Finishing the Katy Trail – 2020
A Chance to Get Outside
So with our upcoming vacations getting canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we were itching to do something…ANYTHING. We waited for a nice weather day in the forecast, and packed up our tandem so we could finish the Katy Trail from where we left off last year. Originally we had planned to do an overnight of it, but with the social distancing orders, we opted to push ourselves and do an out and back from Clinton to Sedalia all in one day (about 35 miles each way). The trip was a little far for us (probably 10 miles past our newly decided max limit) but still an enjoyable ride.
We opted to start as early as we could just in case we had issues on our ride to maximize daylight. *Foreshadowing* So we started the 1.5 hour drive out to Clinton, MO at around 5:30 am. This gave us enough time to set up our bike (#foldingbikeplustinycarwoes), and then to have some coffee at the trailhead. (We had decided to try out our moka pot on our camp stove to see how that went – not bad, but not great either- but the coffee was definitely better than instant). We started our ride around 8am. It was a little chilly, but it didn’t take long for it to warm up to a comfortable temperature. The final 35 miles of the Katy Trail is mostly through fields, but with a tree tunnel around the trail. We did encounter a downed tree (probably from the 25 mile an hour winds the two days before) but it wasn’t too hard to make our way around it, and it had been cleared by the time we came back.
We had made a lot of changes to our bike since last year, so this ride had a lot of “trying things out”. Andrew replaced his shifters and brakes, and I had changed out my saddle and handle bars, we got a few new bags, we both had some new clothes and we got to christen a mug Andrew bought in Iceland! Everything seemed to work out really well, except I think I’m still on the hunt for a different type of handlebars.
The ride itself was pleasant and fairly uneventful, although we did see a lot of wildlife including but not limited to: an owl, a giant prairie chicken (or a turkey, verdict is still out), a woodchuck, a ground hog, hawks, and a wide variety of other birds, and of course the usual squirrels and farm animals/pets. We even rode over the ‘high point of the Katy Trail’ at a whopping elevation of 955ft! As we started to run low on fuel, we stopped to make lunch at the Green Ridge Trail head, where we had a lovely meal of Rice and Beans. It was just what we needed to keep us going so we could enjoy the rest of the morning/early afternoon. We turned around at the fairgrounds just outside Sedalia (so technically there’s that 2 mile stretch on the Katy that we still have to come back and do some time, but we figured it was best for us to stay out of the city with the current public health situation, and I didn’t want to add another 4 miles to our already long ride). We had the trail mostly to ourselves (social distancing for the win) aside from when we got close to Sedalia, there were a lot more people out using the trail stretching their legs and enjoying the weather.
Aside from a flat tire (we really gotta investigate getting some better tires), the ride home was uneventful and meditative, until Andrew’s energy started to crash about 10 miles out and his knee started to ache in a new spot. It was nice having him be the weak link for a change. I powered through and got us back to Clinton like a champ (one of the benefits of tandem riding!). We did have a break in the monotony about 6 miles from the trailhead where we rode past a controlled burn. We had to ride through about ¼ to ½ mile of smoke – luckily neither of us has asthma, and we both had our buffs that we pulled up over our face as a sort of filter.
For dinner we decided to test out a new recipe from “Bike Camp Cook” at the Clinton Trailhead – sweet spicy peanut noodles. We had to grab some extra water out of our car, because apparently 70 miles of riding caused us to go through our 4 water bottles and our 5 liter bladder. The meal was really good and really easy (easy to cook and to clean up –win win) but the only negative was the amount of water required to cook the noodles; so really only useful at an actual campsite (normally there is water at the trailheads, but we were 1 day too early as it was still turned off for winter, although they had put up signs in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I’m not sure if they plan to turn the water on in general).
Overall it was a great ride, we came out a little sore, but we had a lot of fun. We have also *officially* decided that 70 miles is too far for a day ride for us. So our new maximum will probably be 60 miles (other than when we do Bike MS this fall – fingers crossed the world is back to normal by then and it isn’t cancelled). I’m so glad we were still able to get out and ride even while the world is a little crazy.
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