Man of LaMancha
When Frank Was a Boy Miles 8470-8520 October 17
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- Breakfast with Dale and Emma Miles 8520-8570 October 18
- A Perfect French Fry Miles 8570-8750 October 19-21
- Nature’s Vault of Precious Colors Miles 8750-8825 October 22
When Frank Was a Boy Miles 8470-8520 October 17Frank Burnham has never drunk coffee. Amanda has just set a cup of hot chocolate in front of him as I enter. Fubbler's Cove is a welcome sight this morning. I pedaled out of my garage and headed due east up the hill from my house at 7:30, just as the sun was coming up. By the time I make it to the Liberty Animal Shelter on Old 210 the sun is a big orange ball directly in front of me, and I stop to change my glasses. It's 9-11 on the Bank of Orrick sign as I turn right off Highway 210 onto Highway Z and ride over the railroad tracks into town. “Ed, pull up a chair.” Frank is sitting alone at a table and talking to three guys at an adjoining table. I join him. I sometimes drink coffee on cool morning rides. With lots of cream and sugar, the coffee taste is not so noticeable. And the waitress keeps pouring, at no further cost, whereas hot chocolate comes at a charge per cup. But Frank's hot chocolate prompts me to ask for one. “When I was a kid, they gave me either when they took my appendix out. The smell of coffee always reminded me of either.” Thus Frank explains his drink of choice. There once was a store out on Z a few miles from Orrick and a town called Foley. Back when Frank was a boy. The store is gone. No sign of the town. A big grain elevator sits alongside the railroad track where the town used to be. Frank’s children went to William Jewell and live now in nearby towns. Frank had a heart bypass some time back. “No big deal,” he says. Dick Bowles was his doctor. Mine too. Dan Roney is now. Mine too. Small world. Over biscuits and gravy you can learn a lot. Breakfast with Dale and Emma Miles 8520-8570 October 18Dale took me to get our new computer yesterday afternoon and came last night to set it up. Dale Ahle is founder and president of 21st Century Solutions. He has created a novel method of designing web sites for businesses. He designed and maintains our HateBusters and Greater Liberty sites. His eight-year old daughter, Emma, came with him last night. She and Bobbie played games upstairs while Dale set up the computer. I watched. In awe. “Where you gonna ride tomorrow?” Dale asks. “To Catrick’s for breakfast. Be there about 9.” I say. “Emma and I may drive up and join you,” he says. I have just pedaled past a road that runs from Highway 69 and intersects with Salem Road about a mile east of Lawson when a red car pulls up behind me. Dale follows me into town. Catherine is here this morning. She joins us for a moment to meet Dale and Emma. I tell her we’re coming here on Saturday, November 8 for breakfast as the second stop on our celebration tour. I give her a questionnaire to fill out for the book I’m writing for bikers, In Praise of Small town Cafes. A Perfect French Fry Miles 8570-8750 October 19-21A hot day for October. Bright and sunny. Doyle Sager, Pastor of First Baptist Church in Jefferson City came today to teach a stewardship lesson and to preach. .Among the many gems he said, “Happy people are generous, and I tell my people I want them to be happy.” He quoted C.S. Lewis as saying that money is its possessor’s liquid personality. Summer before last when our combined Bike-Aid and HateBusters team rode through Jeff City on our way from Kansas City to St. Louis, Doyle came to the Jefferson City YWCA to deliver an encouraging word to us. I’m on the road by 12:30, bound for Kearney, hoping that Sarah’s Table is still open when I get there. I know Mill Inn closes at two o’clock on Sundays. I’m riding the long way to get in as many miles as I can. It’s two o’clock on the dot when I arrive. The newly painted sign says they’re open until 3:00 on Sunday. The fish and chips with cole slaw is as good as any I had in England, the home of fish and chips.
To be on a bike on the road in October in Missouri is to be set loose in nature’s vault of precious colors. Banks of trees up all the hills are alive with dazzling golds and crimsons. Leaves of lesser hue provide perfect backdrop to display and magnify their brilliance. An altogether awesome spectacle beyond any possible verbal description. But to be here for this moment in time is to catch a glimpse of a beauty that was here before this road and will be here when it’s gone. Henrietta is a town of 457 people on Highway 13, not far from the Lexington Bridge over the Missouri River. The town is surrounded by river bottom farmland recently shorn of corn and soybeans and now being readied for next season’s planting. Bountiful crops from beautiful farms. Bounded on one side by the Missouri River and far on the other side by rising hills banked with trees now resplendent in their fall foliage. I’ve left Richmond a few miles behind, headed back to Liberty on Highway 210, when I spot a rider in my rear view mirror. He’s coming up fast. “These will shake you up,” he says, as he pulls abreast and slows. He’s referring to the rumble strips carved into the shoulder. “I’m Ed Chasteen,” I say. “I thought so. I read your column. My name is Don Howard. I live in Liberty.” Turns out Don lives in Claywoods, just across 291 Highway from where I live in Southland Estates. Don works in Richmond and takes his bike to work so he can ride at noon to Orrick and back over his lunch hour. “You know Sonny Allen?” The question comes as I’m dismounting my bike, about to enter Fubbler’s for lunch. The questioner is emerging from the restaurant. “Yes, I do,” I say. “What did you have?” I ask. “I had chicken salad. My wife likes the Reuben Sandwich. We live in Independence, but we like to come here for lunch. Tell Sonny, Gene to you, that Al and Gibby say hello.” Before he leaves, Al relates to me the story of the biker who came through Liberty this summer following the Lewis and Clark Trail. I had met the rider out on the road and took him home with me for the night. Gene was in his yard when we got home, and I introduced them. Later in the summer Gene’s brother was camping out west and got to talking to the man at the adjoining campsite. Somehow they discovered that he was the same person who biked through Liberty and met Gene.
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