To see who’s there and what, together, we can make happen! That’s the thought that pulls me out of bed most every day and to my bicycle, bound for breakfast in a small town café an hour or so ride away. Being a regular in half-a-dozen such places, I almost always find someone to sit with and/or talk to. The ride has honed my appetite razor sharp. For food. And fellowship. After an hour in this place with these people, I make my way home by some indirect route, fueled for the day with plans and ideas that always come when I begin the day in such fashion. Such a commute to work, if widely understood, would work magic for the sale and daily use of bicycles. Portals they are into a world where nothing hurts and everything works, a state of mind and body above and beyond the automobile and the easy commute.
Sarah’s Table in Kearney beckons today. Janis brings my iced tea ad brags on today’s special. I take her advice and have the chicken potpie. “You’re right, Janis, it’s delicious.” This January 3rd is bright and sunny and unseasonably warm. Too nice to head home. That unseen mapmaker in my head plans all my rides. Pictures pop into my head. In color to fit the season. Names of streets and numbers of highways do not appear in my pictures. Only hills and curves, trees and ponds, twists and turns. I see homes beside the road that house folks I know. I see the café that waits.
Mill Inn in Excelsior Springs I see as I’m ready to leave Sarah’s Table. By a convoluted and circuitous route no car would ever take, I come to the town. Time in transit has been longer by far than my car would have taken. The cathedral quiet, stark winter beauty and bracing chill have had sufficient time to make themselves known to me, and I arrive in a frame of mind I remember from my childhood, when on Saturday mornings by a radio show called Let’s Pretend, I was transported to a fairyland. By bicycle now when I am old, I am back.
As I come to the Excelsior Springs City Limit sign on Old Kearney Road, the picture of Mill Inn vanishes from my head. Applebees appears. A recent addition, it sits across Highway 69 from Wal-Mart, just beside McDonald’s. I’ve never been there. Never wanted to go. Hundreds of times I’ve been to Mill Inn. Now and then to Ray’s Diner or Wabash BBQ. All local places, where I know the owner.
Must be a reason Applebees enters the picture. So I go. Order a chocolate dessert. Sit for a few minutes. Get ready to leave. Guess the mapmaker was playing with me. No reason to come here. I go looking for the cashier to pay my bill. “Ed, what are you doing here?” It’s Richard.
Richard Bowman lives here in Excelsior. Rides with our GreaterLiberty Riders on Saturday mornings. He’s why I’m here. I take a seat beside him. Richard tells me that this coming Monday he is having a procedure done at Saint Mary’s Hospital to correct an irregularity in his heart. He gives me permission to tell everyone. And he has an idea for a Saturday ride. He mentions a coffee shop that has just opened across the parking lot from where we sit. He thinks that would be a good place to begin and end a ride. He asks me to stop by and talk to the owner.
Thus I come to Black River Espresso and meet Phil Kelman. After just a minute or two, Phil and I have agreed that this coming Saturday we will begin our ride here at his place. Then by a route Richard outlined, we will ride up through Watkins Mill State Park and back for coffee and pastries at Black River. Richard’s Ride!
HateBusters
Box 442
Liberty, MO 64069
Phone: 816-803-8371
e-mail: hatebuster@aol.com
No Boundaries On Our Soul!
