Treloar Beer Run

 

On friday morning, Adam "cock-block" LAffoon and I met at the crack of 9am to test our mettle against the forces of nature. Thunderstorms and rain were predicted for the entire weekend, but what else is new. The plan was to ride the MKT from North Jefferson to Augusta, drink a couple gallons of beer and camp. The next day, we'd get up and ride back to Washington to catch a train home. Projected distance was around 80 miles. It was gonna be awesome, as long as we didn't die in a freak hail-storm.

  The trail was mushy from all the rain, but it's not like you have to worry about tearing up the Katy Trail.  We were just excited to be outside doing something, and it seemed like we had only just begun when we rolled into Tebbetts.

I've ridden past this shelter several times, but never checked it out. Adam and I did a little investigating and found out that it's open to anyone for only $5 per night. There are bunkbeds inside, along with a bathroom and refrigerator. Very cool stuff, and it's good to know places like this still exist and aren't completely vandalized.

Back on the bikes and and moving westward, Mokane was our next stop. I love stopping at this place and get a sandwich.  It's just one of those cool little stores that's been around for a long time, and has never been re-furnished.. When you walk inside, you get a sense of history.

Everyone in the store seemed  quite surprised we hadn't been injured in "the hail-storm that came through town 5 minutes ago."  We would've hung out longer to talk about the weather, but I had just bombed the restroom and we needed to get out of there fast.

I believe we've mentioned the "Really Big Rock' on the blog before, but Adam had never seen it. There was a goose nesting on top of it, which was amusing. Not sure what the history is behind this thing, but it was likely built by the pilgrims. Pilgrims were really smart.

By now, we were both pretty hungry. Rhineland was only a few miles away, so I wasn't too worried about it...til Adam got a flat. It was one of those "ghost-flats" that you patch 3-4 more times until it finally holds air. Very frustrating. I mean, what kind of asshole gets a flat tire during a training ride anyway?

After we got the flat tire squared away, we made a quick telephone call to the microbrewery in Augusta to check on their hours. They were open til 9, so if we had any chance of getting there before they closed, we were going to have to quit dicking around. We decided to ramp up the pace, pushing past Rhineland to fuel up in Hermann instead.

Then I bonked and pretty much ruined everything. I guess I just wasn't paying attention to my calorie intake and I ran out of gas. In my defense, I was pulling a bob-trailer on the wet Katy Trail..so let's try to keep the ribbing to a minimum.

The Hermann gas station made money that day. I did my best to breathe while eating  3 blueberry donuts, 2 cinnamon-sugar pop tarts, a Jack link's jerky stick, Monster drink and a bag of cheddar pretzel Combos. Oh, the glory.

I bet I've been on the Katy trail a hundred times and had no idea that it was home to so many beautiful waterfalls:

The rain started to die down a bit, so we loaded up and hit the trail once more. As we crossed through a small town called Treloar, we could see a small building with a neon sign in the window. Beer and hot-wings were only a short distance away, but we decided to push through to the next town. It would only be a few more miles and we figured we could outrun the storm.

Wrong.

I'd say we were about a 1,000 yards past Treloar when a bolt of lightning struck in the field right in front of us. That was all the convincing we needed to turn our asses around and go back to Treloar. There was a bar called Murph's Place, or something like that. The menu revealed $1.50 draught beers, hot wings, cheeseburgers and more. It was time to get down to business.

After inhaling several beers, we took turns changing into dry clothes and ordered some food. The final pic of the evening was just as the sun was starting to set and ANOTHER storm was moving in:

I think we met every person in Treloar that night, and they were all very cool people. The cheeseburgers in that place were phenomenal, and the hotwings were pretty badass as well. The fine folks of Treloar spent the evening buying us shots, draught beer and teaching us how to find morel mushrooms. One guy, (whom i had NEVER met before), went into great detail concerning the effects of cocaine on the male libido. I just sat there and nodded, hoping we could somehow change the subject. 

There are some really nice people in that town. I don't know how late it was when we finally left there, but I know we were both shit-hammered. We bade farewell to our new friends and got back on the trail. We rode for a while before finding a suitable place to set-up the hammocks for the evening.

I know I slept well, but judging  from the pile of vomit on the ground the next morning, I'd say Adam had a rough night.

What a waste of money.

The only hitch we ran into during the night was that we had unknowingly camped reeeally close to the highway. We were basically forced to wake up early the next morning when people were roaring by on their way to work. At least we didn't get pelted with empty beer-bottles.

And so it was with wet clothes and pounding headaches that we re-mounted our trusty steeds and pedaled about 16 miles back to Hermann. I think we were both ready to be done with riding in the rain on a mushy Katy-trail, and we were definitely ready for some dry clothes. The miles ticked by slowly, and we eventually cruised into Hermann. from there, we made a bee-line for "Wings-a-Blazin" for some more  hotwings and microbrewed beer. It was the perfect finale for a really great ride.

Here, we stopped to raise a toast with Arminius. I poured a couple of sips on the ground "for my homies" and we were on our way.

We had an epic weekend and we'll be doing it again, (weather permitting), on the weekend of May 21st. Make plans to be there so we don't have to drink alone with this guy again.

Comments

[Stoney]

Nice write-up. I didn't realize we still posted ride/race reports on this site.

[barry]

stoney, how do we post new topics? it works differently now and I can't do it. but since i'm here and like to bury rides deep into other posts. i'm thinking about next weekend May 7 the Big Shark Vino Fondo race from Augusta to Hermann and back. 138 miles, Mondo Fondo. There are other races that are shorter. It's road race. Sounds like a great event.