Before leaving Ash Grove around 530 a.m. we ate the left over halves of our Subway sandwich from yesterday's lunch, and Vanesa had a cup of coffee made from the Cafe Bustelo instant coffee packets I carry on my bike (I couldn't tolerate it, too strong and no cream or sugar, and I'd rather have no coffee than black coffee, personally). The morning ride was easy and gentle, these Ozarks are flattening but not gone. We rode through Everton, a tiny town in which I recalled having a cool experience on my 2010 TransAm tour (on a very hot mid-day break I stopped and went in for a beer and a burger in this bar called the Shaved Beaver Saloon, which was paid for by a really nice group of local guys who sat around me peppering me with questions about my trip, and I bought a T-shirt to commemorate the experience). We stopped at the saloon and it was but a shell of it's former self, the sign faded, the bar obviously having gone out of business at one point, but then reopened (maybe?). Things change over time. That's one of the strangest things that I perceive about doing this Trans Am tour twice: places I've been before and where I've made great memories have simply gone out of business, or have fallen down in a tornado, or have kind of just faded away to be like they used to be, and it's sad to see. And yet, Vanesa and I are making NEW memories together, going to new places, different places, and that is something so special to me. We've met a number of other cyclists out here, and it's a rare thing that a cyclist has their spouse with them. More often, they are alone or with a group and are missing their spouse back home, and that spouse may or may not be supportive of their journey. I, on the other hand, have my spouse WITH me, and I get to share in the joys and misfortunes of this adventure together, and we will have the rest of our lives to reminisce about this trip that we did TOGETHER. It will NOT be one of us telling bike tour stories to the other who will be trying to listen and be interested but can't really understand it completely because they weren't there. There were a lot of ups and downs in the first half of our 73 mile ride, but we were rewarded with Cooky's Cafe in Golden City, MO, a Trans Am cyclist's tradition for pie. Everyone out here knows about Cooky's and you simply must stop to eat. We were greeted and served kindly by a gal that had been working there for 26 years!! I told her I'd been through on the Trans Am 12 years ago in 2010 and she brought out the old cyclist's log books and sure enough I was able to find what I had written on my previous visit here! I've been a lot of places on this trip that I also visited in 2010, but this is the first time a place has actually HAD the log book from 2010 in which I could see what I wrote back then. Today, we had delicious omelettes and pretty good biscuits and gravy (still, NO ONE's grave compares to my stepdad Lloyd Moore's gravy back home, it's the best I've ever had anywhere!) and fantastic pie!! Vanesa had Dutch Apple pie, and I had Dutch Blackberry. Oh my, we ate so much good food, and had about 3 cups of coffee, and we were well-powered for the final 35+ miles of the day in which we planned to make it across the MO/KS border to Pittsburg, KS. We chatted with an old farmer dude with a cane and a bad ankle outside on the sidewalk for a bit, and he told us we'd pass his house later that day on our ride, shortly before we got to Kansas. For much of the afternoon we had a nice cross/tailwind that helped us along a bit on the gently rolling and more down than uphill terrain as we passed through farm after farm after farm. Just when we expected we were flattening out as we approached Kansas, however, it started getting hillier again, not hard hills, but they SEEMED hard because the wind had shifted into a bit of a headwind, as well as because when you expect flat terrain, any hill you get seems harder than it is. This is true in life too, expectations are everything. Keep your expectations low and you won't be as disappointed when they are not met. Then the sky changed and it became clear that a thunderstorm was coming, and sure enough the iPhone weather report showed that there was one coming in at 2 pm, gone at 3 pm, and returning again from 4 to 6 pm. Vanesa had a bad day, feeling very sleepy and lethargic after the Cooky's meal, whereas I felt full and well-powered by the meal, so I was not lagging behind her today, despite still riding on these god-awful bike tires that feel like they are half-melted to the pavement. Oh well, there's a bike shop in Pittsburg we'll go to tonight...and maybe they'll have tires I want to purchase. If not, I'll order some online and have them shipped somewhere a few days ahead on the route so I can swap these things out! We got a few sprinkles but somehow dodged the first thunderstorm, and we got a huge wave and honk from the old dude we'd talked to on the sidewalk outside Cooky's as he passed us in his pickup truck on the road. When we finally rolled into Pittsburg, which seemed much further away and harder to make it to than we'd anticipated, we were happy but a bit bummed because the hotels are another 3 miles past the city limit sign so a 70-mile day became a 73-mile day; that probably seems like nothing but those last 3 miles were hard even though they were totally flat. We decided to head right to a hotel, tired and wanting a rest day tomorrow, and we'd just go to the bike shop on our rest day to pick up more chamois butter and look at their tire selection in hopes of finding something better than what I currently am using. The Holiday Inn Express was too expensive at $169/night but the acceptable Regence Inn gave a great room for $72 + tax and we jumped at it with the plan of likely staying two nights. After we checked in, Vanesa videochatted with our friends Nick, Melany and Ernest, while I walked to the local grocery store to pick up some dinner and rest day food as well as to the Verizon store to buy Vanesa a screen protector for her new phone. After a dinner snack, only a little one because of still being full from the Cooky's Cafe lunch even after having ridden 35 miles after eating, I threw in earplugs and crashed in a cuddle with Maui while Vanesa binge-watched old Twilight vampire movies. And I woke this morning with no alarm at 6:47 a.m., which on this trip is sleeping in!! I looked up the library, saw it has hours from 1-5 today, which I thought were strangely limited hours until I realized it is Sunday today, and then....gulp...I looked up the bike shop with trepidation and my fear was confirmed. IT'S CLOSED SUNDAY AND MONDAY. Nooooooooooo!!! We need two tubes of Chamois Butter and I want to look for new tires!! Ugh. And it's the only bike shop in town, and there's no bike shop for another god knows how many miles. Actually it's almost 250 miles, I just checked. So I ordered two tubes of Chamois Butter just now to a Holiday Inn Express hotel 55 miles up the road in Chanute, Kansas that we'll pass through tomorrow. I'm not sure we'll book a room in the hotel, but since their service has been so good generally. Vanesa is an IHG Hotels member, and we've had packages shipped to them in the past on this trip, I felt comfortable having a package shipped there. Cross your fingers it's there tomorrow when we get there, like Amazon says it will be. Now I'm off to enjoy this rest day. Speaking of Holiday Inn Express, that's where I sit right now doing this blog. Doing it on my small phone screen is a real challenge, so having this desktop computer here is a blessing. Though we're staying next door at the Regence Inn because the Holiday Inn Express was way more expensive last night, Vanesa asked, because she's a member and we stay here all the time, if we could use this computer and they said YES. So kind of them!