Murrs Across America

Mike picked us up about a half mile before the road turned to gravel. His eyes were kind, his hair kinetic, his truck smoky. He asked if we were really going to ride our bikes that way and said he was about to fix hamburgers and French fries with his boys. We were welcome to come to his house, just down the road, and he would take us to the end of the dirt road in the morning. Though we hadn’t made it very far, we thought that sounded like a good idea.

We were on a detour because the bridge at Bear Lake was closed. Gone, actually. A man had stopped us on the road to warn us (thankfully) a couple of miles before we came to the gaping hole in the road. We hadn’t seen any detour signs because they rerouted most of the traffic on the interstate on the other side of Platt City. We called the highway department from a yard where the kids played tag, and we learned we would probably have to backtrack quite a ways to cross. Instead of backtracking, we decided to hang out beside a busy gravel road to ask a local which way to go. That is how we ended up at Mike’s.

Samuel and Garrett

Samuel and Garrett, ages 15 and 10, greeted us upon our arrival to their home, which seemed in all respects to be the habitat of boys, and they politely put on their shirts and took the kids and Stuart on a tour of the farm. There were baby peacocks and parrots. The house sat in the middle of a vast cornfield atop the rolling hills above the Missouri river valley. Mike, Samuel, and I made dinner, although Mike forbade me to unload the dishwasher. My latent kitchen-cleaning reflexes suddenly flared, and though the urge was difficult to suppress, I also didn’t clean up after dinner. Mike’s disapproval commanded significant respect.

At dinner we talked about music: with all the instruments reclining about the house, it made sense that mike Mike gives guitar lessons, and the boys determined Stuart looks like a young Eric Clapton. Jane piped up about how she wants to play violin; or maybe she asked him if he had a violin. Mike trotted right down to his basement and brought up a half sized instrument.  He told Jane to write him at the end of her journey, and, if she was interested, request the violin and he would send it to her.

Mike's Gift

I was shocked and excited about the gift, but Jane donned that face she has when something gets to be too much; it’s a claymation-style smirk and vacant sparkle eyes that make me wonder if she’s taken an internal retreat. When Mike showed her how to exercise her fingers to make them strong for practicing she came back. She nimbly exercised her left fingers and danced in her chair.

After putting the kids to bed in Garrett’s generously donated bunk bed, I chatted on the phone with a friend on Mike’s porch, surrounded by stars and fireflies. Full of night, I joined Stuart and Mike who were just finishing Stuart’s third guitar tutorial of the trip. Samuel and Mike picked up one of the several guitars at random and would play a riff, a song, experiment with tuning. Their guitars were habits, appendages, friends, and when I asked Mike to play his favorite song, he played one by a western troubadour about love and afternoon.

Then Mike shared the story of his name, which translated from Pawnee means roughly, “He brings plenty”. When his dad died, he dreamed a rotating silhouette. He dreamed it over and over. He thought it over and over. When he talked to his mom about his dream and waking vision, she recommended that he speak to a tribal elder that had been his father’s friend. The elder told Mike to record his dream, to meticulously write down all the details of his visions. Eventually, Mike was able to recognize that the silhouette was a vision of himself wearing the shirt of a medicine man. He made the shirt. From heavy hides, feathers, beads, and the legs of wolfs he constructed, over 18 months, an exact replica of it. He made a medicine wheel. The elders came to ceremoniously name Mike. He was introduced to his grandfathers who had given him his visions. Now the grandfathers guide and protect Mike, and they give him visions that he must see manifested or they’ll cut him off. He teaches his children about the one God, and he has also named them in the tradition of his grandfathers. He wonders if the nine lines he painted on his shirt are representative of the grandsons he’ll someday watch over.

Mikes Medicine Shirt

As Mike translated a lullaby with his guitar, he mused about his life’s path. While he would have formerly dismissed us as crazy people on a gravel road, he was happy now that he had stopped to extend his hospitality. He is clear that he did it for himself, that the peace he feels from helping others is unmatchable. He practices this regularly, as it turns out: he and the boys volunteer at a Kansas City homeless shelter on Saturdays.

We said goodbye to Mike outside a diner near Atchison after we all took shots of the elderberry juice provided by Robert, the Katy Trail Shaman. In Atchison an Amelia Earhart sculpture boasts the following quotation, which added befitting punctuation to our time spent with Mike: “ Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me.”

