Day 6. 282 Miles. Trail Things.

Posted on October 21, 2026 by anthonycaferro

Cliche time travel mechanism to the ending as the start, because… why not. Destination: Marthasville. Martha Martha Martha. No wait. For reals it’s mile numero 77.7 — so how I can not? Why? How? Huh? What?! The internet-informed, supposedly-always-open-showers at the park R locked. Agua, señor. 77.7? Not very lucky, my guy. Desperate for water I double back to another pedaling-long-haulist I peeped tenting up near a closed down caboose of a restaurant. I call the Google number, no answer – and so I inquire with said mutual pedaling maniac… turns out, camping here is OK and there’s water and there’s a shitter and there’s a shower. Hell yeah. His name is Davis. I didn’t change his name because I say, “I’ll remember your name because of Jefferson Davis” – he’s a bit taken aback about the linkage of him and the Confederate president. I just came from Jefferson dolomite som! Plus it’s Thomas Jefferson’s fault!

Trying to be better at remembering peoples’s namez. Pattern interruption. Interrupting the pattern of forgetting, that’s how I remember someone’s name. We chat a bit. He started in Maryland. He’s done the C&O and the GAP, headed into sunsets to the West Coast. Yay yay. First time long rider so I give him some tips and tricks I’ve learned. Spare derailleur hangar, fiber kevlar spoke, etc. He shares some upcoming camp grounds, considering he just came down from Chicago. Good to finally chat with someone… it’s been a while since I’ve been around anyone for any length of time. Turns out Walmart has its limits. I’m back near vehicle roads and so the truck traffic keeps me up almost all night.

And now use said time travel mechanism to go back to the actual start of the day, scribed chronologically and rearranged hilariously.

After finally getting some sleep, I wake up super early, like that time where it goes from cold to colder. That aforementioned moments before the first dawn and I go from thinking “it’s not as cold anymore” too “holy fuck I’m freezing.”

Luckily I got this warm little shower house. So I’m gonna just list some things while sitting here all warm:

Road Kill Roll Call

  • Deer
  • Sparrow
  • Squirrel
  • Possum

Wild Life Living:

  • Eastern Bluebird
  • Wildin’ Turkey Vultures
  • All sorts of other birds I don’t know shit about
  • Deer with big white tails
  • Ginger tailed squirrels
  • Smallish snakes
  • Dogs and cats, the non-rain kind

I love you, Katy Trail. If anyone has a daughter, I have a suggestion. go with first name: Katy, middle name: Trail. After that any last name will do. I love all long rides; this is spesh. Every state would do themselves a service putting extensive trails onto all of the unused railbeds in their states immediately. Read that again. Say it louder.

I’m nearing St Louis and have yet to see a cardinal. But I’m hoping to. Come on you cute red fuckers, show up. What I also have not seen is me doing 5 full down to up and back down squats. I feel me doing them but there’s no visual proof so I can’t be sure. I think it happened. Is happening. Will happen. Not normally 5 squats is not a big deal for me, but I haven’t been able to do that many in months. So it kinda something something something. Maybe I have seen cardinal. Recover recovery recovery.

Espresso Laine in Hermann. Highly recommend stopping here!

Lists literally later. Luxury in Hermann right now. Outside seating. Latte on point. This Pumpkin Maple Bourbon Pecan Muffin which just sounded better as I read each word definitely tastes even better while it’s in my mouth right now. Crumbs crumbling and fumbling down on my thumbs while I tap away about it’s happening. So much that a bee lands on my phone and I just keep typing. He’s on my hand now so I use one thumb. I can’t take a picture of this obviously. I wish I could. I am not making any of this up. At all. About the bee anyway. No crumbs were actually lost, that part is creative license. The honey bee wants to join my adventure but instead I blow her off back into the atmosphere.

Last list. Maybe. It’s in picture format. All sorts of other trail things because a picture is a thousand somethings. Some weird shit out here. And I don’t feel like wordsing.

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Days 4 & 5. 244 Miles. Sun & Moon Days aka Jefferson City Dolomite.

Posted on October 20, 2026 by anthonycaferro
For the record, I’ve been pissing and shitting all over Chiefs nation. Go Bills.

Just a guy and his bike and a beer. In the midafternoon. At a festival. Right smack dab on the trail. Nothing more to see here. Move it along. Back to the beginning.

