The temperatures remain in the mid to low nineties, but are expected to go up for the next two days.  Our game plan remains to start as early as possible.  We spent the night in Jefferson City, which meant we had about an hour-long van ride to get back to our starting point of Rhineland where we ended yesterday.  Almost as soon as we got on the highway we realized just how annoyed Celina has been with all of our bird talk.  She saw a pigeon trying with all its might to avoid being hit by the van.  Celina swerved to make sure she smashed the pigeon into the grill of the van.  She turned to me and said “I hope you mention that bird in your next blog”.  Okay, that last little bit was lie, except the part of hitting a pigeon.

We were on the Katy Trail and heading West by 6:45 a.m.  As we began to ride I felt much better today than the previous two days.  I slept much better last night and it makes a big difference.  I feel more engaged with the trail, the scenery, and of course with Jimmy and Dr. B.  In fact, I was able to focus on the buckeyes and walnuts on the ground and shoot them at Jimmy and Dr. B by pinching them between the ground and my tires.  I don’t want to brag, but I’m a pretty good shot.  Once Dr. B caught on, he joined the game and got me pretty good.  At least he says so… I didn’t feel a thing.

The first ten miles were hella stunning.  We all agreed this has been our favorite section on the Katy we have seen thus far.  At times we were riding through lush vegetation with beautiful rock walls to our right.  The strata within the rock was impressive and gave us a chance to put on our geology nerd hats.  I’m certain if there was a geologist nearby they would have been disappointed in our lack of knowledge, but we didn’t see any geologists so we nerded out, guilt free.  The walls alone were fascinating to look at, but with trumpet vines climbing the walls it became something even more beautiful.

There was one particular five-mile section between Bluffton and Portland we wished would never end.  At the end of this section we met a local couple, Mary and Ken.  They told us that nine years ago on their 50th anniversary they bought two bikes (not e-bikes) and have been riding the Katy Trail ever since.  As the years go by they’ve been riding fewer miles, but doing a ten-mile ride is their norm.  Today they road from Bluffton to Portland and back. It was easy to see why they picked this section for their ride.  They told us of a few “must see” things ahead on the trail and wished us luck.

I’m not sure if I know why, but today’s riding seemed to be the easiest for me and the crew.  Even though it was hot today my temperature never got too high.  There was cloud cover and a gentle headwind to help.  The miles passed by quickly and before we knew it we were approaching our end point for the day, Jefferson City.  We could see the capitol building in the distance and knew we were almost done for the day.  I’m wasn’t sure we could complete an entire day without something going wrong, or at least having a close call.  I was riding next to Dr. B and behind us Jimmy sneezed.  His sneeze startled an adult deer and a fawn.  The adult shot out of the bushes and the fawn, in less dramatic fashion followed.  If the adult had hit any of us it would have been bad news.  Dr. B is the only one who could have been hurt by the fawn.

Today was a special day for all of us at Ian’s Ride.  Our good friends at the Here and Now Project have their annual 5K for Today event today.  This is a rare overlap to have an Ian’s Ride event overlap with a Here and Now Project event.  It’s very similar to the co-emergence of cicada Brood XIX and Brood XIII for the first time since 1803.  We love the Here and Now Project so much we rode twelve 5Ks.  Many of you must be thinking “How bad are the cicadas?  Is it difficult to ride through all of them?  How can you communicate with each other with all their screaming?”.  Thank you for your concern.  We’ve done a lot of research and preparation to deal with this.  It turns out we’ve encountered one cicada.  And yes, we survived.

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