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Last Day - Day 9, St. Charles to the St. Louis Airport - 15 miles

Total for tour - 289 miles

    Our tour was just about over, our only task for the day was to find our way from St. Charles to the U-Haul agency that we rented the truck from at the beginning of our trip. That's where we had left our bike boxes and airline luggage. 

    Jeanette and I actually came down to breakfast at the same time, a first for the tour. Sandy had baked a fresh loaf of bread and prepared scrambled eggs and sausage as well as her special orange juice mix. All three of us sat down to eat and we talked more with Sandy about her life as a B&Ber and living in Missouri. 

    We were anxious to be under way and we could tell that Sandy was watching the clock, making sure she had time to get to church. As soon as breakfast was over we brought down our gear, I brought the bike around from the back of the house and we loaded up. Once Sandy was sure we had all of our stuff out, she waved goodbye and headed off to church. We passed her again as she parked at the church two blocks away and gave one last wave.

    It was a cool morning and way too early to head to the airport. In addition, Jeanette wanted to return to Main Street and visit a cross stitch store and exchange one of her purchases. We rode the six or so blocks down to the tourist area but most of the businesses were closed, the exception being the St. Louis Bread Company at the northern end of Main Street. We had planned on going in, ordering tea and coffee, and hanging out, maybe even reading until more of the stores opened. We cabled the loaded tandem to a light standard outside the store, ordered our drinks and found a corner to stay out of the way in.

    The store was a bicycle magnet. No sooner had we settled down than two other cyclists arrived. Seeing us in our gear they started up a conversation about where we had been and how we liked Missouri. Even as we talked, more cyclists arrived, and we went over the same things we had discussed with the first two. We probably passed an hour and a half talking cycling because by the time we ventured outside it was nearing 10:30am. We left the store and revisited the park where we first arrived, investigating some of the monuments more closely. By this time Jeanette was sure that the cross stitch store was open. A quick check showed that it was. She went in, took care of business and we were ready to be on our way.

    We rode north to the end of Main Street and then north on 2nd Street to the 370 bridge. The on-ramp to the bridge was a short one. The bridge has a wide bike lane at the right hand shoulder but it was littered with road debris and had to be negotiated with care to avoid the greatest threats to our tires. Cars and trucks were whizzing by at 65 plus miles an hour in the two lanes to our left. Jeanette was nervous and just couldn't hold back just how much she hated situations like this. In less than ten minutes we were across and took the first off ramp, a bike ramp to a riverside trail that was part of the Missouri Rail Trail system.

    It seemed that the weather was getting colder rather than warmer as the day progressed. In addition the wind was picking up and the sky was darkening. Luckily, the wind was at our back as we rode the country roads near the river into the St. Louis suburbs. All we had for directions were some MapQuest maps that weren't very clear. We reached an intersection and made a wrong turn, riding directly into the wind. As we made the turn we realized how cold it had become. It was freezing! Then it started raining.

    We ducked into a fast food restaurant and asked for directions and compared them with our map. Once the whole thing made sense, we ventured outside again and rode back the way we had come, this time with the wind at our back. The rain had stopped when we left the store but started pelting us again just as we slowed down climbing up a hill. In addition, our exposed position on the side of the hill left us open to the wind's icy blasts. This was NOT going to be fun. 

    In less than ten minutes of pushing the bike we reached the top of the hill and started riding down the back side through subdivision streets. The rain stopped, the wind slowed to a breeze and it seemed ten degrees warmer. As we neared the airport the map made more and more sense. The weather was improving in the same degree. We followed what we thought was the right route, rode under an underpass, turned left, rode a block and there to our left was the U-Haul dealer. We rode in, I hopped off the bike and announced to the same crew that had been working the weekend before, "We're back."

   They offered an unused bay inside the dealership as an area to pack the tandem. In about 40 minutes the bike was put away, we were changed out of our cycling clothes into traveling clothes we had left with our luggage and we were ready to go to the airport. We still had a half full bottle of wine that we had bought in Augusta. I popped the cork and we made a toast then took turns swigging the wine from the bottle until we had drained it. It had been a good tour.

   We asked if we could hitch a ride to the airport using one of the U-Haul trucks and recounted our experience with the Somali cab driver when leaving the airport. The young guy telephoned his boss and came back with a smiling, "He says that it will be OK."

   The ride to the airport took 15 minutes. We were on our way home.

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Recommended:

St. Louis Bread Company - pastries, lunches, sandwiches, breads, drinks (definitely a cyclist's hangout on a cold fall day)
143 N. Main Street
St. Charles, MO
636-940-9141

A special thanks to the crew at U-Haul for the ride to the airport.