Man of LaMancha
Floating Uphill Miles 8825-8910 October 23
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- If a Customer Drops a Coin Miles 8910-9105 October 29-31
- Our First Saturday Miles 9105-9150 November 1
Floating Uphill Miles 8825-8910 October 23Patrick and I meet at the church at 7:30 and ride Plattsburg Road to 120th and follow a hilly and meandering route to Kearney. Sarah’s Table has their new menu. We both order Breakfast #3: ½ order of biscuits and gravy, hashbrowns—all covered in cream sausage gravy, and bacon. Patrick has to be back by 11:30 to keep his weekly appointment at Manor Hill Elementary School where he tutors a fifth grade boy in math. We take a different route back to Liberty. We part company at the Blue Light Station. I head up 69 Highway and jog over to Salem Road at Excelsior Springs enroute to Lawson and a tenderloin sandwich at Catrick’s. Out of Lawson I take MM and pass over the new bridge on my way to Watkins Mill. The park is gorgeous on this warm sunny day and practically deserted. Out the front gate of the park I turn right toward the James Farm and Kearney. The new tires Dave Biscari put on my bike yesterday are a little more narrow and hold more air. It may be all in my head, but the bike today seems almost to float up and down these hills and respond more quickly and surely to my steering. John Wayne of the Soul October 24-28 Pete Thielen hasn’t walked in years. He can’t hold a pen to write. He can’t talk. He sees and hears everything. His mind is quick and agile. The way his body used to be. He had to be here tonight. His wife and son-in-law got him ready. He doesn’t get out much anymore. He wants to. His body won’t cooperate. He watches movies on the big screen TV they bought for him. John Wayne is his favorite. More than 150 miles each way they had to come. They unloaded his chair in the parking lot and brought him inside. His teammates of 50 years ago surrounded him. He was our center on the 1953 football team that went undefeated and won the championship of Texas. Tonight he is again our center. We have followed the progress of his disease as it steals his life. We have been awed with his fierce defiance wedded to a radiance that comes from within and somehow is made known to all who come into his presence. I do not know the medical term to describe the genetic disorder that takes him in stages from us. Even in high school its presence was known to us. Its insidious and persistent progression has proved unstoppable. All of us who gather tonight to remember what we did when we were young have in the years since fought personal battles. The ravages of age have paid their usual visits. There were 27 of us back then when we were the toast of Texas. Three have died. One is too sick to come. One has been a recluse for years. The other 22 are here. All wanting to see Pete. Even if I knew the name of Pete’s time-release assassin, I could not bring myself to speak it or to write it. To call the name of something implies some degree of acceptance or familiarity. I will not grant Pete’s adversary that status. It is a cold, impersonal and malevolent presence that robs Pete in silence of one capacity after another. More than half a century at work on his body, this monster has reduced Pete to physical immobility and an undignified dependence on others. It is a law of physics that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The spiritual corollary of that law I see in what Pete’s physical condition has done to his soul. As Pete has wasted physically away, his soul has burst all human bounds. People are drawn to him. He can neither speak nor write. But being in his presence is not depressing. He has not grown bitter. He loves. And is loved. Physical invalidity has not made Pete a social or spiritual invalid. He is welcome company. Pete Thielen is living proof that life is more than we know on ordinary days in ordinary bodies. Together we were champions of Texas years ago. Pete’s championship season has continued over all this time. He leads us by example as we all walk through the valley of the shadow. Our championship season was but prelude to Pete’s championship soul. Memories of our gridiron feats prepared us for the battles that eventually come to each of us. To have Pete at the center of our memories gives a grace to our lives greater than all our fears. We were a bunch of scrawny over achievers back then. We’re not so scrawny now. But with Pete to inspire us, over achievement is the order of the day. If a Customer Drops a Coin Miles 8910-9105 October 29-31Took signs to Mill Inn, Catrick’s and Sarah’s Table announcing what Saturday in November we would come for breakfast. Kay Stewart, Manager at Mill Inn, waited on me. When I go to pay, cashier says, “Your meal’s been paid for.” “Who did it?” I ask. “Kay,” she says. “Your bank is pretty full. I weigh it. If a customer drops a coin, I make him put it in your bank.” She says. “Wow! Way to go. I’ll bring a new bank tomorrow.” On the way home I stop by the post office. A $500.00 check from the North Kansas City Rotary Club is waiting. Not a bad day! In the home stretch. Past 9000 miles now, less then 1000 to go. Barring injury or the onslaught of freezing rain, I will hit 10,000 on November 29. By my 68th birthday on the 16th of this month I should be within 300 miles of my goal. Then I will know I’ve got it made. Breakfast at Catricks—short stack with two eggs on top, sunny side up. Four pieces of bacon. Large glass of milk. Coffee. Cool, overcast day works up huge appetite. Our First Saturday Miles 9105-9150 