bite by an excited dog. The dog is all over the road. Cars slow down. I ask the  drivers to phone the cops but my pleas are just ignored.

Later in the afternoon a cop does come out and tells me he has had many calls from concerned citizens regarding someone pushing a baby down the highway. Silly buggers why didn’t they call about me doing the 180′s with the dog?

Today was a decent day, I ran just a little shy of 30 miles after a late start.

I arrived at Camaro’s Steakhouse in Bethel to find that tonight they have an eat as much as you want buffet till 9pm!

I polished of 3 heaped plates of steak, roast beef, pizza, chicken, salad veg and pasta. Then 2 huge plates of deserts. Pies, tarts and two tubs of ice cream! Yummy what a night and even got a couple of steaks for the road. 

I got permission to camp around the back. Nobody from Missouri contacted me with an invitation and I have not seen any runners.

I didn’t sleep well around the back of the steakhouse as there was piped country and western music that went on non-stop all night.

Shattered again I lie there for over an hour dreading the thoughts of wrapping up my tent and all the gear.

Finally at 9.30 I am wheeling Nirvana out when Camaro’s owner Mark calls me back for coffee and then cooks a monster omelet with peppers, mushrooms, cheese and onions.

I eventually start running at 11am. I am getting worse!

I am very tired due to the lack of sleep I guess and when I stop in Albany at a gas station there is a group of farm hands that tell me there is freezing rain due tonight. On the way out of I tune my radio to a local station and the freezing rain is confirmed.

I am about 20km/12 miles short of my destination, Stanberry and have decided I will have to go barn searching again as I want to be off the road early. 

At the west end of Albany I stop at the Countryside Inn. I produce the aforementioned Magic Letter and offer my usual 20 bucks. The two very friendly women there, Bonnie and Jennifer give me the room for free

At 31.4km/19.5 miles, today was one of my shorter days.

LISTEN TO SUPERTRAMP’S BREAKFAST IN AMERICA PRESS  HERE

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 6:56 am and is filed under jogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.