The last day turned out to be the most eventful.

Starting from the Missouri side of the Chain of Rocks Bridge, the first stint was supposed to be an easy ride along a bike trail that led all the way down town to the Arch.

The attraction of the trail was that it ran alongside the Mississippi River. Unfortunately there had been so much rain recently that the river had been at flood stage, and what looked like harmless specks on the trail way turned out to be incredibly sticky glutinous Mississippi Mud left there by the receding water, great for farmers but not good for cyclists! Scarcely 100 yards into the once flooded area and the mud had so clogged the rear wheel that it was literally impossible to pedal. I had to walk the trike back out to the road, remove the rear mudguard and spend half an hour scraping mud off everything.






Clearly using the trail was out, so the road it had to be. Bridget worked out a route, but was concerned as it took us through some of the less desirable areas of the city. Adding to the adventure was intermittent heavy rain, which did at least provide ample justification for having bought Goretex rain gear for the trip, and for ordering mudguards to fit on the front wheels. Disc brakes allow one to ride through puddles without losing braking efficiency, and the water was very welcome in gradually washing the mud off. Fortunately it was Sunday morning, and the commercial operations along the road were all closed and there was little traffic and few people, and with Bridget staying ahead of me, but always keeping me in sight, we reached the Arch without incident.

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We stopped for lunch at a McDonalds once we had safely traversed the Saint Louis University / Grand Avenue area. I had been thinking how well the tires had held up to the pounding they had taken over the 300 plus miles, which jinxed things, as the front left tire was flat as we moved off from lunch. For simplicity I changed the inner tube for a spare and we were off again fairly quickly, only to have the same tire go flat again within half a mile. I had checked the inside of the tire for anything poking thru at the first stop, and checked again now, but still couldn’t find anything. Probably there was something that was embedded in the tire that only protruded when it was put under load. Fortunately I also had a spare tire, so after doing a puncture repair I was able to change to that and after a much longer delay we were back on the road again.

Downtown to Wildwood may seem pretty flat in a car, but on a tricycle it is anything but. The rain held off, but the heat was exhausting. Bridget would go on ahead and wait for me to catch up before advancing again. At times I would have been happy to have stopped behind her, but she would move off just before I reached her. It felt very much like being the greyhound chasing the mechanical hare, which allowed you to get tantalizingly close but always stayed just out of reach!

In Ladue Bridget attracted the attention of the local police as she waited pulled up on the sidewalk for me to catch up. As it happened I wasn’t far behind and rapidly swept by to lend credulity to her explanation to the officer that she was acting as a support vehicle for an idiot on a recumbent tricycle.

Down the hills was fast and fun, but uphill was slow and tedious, but even a plodding pace gets you to the top eventually. The final stretch is mainly uphill, but the knowledge that it meant a successful end to the trek made it easy, and the final turn into our driveway was very satisfying.

The GoPro on the front of the trike took some 53,000 photos on the way from Chicago to St. Louis and I’ll put up some short time-lapse movies of the more interesting parts of the trip in the next few days.

Today had something of everything, rain, headwinds, no winds, heat, bright sun, overcast, quiet roads, busy roads, idiot motorists, bike trails, an old bridge across the Mississippi River, lots of up and down hill, and even the chance to ride in two States on the same day!




The lunch stop was a classic diner Crossroads in Mount Olive on Route 66. Great three egg omelette with bacon and cheese and hashbrowns and lots of tea. Fuel for more pedaling!





60 miles took us to the Chain of Rocks Bridge



which used to be a road bridge across the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. It is now only passable by foot and bike traffic, but it is a fun way to cross from Illinois into Missouri, a milestone that we were very pleased to reach.

Today started off well with light winds still from somewhere at least a bit behind me and pleasant, not too hot weather, and the first part of the route on the old Route 66 running parallel to Interstate 55. We didn’t have all that far to go to get to Springfield (the Capital of Illinois) and were concerned about the suggested route through the city. It wasn’t going to be possible to follow the old route 66 as a huge man made lake has been created in the city that completely covers the old route, and as it turned out the suggested route made what seemed like hundreds of turns all of which required stopping and starting and waiting for lights to change or traffic to clear. Exhausting, very slow going, and very frustrating for Bridget in trying to work out where we should go next. Tricycling towards the Capitol was memorable.










The route took us through the Illinois State Fairground


Even getting out of the city was frustrating as there was a bike trail that they had spent a lot of money building, but absolutely zero money on providing any signage to help people find it!!

Once out of the city we were able to keep going at a reasonable pace and end up at mile marker 63 on Interstate 55. Having started at mile marker 119,



Bridget drops me off at mile marker 119 where we stopped the night before


the trip would only have been 56 miles if we could have used I 55, but with all of the detours that we had to make, the trike covered 67 miles.

In contrast to yesterday, today was a great day to be riding from Chicago to St. Louis. The storm front had moved through, the winds had dropped somewhat, and most wonderful of all, their direction had shifted to be from the North, which meant that they helped rather than hindered progress.

The result was that with about the same amount of physical effort as yesterday, I was able to cover 80 miles in the day, bringing the total to 187 miles (300 Km) for the three days and getting us more than half the way home.

So far the body seems to be holding up, and even maybe improving in strength on the uphill climbs.

