Augusta to St. Louis and Marie's final thoughts

M: After Swingin' in the Vines we awoke the next morning and had a delicious, hearty breakfast and were on our way. It would have been nice to have more time to explore Augusta, but we had to finish up the trip. We had a Cardinal’s game to catch. This game was originally scheduled as a night game, but because of TV had been rescheduled to 3:15 in the afternoon. This encouraged us to keep up the pace, which we did throughout the morning, averaging about 15 mph. As we approached St. Louis we encountered more people on the trail today than we did the entire trip.


I felt good the entire day. I was pedaling strongly, despite the hilliness of St. Louis. Once we got off the trail, we were on local roads and busy streets. We did get off course twice, but were able to recover quickly. We weren’t used to biking in these hilly high traffic conditions, but that didn't deter us from keeping up a good pace.

We biked from Creve Couer Park (just over the Missouri River from the Katy Trail) to the St. Louis International Airport and caught a train downtown. With the time for the game being moved up, we didn’t have time to bike downtown ourselves. We got off the train and biked a few blocks in downtown St. Louis to the hotel.  It felt good to pull up to the hotel. The biking portion of our trip was now complete.  We quickly showered and made it do the game in the middle of the first inning. 

Looking back I was proud of my accomplishment. Pedaling that far was easier than I thought it would be and I am glad I did the trip. I learned that the first few miles and the last few miles of each day were the most difficult. I enjoyed counting down the mile markers on the trail because I knew how far I had already gone and how far I needed to go.


If I do something like this again I would prefer to be on the road with my other bike. I would also prefer to do it as part of a larger, fully supported group. All in all it was a good experience. I am glad Jim encouraged me to do this trip. Initially I was apprehensive and now I know that I can do it. But, he’s going to have a tough time convincing me to do the Lewis and Clark bicycle route!

After having visited St. Louis's Busch Stadium and KC's Kaufmann Field (see pic below) I now have visited 16 different ballparks including; Montreal’s Exposition Park, Boston’s Fenway, NY Yankee Stadium, NY Shea [old Shea], Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium (old), Cleveland’s Jacob’s Field (new), Detroit’s Comerica Field, Milwaukee’s Miller Park, Minneapolis’s Target Field, Seattle’s Safeco Field and the Kingdome, Oakland’s McAfee Field, San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, Colorado’s Coors Field, Anaheim, Dodger Stadium, San Diego’s Jack Murphy (old). Jim has also visited a bunch of others. We hope to visit them all one day.

I hope you enjoyed keeping up with our latest adventure. Goodbye for now…