Today is the chronicler's mountain party. He has completed his fifth tour. In Iowa, which could also be somewhere in Europe, except that Europe is not big enough for that. Everything is bigger in America, even the natural areas of the same character. Now, for once, he is already sitting in the bus and rocking towards the next starting point: Lexington in Nebraska. This bus route from Chicago to Denver only runs once a day and the chronicler didn't feel like spending the night in the state capital, Des Moins, only to be able to board the bus after six o'clock the next day. So he's moving on today in his cycling gear, unshowered, and will have to look for a hotel after midnight. Keep your fingers crossed for him.
The driver is the same one who very kindly took him from the Burlington interchange to Okaloosa yesterday. We shake hands like old friends.
Don, secondly, is a pensioner and has several cold-blooded horses trained by the Amish; the chronicler forgot to ask his question
You can't ask Oskaloosa to have a bus stop worthy of its name. But for the rather modern and wealthy town of Des Moins to offer such a small space six kilometres out of town somewhere next to a forklift dealer is a brazen disregard for the dignity of its users.
But first things first. Sometime yesterday afternoon, the chronicler got off the bus in a sleepy hamlet. The afternoon sun was shimmering in the air, driver Don wished him luck and sped off. There was nobody on the road. Sergio Leone would have immediately had a melody in his head.
Oskaloosa stop
In the absence of a saloon, the chronicler first went to the local drugstore and bought a nail clipper, which he desperately needed. The hotels were just outside the town on the motorway. Directly in front of the more expensive of the two, he got a flat tyre in the back, the unfortunate effect of which was compensated for by a nice room with a senior discount.
The chronicler was not in a good mood yesterday, questioned his plan and its general usefulness and felt the rest of the journey was a burden. And he was also a bit lonely. That happens! And to the chronicler especially after drinking alcohol. After the tyre repair, a shower and a visit to the Walmart opposite, the world looked a different place. Deborah intercepted him at the entrance. She was there to greet the customers and had seen the chronicler arrive on his racing bike. After a brief exchange of information, he was declared famous and a colleague had to take a photo.
Deborah was exceptionally slim. She used to work as a nurse, now she is seventy and does this as a retirement job. She has two children and, like the chronicler, seven grandchildren. We were quickly on the same wavelength. She's a Native American, but unfortunately he didn't hear the tribal designation. Jesus gets 100%, Mr Biden is too old for her and she doesn't trust Mr Trump.
The chronicler repeatedly realises that meat-free food is hard to find. Everything has chicken or bacon. Finally, he can retreat under the white sheets with a vegan salad, cheese, a bowl of fruit salad and a hot drink from the room bar and regain his physical and mental strength. In the morning, it's also nice to skim through the blog prepared by the Todtenhausen back office. Running! And so he was back on top of his game this morning, partly because the hotel had a pool.
In the breakfast room, he asked Larry if he didn't want to sit at his table. A little unsure what his wife would think of it, he sat down and Chris eventually did too. And then things got special. Larry took his wife by the hand and prayed, prayed for the food and for Detlef, the person sitting next to them. Both were here for a family celebration. And again the chronicler had come across customers who thought the connection to Jesus in this matter was absurd, almost immoral. "Do you know Jesus," Larry asked, causing him some embarrassment. "Jesus took all our sins upon himself with his suffering!"
And Chris stated unequivocally that only Jesus could fix it. For the earthly part of necessary rule, they will vote for Mr Trump. At the end, they said a fond farewell. They had to go to church, Larry: "Jesus may not have a timetable, but the church does." They will pray for the chronicler, wished him well and he was grateful for that.
Cris and Larry with the chronicler at the Fairfield Inn in Oskaloosa, Iowa
Dear Larry, the chronicler can't resist a comment that popped into his head on the highway today. Sorry for his big mouth. Yes, it's probably meant that Jesus takes away our sins. That in itself is an incredibly difficult task. Isn't it considerate to refrain from venial sins so that the burden doesn't become too great? And isn't overeating and eating unhealthy food also a sin, albeit a small one? I could imagine that he would be proud if his followers were self-confident and responsible with their frames and thus neither became a burden to others nor waddled through life overly deformed, even in old age. Sorry.
