Day 38, Houston to Marshville, Missouri.

We stopped at this bridge and waited for this guy to hurt himself. He was actually jumping way higher than this, but by the time I got my camera out, he had mellowed down.

I think these are archery targets or something. They have these all over the place. Lance and Brian, come to Missouri with your bows.

This flower grows wild along side of the road. The look pretty neat. I didn't realize till I went close enough, that these are actually the same ones as below after they die.

Yep, these are the same flowers as above when alive.

Main Street in down town Ben Davis. Make sure you bring your horse and side arm.

Here's the restaurant with the all you can eat lunch buffet.

The road goes left, then it goes right. It goes up, then down, and then it goes straight. To get 10 miles, it usually takes us 15.

To make these archery targets, I'm assuming they first cut the hay, then let um dry, then roll um up some how real tight, and stick um into those plastic things. And I guess if you want one, you gotta bring a big truck or something.

We saw thousands of ponds like this through out our ride. Some big, some small, and some even had cows ion um.

Talking about cows, we saw these. They looked real mellow, and happy.

Now these guys know how to spend a hot summer day. Even if the didn't catch anything, at lease the were having fun. I bet there's beer in that cooler.


Day 38, Houston to Marshville, Missouri, "The Heat Is On!" 67.17 miles.

Have you ever wished you were doing something else, but couldn't because you had n choice? Have you ever wished you could just turn the channel of life to a better station where you were at the beach or something? That's exactly how I felt today. I'm only saying this because I want to set the ambiance, and try to relay how hard today's ride was. At least it was for me. I think it was the combination of the heat, not enough sleep, the hills, and the long mileage. Now that it's over, I don't feel a bit tired. So I guess a lot of that was a mental thing, but at the time, I sure felt it.

We left our motel at 7:30AM, and headed for McDonalds for breakfast. I wasn't that hungry, so I just had the biscuits and gravy, and a medium iced tea. We were on the road a little after 8:00AM. We knew it was going to be hot, but we would rather have it hot than thunder storm conditions. We did pretty well at first, covering over 30 miles before lunch. We ate at a small restaurant, in the town of Ben Davis. Really, I'm not making this up. If you look at the map, you'll find it. Both Lisa and I had the all you can eat lunch buffet for $4.99. That's right, all you can eat. With tip and cold drinks, we got away for under $15 bucks for the two of us. It's hill country again, not big ones, but a lot of um. More than you can count. I gave up after about 20, and that was just in the first hour. You just got to block them out of your mind, and pretend that you're on a tropical island sipping a cool something out of a coconut under a palm tree. Well, maybe that's pushing it. But you gotta get over it. Even if you're dragging 50 or 60 pounds of stuff behind you. Anyway, that's exactly what i did. But one thing you can't block out is the heat. The heat is, well; Hot! Even if you could forget about it, the sweat running down your face and back, is a constant reminder. The stops today were few and far between. A couple of the small towns didn't have a store, and one that supposed to have one, had closed down. We ended up stopping in front of this church, and I walked around looking for someone to see if we could get some water. No one was there, but I did find a spigot with a hose attached to it that worked. Unlike on Molokai, none of the buildings I've seen has hose Bib's. That's faucets for those of you not into blue print reading.

All in all, we survived, and we never cried once. When we finally got to Marshville, it was close to six o'clock. We had to change our accommodation arrangements due to unseen circumstances. And ended up at The Holiday Inn Express. Nice place, big room, with all the comforts of home. Even wifi, and just as important, a guest laundry room. Looks like Pizza Hut for dinner tonight. They are right next door. Aloha, thanks for everything, Ted.

Below is a video clip of Lisa attacking hill #2,837.