November 1The Magnificent Seven. That’s us. We rendezvous in front of Biscari Brothers Bicycles. Temperature in the low forties. Spitting rain! We cover our heads and pull on our long-fingered riding gloves. And hit the road. Promptly at 7:30. As advertised. Bound for Orrick and breakfast at Fubbler’s Cove. Al Plummer has come from Columbia to ride with us. Al came last night and stayed at my house. Richard Mark is here from Independence. Rodger Suchman from Lee’s Summit. Rich Groves and Seth McMenemy and Ed Chasteen from Liberty Okay, so anyone watching us would see only six riders. The seventh rider with us is present in spirit and represents those hundreds of people who have bought miles and dropped coins in the canister banks sitting on the counters in all the cafes I regularly visit. Our in-house map-maker, Rich Groves, has prepared a two-sided map that shows the way. Across the parking lot, passing in front of Price Chopper and Sutherland’s, we turn right onto Brown Street and make our way over to Progress Street. Another right turn brings us past the Liberty Post Office over to Withers Road. Here we turn left and make our way toward Liberty Community Center. We turn left on Holt Drive. Then right on Birmingham Road and over a couple of hills to Ruth Ewing Road. A left turn takes us past the entrance to Cedars of Liberty and South Liberty Baptist Church and to 291 Highway. We cross 291 and turn right onto Liberty Landing Road. We wind our way past homes and fields and a repair shop for big trucks over to Old 210 Highway. We turn left and pass Liberty Bend Fish Market, Harmony Printing, Liberty Animal Shelter, ACT Trucking, Fountain Bluff Sports Complex and fields of recently harvested corn and soybeans awaiting harvest. The few drops of rain as we left Biscari Brothers made us think the forecast of afternoon showers missed the mark. Now seven miles out on 210 the rain comes harder. Twenty-two miles to breakfast in the rain will chill me enough that coffee will taste good. The smell of coffee is really the only thing I like. But on cold, damp days, and with lots of cream and sugar, I love a cup or two. Straight, smooth and flat and with a wide shoulder, new 210 from Liberty all the way to Richmond and beyond is a biker’s dream. It’s a little noisy from the big trucks and giant farm machines sometimes compete for the shoulder, but 210 runs through river bottom land and has almost no hills. Coming past Missouri City there is a steady but moderate climb past the place where Old 210 climbed steep and winding hills that over looked the Missouri River. Cresting this modest rise, new 210 stretches out flat and straight for miles, the only incline leading to the bridge built over the railroad about two miles west of Orrick. Tim Heady is expecting us at 9:30. He will be in the kitchen, preparing our breakfast. The place is crowded when we arrive. Orrick played Lone Jack last night. They were both 7-1 coming into the game. Lone Jack won last year at Lone Jack. The winner this year is picked to make the state playoffs The all male crowd this morning is in a good mood. Orrick won. We seat ourselves among the other patrons and strike up conversations. Deer hunting season just opened. A couple of guys are dressed in camouflage and have just come from an early morning hunt. Steaming cups of coffee, plates of biscuits and gravy, pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns and big glasses of milk—all delivered pleasantly to our tables. A Norman Rockwell scene. Good food, good company and good talk are not easily parted with. Reluctantly we pry ourselves away and back to our bikes propped in a line against the front of the building that houses this good place and these good people. Fighting wind and rain on our way here stoked fierce appetites. The wind is at our backs now. Wind at a rider’s back is hardly ever noticed. The aid and comfort it gives a rider is seldom credited. But bikers can never quit complaining about a headwind. I suppose it’s like life itself. We seldom recognize the advantages we are born with or have acquired with little effort, but we complain forever about the obstacles we face and the problems we have. Good food and good company have put us in a good mood as we leave Fubbler’s. Homeward bound is a different species of riding. Leaving home, muscles are cold and reluctant. Riding rhythm has not come. We are pointed away from what we know best and love most. Turn us toward home, though, and everything changes. Every stroke of the pedals brings us that much nearer the center of our personal universe. Having returned from the mountain is not the same thing as never having been there. So with biking. When we are home just after noon today and with the people we love, we will be different people. Pedaling together to Fubbler’s, breakfasting with each other and with other patrons, riding back. These little things of seeming insignificance are like the wind at our backs, giving aid and comfort in ways we not usually astute enough to recognize. This ride to Fubbler’s in Orrick was but the first of five Saturday rides planned for the month of November. Here is the schedule for the remaining four. Please join us. Meet us in front of Biscari Brothers Bicycles at 7:30 AM. Catrick’s Café in Lawson Saturday, November 8 50 mile round trip Sarah’s Table in Kearney Saturday, Novermber 15 30 mile round trip JJ’s Restaurant in Plattsburg Saturday, November 22 50 mile round trip Mill Inn in Excelsior Springs Saturday, November 29 30 mile round trip
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