I apologize, dear reader, for the recent lack of story line. We’ve had company.

Riding so close to home, we have had visits from Stuart’s mom, my mom and dad, and our dear friends the Millsaps and the McNertzes (aka, Karen and the Poke Man). We’ve had the good fortune to stay with new friends in Vienna, IL, and friends like wearing your favorite t-shirt on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, the Rhodes, in St. Louis. We’ve also enjoyed the hospitality of Jefferson City friends Dan and Karen.

I shall attempt to summarize with high points of each day and get back to you shortly with the details, for now the Almirall-Rathsams have captured us here in Kansas City and are facilitating (encouraging even) MAA blog development, copious coffee consumption, and general hygiene for all Murrs.

• May 23: Hotness and frequent stops, Pizza Buffetagedon, the World’s Largest Coon Hunt, and a night on the cruising strip.
• May 24: Rendezvous with Nana follows Parsons meltdowns
• May 25: Nana’s car, a mechanical horse, and a camel
• May 26: A trip to the 1850s and the bicycle capital of Illinois
• May 27: Bikes like limos, tunnels and new friends, Nana leaves, David cooks, and other conspiracies
• May 28: St. Louis and the comfort of Rhodes’ Island
• May 29: Stuart’s birthday, bottleworks, and monkeys that cuddle
• May 30: Resting, arrival of Grammy and Papa, dinner beneath a bike built for seven
• May 31: Spam won WWII and now comes in singles: a ride with my dad.
• June 1: Coyote philosophy, celebrations, reunion with Millsaps, a princess party, and shadow puppets
• June 2: Storms, wineries, dressing for dinner in the RV with Dan and Karen
• June 3: Kate cries when friends leave, kids rally; shaman wisdom and elderberry tonic; Thai food Missouri River sunset.
• June 4: A fawn, the news, a clown.
• June 5: Sometimes Mommy just needs a long, long shower; back to the road; a kind stranger buys us ice cream; Fine theatre
• June 6: Prairie sun; three flats in two days; a minor rescue in two movements.
• June 7: Kids watch sesame street, Stu networks with architects, Kate catches up on blog.

Boy Scouts are prepared and expeditious. They start their days early and with great commotion but, if you’re lucky like we were, they also offer you coffee and feed you. Mr. Kennedy, the troop leader, invited us to join them for breakfast and ran me off when I tried to do dishes. The boys were gentlemen, making Mickey Mouse pancakes for the kids, and demonstrating to me their alcohol-burning aluminum can stoves over which they would be cooking their lunch on the trail.

After breakfast, Brady and Jane shot some more cannons on the historic Shilo battlefield, where Brady nearly surrendered to a mountain of ants he disturbed while loading the cannon with FIRE. Fortunately, he only got one bite that I could find and the pirates decidedly lost the May 2010 battle of Shilo.

Our lunch on the trail happened in the town of Crump after some parents at a downtown little league game directed us to the local diner, Na Na’s (long “a”, folks) for a hearty “Plate Lunch”. At this particular diner, a plate lunch consists of meat, three sides, and a roll or cornbread all for $4.95. For the record, I only ate one plate lunch, but considered ordering another because it was so darn good. A kind local, who looked very hot from putting a metal roof on a building, bought our lunch, and a lunching doctor asked us if he could help us in any way.

We biked up from Crump. I’m not even sure we went north or east or west, but we definitely went up. We stopped on what seemed like the rooftop of Tennessee to catch our breath and lay on towels for a while. Turned out our rest stop was a driveway to the new in-ground cabin built by Jim and Teresa, who pulled up in a golf cart just as we were gearing up to leave. They invited us to stay at the cabin, which had a porch with a million-dollar view of the Tombigbee River Valley below. The kids and I explored the house (and tried to figure out how to work the toilet) and Stuart relaxed on the porch…momentarily. A snake slithered up the hill to the house, ignored the pelting of Stuart’s warning rocks, and headed straight for our bikes. Brady was heading out the door about the time Stuart was picking up a stick of lumber to keep the snake away from our gear. Of course Stuart yelled to me to keep the kids inside and he ended up killing the snake. The kids and I watched out the window as he lifted the limp viper and flung him down the side of the hill.

Besides the snake visit, some neighbors drove up to the cabin about the time we were sitting down on the porch to enjoy the view, Shirley’s tamales, and some Spanish rice and nachos. They were very friendly and gave us the idea that a still was rumored to be on the property. We didn’t see it, of course.

