bicycle – Author Sarah Angleton

On October 4, 1986 the Missouri River flooded its banks and damaged the stretch the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad track that stretched between Sedalia and Machens, Missouri. This in itself wasn’t particularly unusual. The area is prone to flooding and had proven a problem for the railroad company since the earliest days of the route. What was unusual about the 1986 flood was that the company decided to abandon rather than repair the route.

This is the last remaining signal from the MKT Railway.

This turned out to be good news for the biking and hiking enthusiasts of the Great State of Missouri. With help from a generous donation from Ted and Pat Jones (of the Edward Jones Financial Investment Company based in St. Louis), the Missouri Department of Natural Resources purchased the abandoned right-of-way to use as a trail.

The first section of the crushed limestone MKT trail, shortened to KT, which became simply “the Katy” opened in 1990 around Rocheport, Missouri. Today it officially extends from Clinton in the western part of the state to Machens in the east, comes in at about 239 miles, and is the longest recreational rail trail in the United States. Several spurs offer additional distance, including a 47-mile Rock Island Spur that runs to Kansas City.

Sock Monkey Steve came along as well, but his skinny little monkey legs weren’t much help.

My sister and I were happy enough last week to hop on our bicycles and crush the route between Clinton and St. Charles. That’s officially 12.7 miles from the end in Machens, but St. Charles is a better place to stop and get picked up and taken out for celebration barbecue and cookies. Also, if we add in all of the spurs into towns that we took along the way, we more than made up the difference.

It turns out a lot of cyclists (and some hikers) tackle the whole Katy. We met quite a few cyclists, some of them traveling the same direction as us, some day riders who had done the whole thing on previous occasions, some with light loads and dedicated sag wagons, and others carting their own camping gear. Some riders do the full length in as little as three days. Five to six days seems to be the most common.

We reached the high point of the trail on the first day, but it definitely was not all downhill from there.

We did six, which was good enough for us. And we stayed in hotels and B&Bs along the way, because we couldn’t imagine that sleeping on the ground was going to be restful enough for us after forty-plus miles of biking on crushed gravel to then be able to get back up and do it again the next day. We did carry our gear with us, though, which was enough of a burden.

The trail, though straight and flat-ish, requires a lot of work. Some patches are very well groomed. Some not so much. After one stormy night, we had to dodge quite a few downed branches. There are some stretches where large gravel and washouts make the riding all the more challenging, and the western portion of the trail all the way to about a mile outside Boonville is often slightly uphill, just enough to be a slog.

But the trail is beautiful, with much of it running between the Missouri River and gorgeous bluffs. It crosses over numerous creeks on pretty truss bridges, through tunnels, forest, wetlands, prairie land, rolling farmlands, and past historic remnants of the railroad.

As challenging as some days were, as sore as our bodies ended up being, and as tired as we were by the time we lugged our bikes from the trail to our stops each night, I’m awfully glad we did it. I don’t know that I learned anything profound from the experience, though someday when my backside is less sore, I will probably think of some way to turn the experience into a terribly moving and deeply reflective personal essay. For now, it’s enough to have crushed the Katy for the bragging rights.

1894 brought a great deal of political strife to the nation of France, which became deeply divided over the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain accused with dubious evidence of passing military secrets to Germany. Dreyfus was finally exonerated in 1906, but by then the incident had already caused the fallout of former colleagues and the rise of an intense newspaper rivalry, which spawned the greatest bicycle race the world has ever known.

I refer of course to the Tour de Donut in Staunton, Illinois, which has been held annually in July since 1989 as an alternative to the Tour de France. That other silly little French bicycle event has been going on since 1903 when the then newly founded French newspaper L’Auto sought to surpass the previously established Le Vélo by creating its own sensational event and then scooping its rival.

The plan worked. As the circulation of L’Auto grew, Le Vélo went out of business, and with the exception of a few missed years for world wars, the Tour de France has been going strong ever since, as the original and most famous multi-stage bike race in the world. You may have even heard of it.

There was a little trial and error at the beginning, figuring out where the course would go, how many stages it would consist of, how the winner would be determined, and whether or not the bulk of the racing should occur in the dark of night to make violent sabotage easier. It was eventually decided that no, the stages should probably be held in the daylight hours, which has significantly cut down on the cyclist beatings.

Incidences of violence and cheating are rare among the participants of the Tour de Donut, as they are mostly happy and hopped up on sugar.

The rules have changed a lot through the years, as has the course, with the current event (ongoing as I type this) visiting four countries in twenty-one stages and covering about 2080 miles, quite a few of which are mountainy.

The Tour de Donut has changed course a few times, too, fluctuating between thirty and thirty-six miles through the small town of Staunton and into the surrounding countryside containing a couple of smaller towns, corn fields, and occasionally frustrating hills. It’s a tough ride, for tough people, who like donuts.

Like its French counterpart, Tour de Donut is a multi-stage race, with the ends of stage one and two each marked by donut stops, offering the most serious competitors the opportunity to gain a five-minute advantageous adjustment to their total race time for each donut consumed. The final stage ends at the finish line where cyclists are greeted with much fanfare, awards ceremony, and usually some leftover donuts.

I ride for the tee shirt. And the donuts.

It’s a fun event, and with often more than six times the number of competitors of the race that inspired it, the Donut’s popularity far exceeds the Tour de France. I think that’s mostly because of the donuts. Also, it may be a slightly less challenging race and so might be more accessible to the average casual bike rider.

I have participated in the Tour de Donut twice, once about eleven years ago and then again last Saturday. This year’s thirty-four-mile course started in the rain, with gusty wind, and much celebration. Citizens of Staunton and donut enthusiasts lined the streets with encouraging signs, cowbells, and inflatable donut décor.

By the time it was over, the rain had let up, the air had warmed, and I had a belly full of donuts and a tee shirt to prove that I had participated in the greatest bicycle race the world has ever known.