We woke up early at the Murphysboro Holiday Inn Express because we wanted to finish editing Vanesa’s cover letter and get her résumé edited so she could apply for this amazing job that she is really hoping to get. It took longer than expected because of formatting troubles but the computer was really nice and we managed to get through it. We ate at the Holiday Inn breakfast twice between 7 and 10 while we were sitting there on the computer, so that was a really awesome and unexpected benefit for having to stay so long to do the computer work. We also did, or I should say Vanesa did, more work on getting her phone connected and working properly. We finally got on the road at 11 and it was already hot and windy. Fortunately the ride out of Murphysboro along the Trans Am Mississippi levee alternate route is really quite flat and it made for some really easy and fast riding because of a strong tailwind or cross/tailwind. There were about 5 miles of really really hard headwind but we managed to power through them pretty easily. We were surprised and happy to find a really good midday lunch in Neuherd where we got a couple of cokes and some deep-fried café goodness in us before pushing onward. We decided to skip past Chester, Illinois (The birthplace of Popeye the sailor man) where sometimes people stay at a bike hostel at the Fraternal Order of the Eagles lodge and instead we crossed the Mississippi River to Missouri looking to go forward anywhere between about 10 and 25 miles depending on how we felt in the 85° weather with a 20 mile/hour wind. Before we crossed the bridge we stopped on the Illinois side and hung out by the Mississippi River for a short period and watched the massive barge go by and took a few pictures. The bridge across the river itself is actually pretty sketchy because it’s really narrow with no room for bicyclists and it’s deceivingly uphill until you get to the bridge’s peak and coast down the other side. Thankfully, we had a really nice driver behind us pulling a fifth wheel trailer and he put on his hazard lights and just went really slow and let us go at our own pace and never pushed us, never tried to pass us, never put any pressure on us. That was glorious because I’ve experienced it myself before and heard from a number of other cyclists as well that coming across this bridge with trailers passing you and then swerving back into your lane so they avoid oncoming traffic is a really dangerous thing when you have nowhere to bail out to on the right side. But when coasting down the other side I attempted to shift into a bigger gear, for some reason my chain fell off suddenly and so when I was supposed to be picking up speed to let the truck behind me go faster I ended up coasting and slowing down. I ultimately ended up pushing my bike Fred Flintstone-style, still rolling with one foot connected to the bike and using the other foot to propel myself down the bridge to the end where I could finally pull over and let them pass. That’s the worst time in the world to drop a chain, but again the really cool RV driver behind us was amazing and didn’t put any pressure on me. When we got the chain back on we pulled immediately into a Conoco gas station at the Missouri welcome sign. We did our “we-reached-a-new-state” dance on video and then we went inside to fill our water bottles and buy some Gatorade. There was a old dude putting gas in his old truck and when I said hi he started talking to me and volunteering information about what it was he was pulling in his trailer. It looked like a big hunk of junk but it actually is a wood splitter that he made himself back in 1979 from junk spare parts around his farm so that he doesn’t have to use an ax to cut wood to heat his house. He did it during the oil embargo because the cost of gas was so high that he thought that not only would he save money by heating his house with split wood, but he might be able to start making wood splitters as a business so this was his prototype. It was one of those interesting slices of Americana on this trip where are you talk to someone that you would never otherwise talk to you and learn something random about a random person in a random place. He was really chatty and Vanesa didn’t have the patience for that so she excused herself really promptly, but I got sucked into his wood splitter explanation and then him telling me about his entire life and ultimately giving me his name address and phone number and asking me mine. Seems maybe he wanted a penpal or something but he didn’t come out right and say it. But he was pretty insistent after I gave him my address that I give him my phone number too. He does like to talk, that’s for sure. We turned south into the big headwind for about 3 miles, and it was challenging in the 85° heat. But then we had a sharp right turn and suddenly that fierce headwind was a cross/tail wind and we started just flying down that highway towards Saint Mary. It’s amazing how quickly a bike ride can turn from fairly miserable to super awesome so quickly based on a direction or weather change. When we got to Saint Mary, we pulled into the convenience store to try to decide where to sleep for the night. There are no motels or campgrounds out here but we both had ridden as much as we thought we could ride and we needed to find a place to set up camp for the night. We had seen a covered porch at an Elks