It’s interesting to wake up in a place and you have no idea what it looks like or where you are. After camping in total pitch darkness I wake up and see the spread of Katy Roundhouse all around me. Suns out. Still cold. The kinda cold that slaps even harder when I go to fill a water bottle and the water coming from underground is MUCH warmer than the air. With only a handful of guests. I move into a sunny area with a picnic table. Then another. I use that expanse to give my tent and rain fly a chance to dry from the dew. Yes I do the dew. Rain fly on this table, foot print on another, towels hanging on a branch. My shit is over 4 or 5 campsites getting as dry as it can while I sip coffee and type this. Dew. Dew. Doo doo. I don’t have any food left and 15 miles up the road to the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City. Where there’s food and more.

My legs are sore as usual this morning. This trail is well worth it though. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, back when it was laying tracks, bought up a 100 foot wide tract of land even though they only needed 20 to put in a railroad, but that’s just the kind of shit you do when you’re playing with real Monopoly money. Works out for us now. This thang is wonderful. It’s wide and completely packed down, crushed limestone. What’s really cool is that since we’ve over farmed every square inch of fertile land in this country that extra 80 feet of railroad right away is now allowing for natural and native prairie grass and flora to regrow and populate sections. That’s baller. And whaaaattt… let’s go back to “less coffee my ass” because there’s a coffee shop. Right. On. The. Trail. And it’s good.

Fork in the round here at the 9 mile spur into Columbia. I spend and hour sitting here. Drinking coffee. Stretching. Greeting other long haulers. Some also camping. Do I go into the city — it’s also an entirely car free route — or stay out in the woods. I stank.i read out Darwin Hindman. Mayor of Columbia and a big reason this trail exists. Passed away in 2019. Seems like he was a real G.

I decide to avoid people and the city. Stay on the trail. It’s quiet. Then that festival happens. A mid 70s woman I wanna call Bonnie asks if I’m a Missouri voter, then flirts with me every time our paths cross. Her guy, I’m calling Clyde does nothing but meander drunkenly around and brag about how he finally lost his old lady roaming around somewhere. They do not rob me but they are hilarious. After a couple hours of fun I push out, the campground here is gonna be too loud for me tonight.

Bluebirds. Plenty of roadkills. Finally some wild life. And live stock. The bluebirds though. Quite blue. The state bird is the Eastern Bluebird.

When you just have to turn your head to the right only slightly for the moon and the sun to both be out in the sky and in your viewpoint together at the same time whilst pedaling. That would be a bomb add title to the weirdest poem ever. Probably in long format Heiku.

Hartsburg volunteer park free camping. This is the heart. Hart. Land. Middle of Missouri, my map-minded mammals. It’s also the coldest night yet I sleep with the magic rain jacket on dog barking all fucking night. Multiple dogs multiple locations. All clearly barking at me. And I literally mean all night… the population of this town is in the three digits and these barks echo throughout the one intersection. How does anyone here sleep? And who let the dogs out?

NIGHT TIME

A few doze offs here and there. I give up sleeping yet again, right around the time the dogs finally go to sleep and the trucks start moving through the area again. It is cold and it is wet. Still. Moore do. Moor Due. More Dew. Nothing’s been fully dry since mile 12.

Jeff City. Dolomite you say.

Dolomite is both an anhydrous carbonate mineral and a sedimentary rock composed of calcium magnesium carbonate. The Jefferson City Formation is a major geological layer composed almost entirely of dolomite rock.

First named by geologist Arthur Winslow for its prominent exposures in Cole County, the formation dates back to the Early Ordovician period (roughly 470 to 485 million years ago), when much of Missouri was covered by a warm, shallow sea.

Dolemite is also a 1975 American blaxploitationcrime comedy film and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore.

There’s a really good joke buried somewhere in all this, ya dig?!

This map is wild. These are the three points of interest. I am one of them.

Clothing Tetris. I now wear every combination of clothing in various combinations. Layering. Delayering. Relayering. It all fits together however I need it. Very little is still clean but I definitely packed appropriately.

No sleep til Bluffton. It’s bluffs galore out here. Limestone. I pass up three primitive campsites, a paid campsite with a shower, an indoor bike hostel with a shower and push the extra mileage to a self check-in, honor system campground I hope has a shower. Steamboat junction at sunset. Not one other human alive. Or dead, yet. There’s a registration envelope and drop box for dead presidents. I don’t have Hamilton so you gets a Jackson. It’s getting dark and I can’t find anything. There better be showers. No one here. Whoa. Find em! Yes. Heated little room too. Out door crapper butt this shower room is tits. Dry out and charge up and such.

