Everyone was up really early this morning to head off to Kansas City for a wrestling tournament. Amy's Mom, Diana, who was going to be heading home today after visiting for about 3 weeks, would get to see the boys wrestle one more time before jumping on her train to head back to California. As for Joey and I, somehow we slept through them getting ready this morning because they were already gone by the time we woke up this morning. We got everything all packed up and I took a quick shower before heading out today. It was a very cloudy day and wasn't all that warm. Another day in our pants, heavy gloves and face masks. The crazy Missouri hills continued. Lots of endless steep hills. The wind again, was just killing us. I don't think we're ever going to get a tail wind. We had a couple dogs chase us today as has become the norm out here in farm country. We went through a little town called Fairview where we met a guy, David, who does some touring and loves to cycle. He pulled us over in his truck and talked to us for quite a while out there in the cold weather. From there we continued on and got to the town of Wheaton after battling the wind for quite a while longer. Just before getting to town, a young man stopped to check if a bag that we saw laying on the side of the road a ways back happened to be ours. We were so surprised by the thoughtfulness of this young man because most kids his age are beeping their horns or yelling out the window at us, not checking to see if we dropped something. Like when we were in Iowa, Missouri seemed to be a very nice place to be. Everyone we've met here has been so nice. On the way into town, we also saw something kind of neat- Oreo cows! There were a little group of cows that looked just like Oreos- black on the ends with a distinct white strip in the middle. They were cute. For lunch, we toughed it out and cooked one of our frozen pasta and veggies meals outside. We were able to get out of the wind a little under the pavilion at the town park, so it didn't seem so cold. Originally we hoped to make it all the way to the Arkansas border today, but with the wind, we knew that might be a little bit of a stretch. The hills got a little less steep as we continued on today and when we turned onto a busier road that had a nice shoulder, the grade of the road was much nicer. We slowly made it down the road and decided to call it quits in the town of Seligman. We made it very close to the border, but weren't sure if the first little town in Arkansas would actually have anything in it, so we figured it would be better to just stop where we were. There was a gas station and a Dollar General where we could get some food if we needed to. While Joey rode around the little town real quick looking for a place to set up our tent, I got some pasta and sauce for dinner and some cereal for breakfast tomorrow morning at Dollar General. There was a very nice little church that was off the road quite a bit and had plenty of room around it so that we wouldn't be bothering anyone. It wasn't supposed to rain at all, but it was supposed to be another cold night. We got set up and made our dinner as fast as we could. While we enjoyed some angel hair pasta and alfrado sauce, Joey talked with John (a host in West Virginia that we stayed with on our last tour) about his Wheel Chair mission since we have been thinking about doing the last leg of the trip for a charity. A big number of people have asked us if we were doing this trip for a charity, but we've always had to tell them no. We've always felt that we didn't need a reason to do the trip or to ride. We were simply doing it for the adventure and the fun of it. But, we figured that we might as well put the last leg of the trip to good use. So, we've decided to make the last leg go towards John's charity-The Free Wheelchair Mission. We still have a few things to do to get it all set up, but by the time we leave New Orleans, we should be on our way to doing our "mobility for mobility" ride. After dinner, we washed the dishes quickly and then went right into our sleeping bags to avoid the cold. Tomorrow will be a new state already. The further we get east, the faster we start going through states simply because they are so much smaller than those in the west. We rode 55.26 miles today and are only about 4 miles from the Arkansas border.
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