Day 25 - May 28 - Jefferson City, MO Layover Day - Two Old Guys Take On A Continent

May 28, 2023

Day 25 - May 28 - Jefferson City, MO Layover Day

Relaxing

Ed’ s story

Had a great nights sleep and actually slept in for an additional hour…. Until 6:30 🤣

Got up to coffee and cinnamon cake made by Charlie. We then went out to breakfast however, the original restaurant we wanted to go to is closed. We went to the Landing Zone at the airport.

The restaurant was busy however, only some of the waitresses seem to be working. Our waitress was just hustling.

After breakfast, we went to the Jefferson City capitol building for Missouri. While we were there a reporter for the Jefferson City News-Herald came and interviewed us for a story. We will try to add a link with the story when it comes out.

We took a tour of the capitol building seeing history exhibits, however, didn’t take very many pictures inside.

We will be following the Missourians as they headed out on the Oregon Trail

I did see a submarine memorial plaque inside the capitol on the tour. I shared it with a submarine Facebook page and had numerous likes and comments.

Honoring the submarines lost in World War II

The rest of the day was cleaning and tightening bolts on the bikes and lubing the bikes. We also dried our tents.

I had a nice FaceTime call with my daughter earlier today. She sent me this picture later.

Boy do I look old and gray while she looks ready for the day

The four of us (John, Charlie, Chris and I) headed to church early to prepare the music for Mass.

Dinner was Mexican food at Dos Primos, the best Mexican restaurant in the area. We returned to the house; loaded our bikes on the trailer; packed our bags and prepared for tomorrow’s departure.

Tomorrow is a 35 mile day to Rocheport Missouri. We will be staying in the Missouri Life magazine headquarters on cots provided by the publishers.

Until tomorrow happy biking!

John’s Story

Pretty quiet day. Lots of good conversation. Even a short nap.

Missouri has a very impressive Capitol building with beautiful grounds around it.

Sculpture outside the Missouri State Capitol building. Jefferson signing the Louisiana Purchase. If it hadn’t been for this our bike ride might have been over a few days ago when we hit the Mississippi River and ran out of the United States.

Here we are being interviewed by the reporter in front of the Capitol building. He then followed us to Charlie and Chris’s house to get some pictures of us with the bicycles. It will be interesting if we actually see an article written in the local Jefferson City paper what the slant will be. It could be our 15 minutes of fame.

The inside of the rotunda at the Missouri State Capitol building from the ground floor

Today’s critter was a moth on one of the building stones at the Capitol building. I’m sure I bored everyone by talking about the geology of the limestone blocks that were used to build it. You can’t very easily tell it from this picture but this is a very fossiliferous limestone that was deposited as primarily sand sized particles. I can hear you nodding off now, so I won’t talk anything about the stylolites in the building stone. Once a geologist always a geologist.

We helped provide the music for the Sunday evening Mass at Charlie and Chris’s parish. I got to play Charlie’s Taylor 914 guitar. Very sweet.

We really enjoyed our visit with Charlie and Chris. They were very generous and hospitable to us, far beyond the call of duty. We capped off the evening with a round of Kentucky mules served in copper mugs.It was hard to call it a night and come downstairs to work on the journal and go to bed.

When I think of being part of a family I naturally think of my biological family, the in-law family I inherited through my marriage to Carol, the family of people I worked with in the petroleum industry for almost 40 years, and the people I know from church in Oklahoma City.

Charlie and Chris are part of a wider community of Catholic liturgical musicians that I’ve been a part of for about the last 12 years ( I’ve played the guitar at church for over 50 years). Whether you call it GEI (Guitar and Ensemble Institute) aka Guitar School, BFEFP (don’t ask, I’m not sure I got the acronym right) or CLEF (Catholic Liturgical Ensemble Formation), I fondly refer to it as “band camp”. Charlie and Chris and all those other musicians I’ve met over those years are another family that is very important to me. I’m going to miss the CLEF program this year because it will be held the very week this ride will finish. I am so glad I got to visit with them on our way west.

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Nancy GrahamI would have to give the Trail Angel(s) award to Charlie and Chris for this part of the tour. Bed, food, showers AND music playing & singing at the church! You got it all.
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