Lodge that was empty about half mile back, but it was right next to the road, and not far from there was a church that we thought might have a covered pavilion. There was a new, clean, small-town post office and a whole bunch of really nicely manicured grass just 200 feet downhill behind the St. Mary convenience store that also looked potentially promising (imagine a very tiny post office, probably 35’ x 15’ rectangular With corrugated metal siding). As I walked down to the post office to check it out, and see if it was open, some local dude who was getting gas started talking to Vanesa and she mentioned that we were interested in staying at churches that had covered pavilions and were wondering about the one down the road so he voluntarily jumped in his truck and drove a half mile backward along our route to look at the church down the hill to see if it’s pavilion was covered for us. What a kind guy. His name is Travis. When I got back from checking out the post office, which was beautiful, open, but very warm because they were no shade trees and it’s just a metal box, Travis arrived and told us the church did not look promising but there was a park about another quarter of a mile further that he would be happy to take one of us to check out. Vanesa looked uncertain about going with him in his truck, but because he had his of own accord already driven and checked out the church for us, I felt comfortable enough with him and I got into the truck with him to go check out the park (I did give Vanesa my wallet first so he’d have nothing to steal from me if he turned out to be a nefarious dude). We got to the park like he said we were going to and it was just like you would expect in a way-out-in-the-country park – really long grass, a lot of dirt and branches and junk where we would be laying down to sleep in the covered pavilion, and a feeling of significant remoteness even though there was a subdivision nearby. It definitely was not a place I wanted to stay because it actually felt too private, as well as kind of gross…also this dude Travis would know we were there all night and it just felt smart not to put ourselves in a remote place where only one person we didn’t really know would know where we were. So I would’ve been sleeping with one eye open. Not good. When Travis and I got back to the convenience store Vanesa asked how it was, I said it was an option worth considering but this Travis guy was really pushing it like he thought it was a great idea for us. At that point V and I made eye contact and in unspoken language agreed that we did not want to tell this guy what our ultimate camping plans were…so we just thanked him for giving us all the information and told him we were going to sit down to a convenience store dinner and make our decision. We went inside the convenience store and spent quite a bit of time ordering deli sandwiches and talking to the two ladies working inside who were amazed by our journey and asking all kinds of questions. As soon as Travis left, we both decided that the post office was the best choice because it was really clean and it was indoors. We figured though it was hot it would cool down and also we could just leave the door open if need be. Note: we don’t normally sleep in post offices. But we follow the Trans Am Bike Race every year and the Trans Am racers will often sleep in post offices as a source of refuge when it’s either hot, cold, windy, wet, or if they’re just too tired to go on and there are no hotels or campgrounds in the area. Apparently it’s legal to do that and post office lobbies are open 24 hours a day seven days a week so it’s a good last resort for refuge. But for us, it was a really stupid decision! That little tinbox post office was so hot, but we couldn’t leave a door open to get some cool, fresh air in there because there were tons of bugs including flying cockroaches outside that were attracted to the post office lights in the pitch-black countryside. There were not cockroaches around because it was dirty, but simply because there just happen to be cockroaches out here in hot humid Missouri. There was a tiny window that twisted open outward but only about 5 or 6 inches and it didn’t really let any air in. So when we rolled out our sleeping pads and tried to sleep, even without a sleeping bag, it was so hot that we literally couldn’t sleep. And it was kind of tough sleeping with an eye mask or a bandanna over our eyes to block out the lights that you couldn’t turn off. And the sounds reverberated off the walls in that tiny metal box so every time either one of us moved all night long our sleeping pad would make a crackling sound that would wake the other one up. Ultimately, we tried to go to bed at about 9:00, and we had the alarm set for 3:30, but we both woke up repeatedly all night long and when the alarm went off it felt as if we’d had almost no sleep at all. How stupid were we? We do have a tent!!!! We could have pitched our tent in the beautifully manicured grass outside of the post office and had a nice, cool, mildly windy night and probably gotten a great night of sleep. We would’ve been a little bit more out in the open, but this was an area that would’ve been just fine to be visible. We honestly were just too lazy to set up our tent and we suffered for it. So we woke up at 3:30 and hit the road at 4:30. Basically with no sleep and no breakfast.