Dad remembrance pilgrimage: Day 1
July 10, 2022: Sikeston to Canton, Missouri
My pilgrimage to honor my dad’s life, attend his funeral, and reconnect with some of his family began Sunday, July 10, after worship at First Christian Church. I had ridden my fully packed bike to church and left from Dexter shortly after lunch. The congregation wished me well and had organized things so that the all the pieces of ministry would be covered in my absence. I began by heading west on U.S. 60 through the Ozarks.
Despite my GPS dying partway, missing a turn, and having to do an extra 25 miles, it was a beautiful ride and a not as hot as later parts of the trip would later become. The GS held up well and I arrived in Springfield in time for an early afternoon snack and a fill up at Kum & Go, a weirdly named Iowa convenience store chain that has apparently made it farther south than I had previously known.
Visiting University of Central Missouri
From Springfield I headed north on MO-13 towards Warrensburg, my primary destination for the day. Dad and I both attended the University of Central Missouri. The school was known as Central Missouri State College when he studied there in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He did both his bachelor and first master’s degrees at Central.
While in town, I recreated a 1971 photo of dad sitting on the quad and visited Foster Knox, the dorm that dad and I both lived in 25 years apart. I also visited First Presbyterian Church, where my parents met and were married. It is also the congregation I joined in college and which first supported my first steps in my candidacy for ministry.
Unfortunately Warrensburg was the site of my first scary moment of the ride. As I came over a hill on my way out of town I nearly hit a cow that a farmer was moving from one field to another. It was standing in the middle of a busy four lane road and the farmer was sitting in his pickup doing nothing to control traffic. On the positive side, no one got hurt before the cow eventually relocated herself, and we were all able to go along on our way.
Just keep riding
Day one proved to be the longest leg of the trip due to a last minute schedule change. The original plan was to stay overnight at my mom’s house in southern Iowa, but after texting with Chris Comly, a long distance riding friend who was returning from the the Hoka Hey Challenge in South Dakota and happened to be passing through Iowa at that exact moment, I decided to keep on riding north and east later into the night so I that I could meet him for breakfast in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
The challenge came when I was unable to find a hotel with vacancy and ended up having to continue all the way to Canton before finding a place to sleep. It was a far longer day than I had expected, but the late night ride did have an amazing silver lining. Part of the journey was on roads paralleling the Missouri River. Seeing the nearly full moon reflect off the water was a gorgeous sight.
When I arrived at the hotel in Canton I crashed hard, but was extremely excited to finally be under way after weeks of planning.
Day 1 distance: 601 miles
Next leg: Canton, Missouri to Tama, Iowa
