Day 22 June 29, 2009

We left the motel and headed straight into the Missouri Ozarks. We biked to Ellington which was 50 miles from Farmington and napped under some shade trees outside of a burger joint. The next 40 miles were going to be the toughest 40 miles of the Ozarks. We took our time and were chugging along when we had our first mechanical failure of the trip. I was biking up a steep hill about a half mile behind Ben and Jay when my chain snapped in half. At first I thought my chain had just come off but when I got off my bike I found my chain dragging behind the bike. I called Ben and decided that the best course of action was to hitch hike to where we were staying in Eminence and we would fix it there. As soon as I hung up a state trooper drove by which I flagged down and he took me into town. There wasn't a bike shop within an hour drive so we were in a real bind. I needed a new pin to put in the chain to hold it together and the police station happened to have an impounded bike that they said I could pull the chain off of. The trooper called dispatch and their conversation went a little something like this-
Trooper: Dispatch, this is 3208 I have a stranded man down with mechanical failure on his equipment. over.
Dispatch: 3208 are there any injuries on site? over.
Trooper: negative, over.
(Sam trying to contain his giggling in the passengers seat)
Trooper: I'm going to need you to get the equipment out of the back room and meet me at the dairy shack in Eminence. Over.
Dispatch: Equipment is loaded onto convoy and in route to destination. over.
We met the other trooper with the impounded bike at the dairy shack and were able to piece together the chain. I hopped on my bike and biked the 8.5 miles to the spot that my chain had broke and rode back so no one could say I had not really biked the whole thing. Mileage= 90.5 (Sam's mileage= 98.5)