Biking into St. Louis

Yesterday Eric and I crossed the McKinnley Bridge into St. Louis. At the Illinois/Missouri state line, we were in much better spirits than in Granite City, where we stopped at a station, terribly hot, and the people running the store wouldn't fill Eric's waterbottles, even after he bought a soda and a bag of chips. But at the top of the bridge, with downtown St. Louis in sight, we were feeling like we had just accomplished something to be remembered: we had rode our bikes across Illinois, from Chicago to St. Louis. How many grown men can say they have, according to Eric's mileage log, biked 372 miles together? All I can say is that I couldn't ask for a better biking partner. At the top of the bridge, on the state line, we took one last picture of our bikes, and Eric took one of me straddling the state line. We then went our separate ways. Eric bikes alone to Kirkwood, passing a flooded section of downtown St. Louis, while I biked up from the river into downtown, further up to Olive, and still further up to Grand and Lindel, and finally up to Skinker, with a flat stretch almost to home, with a final climb up to Shaftsbury, and, at last, a fast downhill to Drexel, the garage, and home.