Refreshed from my first night's sleep in a real bed, I was not. I stayed awake till something-past-midnight and then made the mistake of thinking 6 was 7 when I set my alarm. Fortunately, I was riding with Connor and we had both agreed the night before that the ride was going to be easy.
Connor is an artist out of Baltimore. He is traveling across the country for research (in part). He takes photographs of dense, dense woods and then painstakingly draws every knobling of bark with a very fine brush. The result is really quite impressive, both technically (think Durer etchings if that helps you) and in the harder, vaguer area of being neat to look at. His book asks you to 'Read Slowly', and I did. Perhaps I am starved for faces, but I saw people in the woods.
The panels (24?) move chronologically through a woods and so do we. The tall, thick trees of Virginia make way for the shorter, denser eastern redwoods of Kentucky, which in turn give way to broad farmland, fertile Mississippi flatlands, rolling, reddish Ozarks, and now the trees of Central Missouri, which have green leaves, trunks, and roots. As a matter of fact, I have a root wedged in my spine as I write these very words.
These trees are plugged right into the ground here, which, blessedly, is nearly flat. Connor and I trudged it today, a cool 80 miles with time for a library break, a failed nap on the skinniest bench I have ever seen, my best biscuit sandwich yet, yet more chocolate milk, and 5 of those magical cups of coffee that leave you more tired than you were before you committed to caffeine. I have little else to report except for that I think I had the best bagel of my life in Fair Grove, Missouri (hint: sourdough).
Can I tell you what I'm excited about? We are headed to Golden City tomorrow to a restaurant called Cookie's that just might give us 6 pies. If nothing else, inching one step nearer to pie has made the day a definite victory. Expect a long rant about the many pleasures of eating across this country.
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