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Day 3. 150 Miles. Junction/Luncheon/Function.

Posted on October 18, 2026 by anthonycaferro

Day 3 is the first day I listen to a second of music. Day 3 is the first day I wear dry socks inside of (almost) dry sneakers. Eventually, I even take the rain jacket off for about 90 minutes.

Get all excellent adventure with it and have Rufus pull up to the bumper baby — drop you off at last night around 1800 hours midwest Time; tell him to the keep the phone booth door open because this will be quick. No way!

After that torture-esque like day I hit my intended 50 miles. Destination achieved. My bike hostel of a campsite is worth mentioning to y’all. Even if it requires time travel — and resurrecting George Carlin — to do so. I am talking a 5 star long ride accommodation type level of Trail Magic raineth down upon me. I get a legal patch of soft land and a picnic table. I get a wonderfully hot shower and heated bathhouse. I get a bike garage with electricity coffee tools community fridge and more stuff than I could dream, if I had have slept. It really all starts manifesting as I’m cashing out my $20 with Charley here in the Katy Rock Junction Campsite office, he offers me a welcome beer — I go with a free orange mango body armor — and now he literally points over to a six-log fire ripping in the wind across the lawn. He’s telling me that they started it for me to attend… if I want. If I want? Um yeah. Charley’s wearing an Air Force hat. Crispy too. Nice. Now Charley’s telling me about all the amenities that I get – the ones I already told yinz about before. Then Sir big C (as I’m knighting him) lays the finale on me with the five dolla firefighter discount. Holla.

Amenities schmenities. Was there really any sleeping? It’s that time of morning that’s still super dark. Like it just got past late late night. The ravers have come down and crashed out but the grannies are not quite stirred up stirring up their fiber yet. No one awake can really be statistically certain the sun is really going to rise at all. All this awesome bike hostel around me, it still dipped to 0° Celsius last night. Still cold and sore and stiff. I make the waste of three wastes in one, get another hot shower and a coffee, put all of my clothes back on (including the now multi shirt monster of funk) eat something, clean the bike a bit and roll out, bidding Charley adieu.

I am now on the actual Katy Trail! Rail trail haul of game. Pun. lol. the rail trail people should pay me. They don’t. It’s a little more firm than the Rock. It’s the only Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad. Shorten to just the last two state parts (KT) and ultimately and quite cutely: Katy. They must like it here. I do. I been had been wanting to be here.

The sun comes out. The winds die down. Still not warm, and I’m still damp in general. Trending upward, with 60 miles to the Katy Roundhouse Campground and their hot showers. I haven’t done sixty miles (even on an empty bike) in over a year.

I have been consuming copious amounts of coffee. Too much. Electrolytes can’t keep up, despite all that craving from plants. Multiply that times the gallons of water I consumer and I’m up to one full bladder emptying urination per five miles. It’s absurd. I’m a circus freak. I should probably factor in the lack of sleep in some calculus involving matrices, instead I take another sip.

Lunchtime brings me to a local supermarket and it’s got me set up perfectly on the dinner tip for some steak-jerky-added-campsite ramen. I’m kinda just getting my steps in lapping this place with a little basket of three things when I wander into the illest of Japanese section. Like someone know their sushi in this tiny whatever town I’m in right now. I grab and go to the little train depot trailhead with what becomes a bomb ass poke bowl luncheon.

Lunchtime also brings me to my first removal of the magic rain jacket (also great against wind too) in days.

The suns getting low big guy. My muscles don’t wanna fire. Sluggishness sets in around mile 45. One point five hours of no-jacket-time come to a chilly terminus.

This guys name is definitely wilhelm. Thats what I’m calling right now. Right now he’s asking for some of my jerky. Which ain’t getting. Cute and chill. I push out to the Roundhouse, 12 final miles.

My meat puppet of a gas tank starts operating correctly again. Muscles go. Moving quickly actually, still not as quickly as the sun sets. Hurts but works. I get to the campground and it’s very dark. Lots of starlight. It’s right on the trail which is baller. Ay Eff. All I see are RVs though. Locked office. I telephoned earlier and Yann ok’d me but I can’t find a the shower house or any tents. I make a loop and no less than three or four big dogs come running and barking. They’re no Wilhem I tell you, these fuckers nipping at my heals. This must not be the place. Despite the sign. I cross back to the other side of the trail. Eureka. Showers. Flat earth. All my gear is still moist but I push 61 miles on the day and haven’t cramped up yet. Two bananas. Monkey.

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