“Let’s just get an Uber.”
Not something we ever say on a bike ride. But we’re in the middle of nowhere on the Missouri Katy Trail, it’s 101 degrees, and we have a flat. The rear tire of Robin’s Brompton has holes in three places.
And the fix isn’t easy. Robin is an expert flat mechanic, but there are a bunch of extra steps to remove the wheel on this clever little folding bike, and even after sweating over it for ten minutes, he still hasn’t got the wheel off. Uber it is.
We’re on a test run to see if realizing our dream of US travel by train hopping and biking is really doable. We’ve had our Brompton bikes for about a year, and we ride them a lot around town. They fold up small enough to take inside the dentist’s office and community center, but now we’re seeing if we can load them with gear and hop a train to somewhere and ride them longer distances. Romantic, no?
Our town is enabling us on this idealistic journey by having an Amtrak station a half mile from our house. We’re taking the train from Warrensburg to Hermann, Missouri, where we plan to ride on the KATY Trail about 30 miles to Washington, stay the night, bike a little farther past Washington on the KATY to some wineries the next day, and then cycle back to Hermann the third day to catch the train home.
The romance starts to wear off in the first hour when the train is delayed and we’re left sweating on the platform as the temperature climbs higher. It’s an unseasonable sauna in September which we hadn’t counted on when we planned this trip. Some of the glamour is restored though when the train finally arrives and we clamber on easily with our packs and bikes, settling into a small space.
We enjoy the air conditioning on the two and a half hour train ride, and we’re back in fun adventure mode when our little bikes and packs allow us to disembark more easily than with a full-sized bike.
We’re on our way and the ride itself is beautiful, following the Missouri River for much of the way, but it’s nearing 100 degrees and we’re short on water, something we had counted on being more available along the way. We’re nearly 25 miles in before we’re able to fill up with Gatorade and ice water at a bar and grill in Treloar.
Then the flat happens six miles from Washington where we have an AirBnB booked. Thank goodness for Uber, and we’re too heat exhausted and gritty to feel guilty even a little bit about bailing on our dream as we soak up the air conditioned comfort of the ride there.
It’s still ungodly hot the next day, and our ideals slip even further as we opt to skip riding and just stay close to the AC in Washington. Instead of biking to wineries, we walk to the local farmers market, have lunch nearby, and basically have a quiet, relaxing day in what turns out to be a pretty cool river town.
On our final day we get an early start back to Hermann to catch the afternoon train home. Four miles in it’s Kelly’s turn to get a flat, but armed with his new knowledge of how to change a rear-wheel Brompton flat, Robin gets us back on the road in 20 minutes, and we make it to Hermann without additional drama. We also have learned enough to take extra water and a couple bottles of Gatorade, so it turns out to be a good riding day overall.
The last travel hiccup is another hour train delay in Hermann which puts us back on our home platform after nightfall and we’re riding the half mile to our house in the dark. We’re at least prepared enough that we have bike lights, and we marvel that we are gliding through our hushed, night-transformed streets after traveling miles and miles on our little bikes without having stepped foot in a car. Well, except for the Uber. Still, the romance of Brompton and train travel is a little bit renewed, and we did learn a few things for the next time. We’ll do it again..
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