Day 20, entering the plains

I've injured myself eating. Forgive me if this post is short, but I can't get into my favorite writing position (sun salutation) on account of a distended tummy.

No matter how professionally or hard you exercise*, you cannot eat a beef brisket sandwich, a country ham, a chocolate milk, fried chicken livers, and three pieces of blueberry pie a la mode. You will feel bad in the best possible way. Now, complaints out of the way, I have found America's best restaurant.

Cooky's in Golden City, Missouri has everything. It's a family business. I had a granddaughter serve me her grandfather's cow. There is a warmth and friendliness to everyone and communal conversation that you would never find at a Per Se, per se. You can stay as long as you need or nap in the back. They allow kids. They have sundaes. And nearly every scrap of food is grown on the farm out back. A water sommelier will not stab you with a fork until you relent Pellegrino; you, normal eater, will spend 10 dollars.

The kicker: they actually want you to get full here. There are restaurants in New York City where, say, a lima bean salad is made from just a lima bean. At Cooky's, everything is plural.

A man cycling across country stopped into the restaurant and had a slice of pie. He stayed for 4 days and ate there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until he had eaten every single freshly made pie. I only had Dutch blueberry because I struck gold the first time. And because I knew I was going there for breakfast.

Earlier, a man woke me from my 35th failed attempt at a nap and told me he was the warm showers man. That's a bit fresh! Warm showers, it turns out, is a collection of people who board cyclists out of no greater utility but pure selflessness and a love of conversation. As we talked, it turns out he was stationed in my home town, worked at the hospital my brother was delivered at, and bought custom made NoSqueak shoes at the military mall I used to buy my comics at.

He met us at the Golden City Idol competition in the park. We just missed a young -- really young -- country singer whose parents farm and take highschool photographs. Do you know how much a Missouran spends on a senior portrait? 1500 dollars for the full treatment, blemishes photoshopped and a gaussian halo added to your pickup.

Like I said, we missed her act but were given a CD. The dad took the photos and made the album art. On the verso, a listing of songs including Stand By Your Man. Her father made her up, stuck her in a windblown canyon and photographed her from a distance. On the front, he stuck his daughter in some black chamber and blurred her hair into infinity. I don't feel good having this thing so I have given it to Connor (who probably doesn't feel good having it either).

Interesting fact of the day: country music was invented the very year the urban population overtook the rural.

*This depends on whether you believe competitive eating is a sport.

Day 19, a feast and the promise of seconds

Diane, remind me to buy a drop tarp from a hardware store so that I don't have to lie on wet nylon without due cause.

Refreshed from my first night's sleep in a real bed, I was not. I stayed awake till something-past-midnight and then made the mistake of thinking 6 was 7 when I set my alarm. Fortunately, I was riding with Connor and we had both agreed the night before that the ride was going to be easy.

Connor is an artist out of Baltimore. He is traveling across the country for research (in part). He takes photographs of dense, dense woods and then painstakingly draws every knobling of bark with a very fine brush. The result is really quite impressive, both technically (think Durer etchings if that helps you) and in the harder, vaguer area of being neat to look at. His book asks you to 'Read Slowly', and I did. Perhaps I am starved for faces, but I saw people in the woods.

The panels (24?) move chronologically through a woods and so do we. The tall, thick trees of Virginia make way for the shorter, denser eastern redwoods of Kentucky, which in turn give way to broad farmland, fertile Mississippi flatlands, rolling, reddish Ozarks, and now the trees of Central Missouri, which have green leaves, trunks, and roots. As a matter of fact, I have a root wedged in my spine as I write these very words.

These trees are plugged right into the ground here, which, blessedly, is nearly flat. Connor and I trudged it today, a cool 80 miles with time for a library break, a failed nap on the skinniest bench I have ever seen, my best biscuit sandwich yet, yet more chocolate milk, and 5 of those magical cups of coffee that leave you more tired than you were before you committed to caffeine. I have little else to report except for that I think I had the best bagel of my life in Fair Grove, Missouri (hint: sourdough).

Can I tell you what I'm excited about? We are headed to Golden City tomorrow to a restaurant called Cookie's that just might give us 6 pies. If nothing else, inching one step nearer to pie has made the day a definite victory. Expect a long rant about the many pleasures of eating across this country.