Last of Day 13 and Day 14

Wow, it's been two weeks already....

Yesterday turned into quite the exciting little adventure! After my last post, I headed westward, but almost immediately ran into problems with Route 50 - mainly a lack of any shoulder at all! I decided to try the side roads, as this was still field country. A bit of trial and error had me headed in the right direction, with one interesting discovery of a tiny little community of about 3 blocks plopped down in the middle of a field (I had to explore the whole thing before I realized I needed to backtrack to head west). Fortunately, other bikers on these back roads sent me in the right direction!

This is where things get interesting. My goal was to get reasonably far into the city while still finding somewhere to camp, maybe alongside the river. Well, the route I was in was taking me into East Saint Louis (a separate city from St. Louis, this is still in Illinois), a place I had never heard of, and should have learned about BEFORE heading into. I headed towards a rise that would bridge me over rail tracks and saw a sign saying "watch for water on road", something I figured would be a problem for floods. This begins my somewhat unsafe adventure. As soon as I crested the rise and dropped down, I discovered that indeed, there were two spots where the road was covered in water, with swamp on both sides (only about 1/8 to 1/16 inch of water, I would guess). The sides of the road were a dumping ground for dozens of mattresses and couches, with a random truck stopped and two guys smoking marijuana out of the back of it. I kept following the road, frogs fleeing my approach and ended up in a pretty sketchy neighborhood.

I have been in the projects for Huntington, and several other spots like that, and they do not disturb me. They can't even begin to compare to this community - a place I was truly scared to be in. I just checked Wikipedia, and it is noted as having one of the highest crime rates in the USA. In the projects of Huntington, people still leave toys outside and neighbors provide a sense of community. In East St. Louis, nothing was left outside, half the houses were abandoned wrecks, and there was little neighborly interaction. It was like a community that had given up on itself, and I found myself in it as darkness began to fall.

I figured my best plan at this point was to keep moving to try to get out of the area. Pretty soon I ran into my second police officer of the trip. I had stopped for a second to check my map and try to figure out where I was when he came up beside me and noted "you're not in a very good neighborhood, sir". Gratefully, I got directions from him on how to get out of the area and across the river. Of course, I still managed to go the wrong way and it was pretty dark before I got out. I can legitimately state that being in East St. Louis after dark scared me a lot!

After crossing the Mississippi (picture to come when my battery isn't almost dead!), things were immediately much safer. I kept going, looking for somewhere to stay, only to find that the urban sprawl goes a loooong ways on the west side of the river. Fortunately, I managed to find somewhere to sack out, completely exhausted at around 1 AM. From now on, I intend to avoid such adventures, although the lack of traffic due to the late hour was nice.

Today dawned with a visit to an IHOP I found early this morning. Fueled up, but with chafed body parts from the long day before, I decided to make it an easy day, pedaling standing up 95% of the time to give my butt and inner legs a rest from chafing. Despite thinking this would slow me down a lot, I made decent time. What did slow me down was the weather - While you can hurry in cold weather, you can't go too quickly when it's 91 degrees and humid. I drank a LOT today and took frequent breaks to keep from dehydrating. With all the breaks, I got into some nice conversations with friendly Missouri locals, including two brothers (Doug and Dwight) who had done some shorter bicycling before and were eager to chat with me about my trip.

I ended up having a long day, despite my plan to go easy, after discovering that there are very few McDonalds' along Rt. 50 in Missouri. Linn was the nearest one after the morning, and a long ways off. Still, with the sun in the sky, I managed to make it (at least 90 miles) to keep everybody updated. I would also like to note that at least Eastern Missouri is not flat! In fact, compared to Indiana and Illinois, I feel like I'm already getting more rolling. I have been told things should be better tomorrow though! The battery is almost dead, so I may go for a short day and then a hotel to charge up electronics tomorrow night. If so, expect a picture and some more comments on these last two days - this post was a bit rushed for fear of battery life. Take care all!!!