Bridget once again did a terrific job of scouting the route and being at the key intersections to let me know where I needed to make a turn. We are now solidly on the old Route 66 running parallel to Interstate 55 between towns and then continuing straight through the town as the Interstate bends away to go around the downtown area.

Navigating some of the towns has proved somewhat scary, especially Bloomington / Normal, where the race track one way streets are not a comfortable ride on a recumbent trike.

The worst moment was out on one of the 55 mph limit sections of two lane road, where a Motor Home with a car trailed behind him must have been scared by a cyclist when he was a baby because he barely pulled out enough to pass me, despite there being an entire empty carriageway available to him, and then proceeded to deafen me with his air horns as he was alongside me. Sadly Bridget was nowhere near at the time for me to set her on him!!

Other than this one idiot everyone else in the high speed sections has behaved with wonderful consideration, even if it has meant them slowing to my speed for a few moments to wait for oncoming traffic to pass. All in all a really good day. I don’t have the courage to look at the weather forecast to see what direction the wind will be tomorrow!

Thanks to our trainer, Mike Tallis, I had made it through the first day without any problems. The question was could I get going again?

As it turned out, the answer was yes. We were late getting started, and were concerned that the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, flash floods, and hail the size of baseballs along the route, but in the end the weather held off long enough to do the day’s mileage.

My first decision was to abandon the canal trail, and use the road, a really good decision. The second decision was one that was taken back in the planning stage, and while it was taken for very good reasons at the time, today made me wonder if I should have changed it. As I was working on the route, Angela did some research, and noticed that the prevailing winds at this time of the year in this area are from the southwest. Now if you look at the route map, you can see that that is precisely the direction that most of the route follows. She very sensibly suggested that I did the ride from St. Louis to Chicago, rather than the other way round. I wanted to do the current route, because psychologically it appeals to me much more to be cycling home than to be cycling away from it, and also I wanted to get the downtown Chicago bit out of the way in the early morning, not in afternoon rush hour. and how bad can a bit of wind be anyway.
Yesterday my decision seemed sensible. Most of the route was in sheltered areas and was predominantly west. Today, a major storm system has been moving through the area with winds gusting to 20mph. Riding through Illinois has the advantage that it is basically a flat plane, but the downside is that when the wind blows there is nothing to stop it. In a few weeks the corn may have grown high enough to provide a wind break for a recumbent trike, but at the moment the millions of six inch tall plants that I cycled by did nothing to help with the energy sapping effect of cycling into a strong headwind. One of the sights that I will add to my “not want to see again” list is a wind farm directly ahead of you with all the rotors spinning at top speed and all facing directly away from you, showing the rear face of their generators to you as they align themselves to gather the wind, confirming, as if you weren’t already aware of it that the next few miles were going to be an uphill struggle against the wind, even on the flat. Now of course if I had taken Angela’s advice I could probably have spent most of the day today, freewheeling!

Despite the wind I have managed to get a total of over 100 miles done, which starts to make the 350 plus trip seem as if it might be achievable. However, without Bridget’s support today I wouldn’t have been able to make it. She has scouted the route, leapfrogged me a few miles at a time and been there like the support stations that you see on the Tour de France to provide encouragement, water and additional sunscreen every time I started to wilt from the effort and the heat. Endomondo computes that today’s ride would have used 2,632 Kcals of energy and resulted in a loss of over a US gallon (over 4 litres) of water. She has been fantastic in her support of this venture, and without her it just could not have happened.

Everyone was worried about this part of the trip. Worried both about the dangers of the traffic in downtown Chicago, and maybe more so about the likelihood of getting shot in some of the areas that we would be riding through!

The first problem we addressed with an early start, aiming for 05:30 and actually achieving 06:30, which if you know anything about how I am at hitting deadlines in the morning, was nothing short of a miracle.




Starting out at Lakeshore Drive


The risks from the second issue were brought down to a tolerable level by the time of day. If you take a look at the map and listing of shootings here you can see that most shootings take place between 22:00 and 02:00, with the odd body being discovered around 4am, and most people taking a break from shooting in the dawn hours!! Having Michael cycle along with me for the bulk of the first day, helped to make us a bigger target, and his local knowledge helped with providing encouragement “not to stop for anything other than a solidly red light” over one particular 15 block part of the route.

Once we were out of the downtown, having Michael alongside was a terrific help with navigating and just establishing the confidence in what I was doing. He was using a regular bike, and put in a great effort to stay with me for the first 50 miles despite his lack of practice and the considerable pain in large areas of his body that an unrehearsed long distance ride caused, I would have had a terrible time getting started without his support.

The last 13 miles I did on my own, which proved a very sensible decision on Michael’s part as the trail beside the I & M canal was the worst terrain we had encountered all day, mainly compacted gravel, but with great sections where it had been repaired with deep areas of sharp stone into which my tyres would sink, making progress extremely slow and tiring, and with a considerable risk for a puncture. The experience was topped off by a rainstorm, with some thunder and lightning which did give me the chance to try out my new Gor Tex rain jacket, but also made the trail even more demanding, as you can see from the heart rate trace on the day’s GPS track.

All day long Bridget had done a great job of providing the sag wagon for us, and I was delighted when she and Michael picked me up at the Dresden Access Point.

Today was the easy part of the trip, driving the 346 miles from home to Chicago!! Tomorrow let the fun begin.