To the River's End: Chapter 21 We are going to Fruitland, Cape Girardeau, a Bikecentennial rider

TransAmerica Bike Trail

Twenty miles south of St. Genevieve I started seeing signs for US bicycle route 76 alongside the MRT signs. I stopped at a convenience store for breakfast and the cashier who saw I was biking said I had to sign the guest book. It turns out it is filled with hundreds of entries from all sorts of folks. There were entries from cyclists from Japan, someone riding an old fashioned penny farthing, a unicycle you name it. I learned that route 76 is also known as the TransAmerica the premier cross country bike trail. The MRT and the TransAmerica share the same road for about 10 miles before each heads their separate ways. Clearly all the entries are from TransAmerica riders, a far more popular trail. That night, I end up in a town with the prosaic name of Fruitland, MO. I was curious as to the name of the place and deliberately stayed there to learn about it's origin. I had visions of a garden city with colorful fruit stands, orchards, women laden with baskets of fruit but the reality was it was just an gritty intersection of two highways with a Casey's gas station. I asked around and no one seemed to know why it was called Fruitland. Finally I resorted to google. It seems there was an orchard there long ago.
The next day I made it to Cape Girardeau, a river town big enough to be home to Southeast Missouri University. As I am still dealing with unusual heat and humidity and decided a leafy college campus would be a good place to wait out the heat of the day. The local bike shop told me they even had hammocks set up under trees that sounded pretty good. They also put me in touch with Judi, a warmshowers host who takes in weary cyclists like stray dogs. Even ones with dogs. Judi Cureton is a 78 year old veteran cycle tourist who has traveled by bicycle in all 7 continents.

Judi's Bikecentennial Certificate

It pretty much started on a whim when she picked up a brochure one day about the Bikecentennial and decided she would do this. She was one of the original 2,000 riders who traveled across the country in 1976 along a route which later became the TransAmerica trail which I had just crossed the day before.

Judi's Home has a widow's walk.

She lives alone in a grand Queen Anne style brick home built in 1904 by her grandfather. It is quite close to the campus as her father had been a professor there. Unfortunately for Murphy she also has a Jack Russell terrier who was not happy to share his territory with this intruder. Terriers pretty much will use any excuse to bark non-stop and this was a real good excuse. Judi lived and breathed bicycles. Bicycle mugs, coasters, posters and anything bike themed was quite evident throughout the place. She still rides 20 - 30 miles a day and is in remarkable shape. Her most recent international bike trip was to the Kingdom of Bhutan. Wow. That morning she made me "Bicycle waffles" which are supercharged whole wheat, with a selection of berry topping, crunchy peanut butter, yogurt or maple syrup. I put on all of the above. Thus fortified I bid my good byes and headed out of Missouri for the last time crossing the new Mississippi River bridge that takes you to the tail end of Illinois.