Stuart sat up late on the porch, looking out to the stars and a few angry deer surprised him. We enjoyed the space immensely, and the view was green and filling.

Thank you Jim and Teresa!

After rains cleared, we headed out and it started raining. It was refreshing, though, and we needed the motion.

Stuart really exercised his navigational skills as we crossed into Tennessee. Few roads on the route were marked, and they were all rural and uphill. Pushing our bikes up one particularly evil slope, we recorded a 6.1% grade using Stuart’s i-phone. Of course the hills provided plenty of exercise for the kids. We parked at the bottom of one hill and hiked up to an old cemetery. I’ve always liked the quiet feeling and weighty language of cemeteries. Jane fluttered around sounding out names on headstones and I imagined macabre Kindergarten papers peppered with question marks and notes of concern.

A few hills later when we paused to eat some oxygen I threw a graham cracker at Stuart, but missed.

When we pulled up to Shirley’s trailer to inquire about a nearby restaurant and campground we were completely calorie deficient and grouchy. The assembly at Shirley’s said the restaurant was closed, and they didn’t know about the campground, but would we like some BBQ chicken, dried black-eyed peas, and maybe some Coke or Meller Yeller. Jane made fast friends with Shirley’s granddaughter, Allie, who is four, and we thankfully accepted the invitation of our gracious hosts. The family had already eaten, but we all sat on the porch enjoying the evening together and before we left Shirley shared with me her recipe for hot tamales. Eyes a-twinkle, she also filled our cooler with frozen tamales for the road.

We biked another mile to the Shilo battlefield campground, which was a couple of mowed fields surrounded by majestic and mysterious trees and separated by a wet ditch that the children referred to as “the marsh”. Stuart set up camp and my history lesson for the kids morphed into a tour of two imaginary worlds they created on the spot. Jane’s story of Pixi Land, told entirely whilst she was gracefully “flying” with her arms, was pure summertime imagination candy.

Jane was adamant that there were no boys in Pixi land: brothers, silly boys like Matthew, and future husbands like Owen had their own world and could only visit Pixi land by request and upon the stipulation that they first had to go to the market and order wings; also, they couldn’t bring their swords. Despite Jane’s royal decree, the magic spell of our private worlds was broken with the twilight arrival of three (3) troops of boy scouts. We fell asleep as voices cracked and hammers clanged and boys rushed about on the margins of a field made magical by childhood.

Tishamingo has a burgeoning bike club. And because of it’s proximity to the Natchez Trace and the natural beauty (and new road) displayed within the lovely the Tishamingo State Park, it is no wonder that Main Street Cycles has started carrying bicycling gear and that 15-20 people have started meeting weekly for rides.

In related news, I think I sold a Burley today. At the Tishamingo Sunflower market, where we quickly picnicked before racing storms to Iuka, we met Shelly, who circled her minivan back to where we sat to ask us what we thought of the performance of our Burleys. Shelly explained that she and her fifteen year-old son had started biking recently on doctor’s order to help with his heart condition and to reduce his weight, nearly 300 pounds. Since he started biking (with fervor), he has lost thirty pounds, and is feeling better than ever. But Shelly worries about her son biking alone, and she has to hire a babysitter for her one year-old when she rides with him. She’s been researching child carriers on-line but she wasn’t sure she would be able to balance or pull a Burley. I assured her the Burley was easy to pull and holding up just as well on our cross-country trek as it does around town. She’s excited about how a Burley might give her time with her son, and the benefit it will have for his health. I’m excited about these things, too.

We raced storms to Iuka, arriving just as the rain started. We sought shelter on the porch of the local Mexican food restaurant, which was coincidentally next door to The Dollhouse Hair Salon. Three out of four Murrs were due for haircuts, so we waited out the storm and got beautiful.

We biked in the rain to the Victorian Inn where we cleaned up and drafted plans A through F for dinner plans. Fortunately, the rain stopped long enough for us to walk the 1.5 miles back to the Mexican restaurant. A friendly local picked us up and delivered us to the restaurant, but we walked the whole way back to the hotel. Jane was concerned with gathering as many different flower species as possible to create a bouquet for the next guests in our hotel room. I was mostly in awe of the cumulonimbus sunset sky, where every color I’ve ever seen must have originated. As a bonus, there was also a rainbow.