The patched tyre has kept its shape and the forecast rain has been thoughtfully brought forward. Today is Memorial Day and the spacious motorway is sparsely populated.
Counting to ten, the chronicler cranks past two police cars parked on the central reservation. No wailing sirens, no flashing blue lights. The officers remain seated in their fat Dodges, watching the Sunday service on their tablets or perhaps sex films. In any case, they don't seem to think the chronicler is game to be hunted.
Legal! Racing bike on the highway; For Dave Jackson, the owner of a 1960 Cadillac Sedan deVille in the colour Persian Sand
Iowa is clean, the highway without dirt on the shoulder, no rubbish on the roadside, the farms don't sink into slurry like he saw in England. To avoid erosion in the undulating relief, the farmers leave strips of permanent green parallel to the slope.
Gentle soil cultivation
What irritates the chronicler are the huge lawns around the estates. They are as big as golf courses and the lawn maintenance is the same. For the chronicler, it is unimaginable to have to mow such areas. But it also seems to be for relaxation: Whizzing across the grassland on a ride-on lawnmower of the municipal vehicle category with ear defenders. Elsewhere in the world, the most intelligent tricks are used to save energy. Here, perhaps we could simply think about not mowing an area of fine turf the size of Lower Saxony every ten days.
The chronicler has to admit that it looks nice, cultivated, just as the houses are well maintained and the car park in the open carports is at least three-part.
Almost all the houses have this style; as a village pub, it is an exception Smokey Row Coffee Shop in Pleasantville
The chronicler is lucky again for his lunch break. A village in the middle of nowhere. The only shop open has charm, the food is delicious and the children who run it do a good job. His attempt to get rid of the disgruntled, taciturn red fox's question fails miserably. No reaction. In the end, he just thanks the chronicler for correcting his opening hours on Google Maps. According to this, the shop was closed on Sundays.
Because he doesn't like to come across as cheap, the chronicler had pumped up this tour from the more direct 90 km option to what he considered to be the appropriate minimum length of over 100 km. This diversions is also nice, but has the disadvantage of being a secondary route that has simply been laid on the relief like a grey sash, while a mountain has to be removed for a highway.
Up down, up down; Memorial Day flag at the cemetery
Des Moins, a picobello refurbished state capital, spacious, new pedestrian walkways, decorated with flowers; the restaurants and brewery pubs are well-staffed. Somehow the towns here in the Midwest seem to be reinventing themselves.
New two-part pedestrian and cycle bridge
https://www.relive.cc/view/vevY3Y7kWJ6
At this point, the chronicler would like to point out that he had at least two predecessors on this route, who followed it in quite different ways and at different times. There will be countless, but he only knows of these.
Hamilton Mack Laing, Riding the continent, a Canadian nature lover and biologist, who came this way on a Harley Davidson in 1915, at a time when the roads were still made of sand or mud and he had to trudge through them. His daily stages were often no longer than those of the chronicler. When the roads were completely inadequate, he also used the sleeper-gravel track between the railway tracks, observing the respective timetable. He shunned the hustle and bustle, slept in the countryside next to his motorbike under a canvas tent that he attached to it and was happy to hear the birds singing in the morning. He knew them all.
The other, far better known, is Jack Kerouac with his book On the road. An eloquent description of a wild departure westwards as a hitchhiker in 1947. The chronicler remembers that in the seventies this book was often found lying around on white lacquered bedside tables alongside the joint cutlery and the Mao Bible. At the time, the chronicler was reading Johannes Mario Simmel and, as a severely school-impaired person, was enthusiastic about the attempt at educational reorganisation in England's Summerhill and had a great time with Asterix and Obelix.
Tomorrow he is meeting Jack in North Platte. In addition to Simon Geschke, the chronicler's partner and friend has also given him Jack Kerouac as a digital reading book. And he's at the very spot where the author was stranded for a few days in North Platte.
Until then, it's a good read.
