The Pie is the Prize

On Saturday, John Dilsaver and I were back out on the Mother Road (Route 66) riding west to Golden City for pie at Cooky's. Actually, only about 11 miles of the Route 66 & Cooky's Pie 206K permanent are on old Route 66. We headed out about 5AM with a slight south wind. Since I set up the route in 2007, Springfield built a new airport terminal and the route goes right by the entrance at a new roundabout. I was concerned about the amount of airport traffic we might encounter, but there was no problem that early in the morning, and the afternoon traffic was not bad either.

We were not really pushing the pace, and we made it to the first control in Miller (37.5 miles, 1,910 feet of total climb) just before 8AM. With the wind at our back most of the way, we reached Golden City (64.4 miles, 2,820 feet of total climb) just before 10AM, and Cooky's was still serving breakfast. Cooky's is a popular stop for riders on the Trans-American bike route, but the 10 or so riders eating breakfast this time were all from Mt. Vernon, about 35 miles southeast of Golden City.

We left Cooky's about 11AM. The south wind had picked up (23 mph with gusts to 28 mph), and it seemed a lot warmer. The wind hammered us on the south legs back to Miller (5,520 feet of total climb). The same clerk who had validated our permanent cards was still there. She told John that the Mt. Vernon group had come through earlier, but they did not have cards. We wondered if she had asked for their cards, and we invented stories we should have told her like: only card-carrying cyclists are real cyclists; or that we were on release for good behavior from the Green County jail, but the ankle bracelets did not transmit that far, so we needed to document where we had been.

The route is pretty much east-west after Miller, but we were both pretty tired from fighting the headwinds. Fortunately, we had good cloud cover from M Highway (98 miles) on into Springfield, so the temperature did not continue to climb. At about M Highway, I also began to get extremely sleepy. I finally stopped to take a caffeine pill, which began to kick in about the time we stopped at a church in Elwood (9 miles from the finish) to fill our water bottles. We made it back into Springfield shortly after 5PM (5,250 feet of total climb). John and I were both surprised there is that much climbing in comparison to the Munger Moss Route 66 200K we rode July 31, but there are some good hills on the east half of this route.

Golden City














John's half-eaten blueberry pie














My Dutch apple pie














New Roundabout at the Springfield Regional Airport entrance