The calendar says July. But it’s April weather as we converge on Mt. Gilead Church and School, now a Clay County park but in the 1800’s a spiritual and scholastic home to settlers recently come from the east. By car, pickup, van and bicycle, 28 of us have come from all directions and varying distance to rendezvous at 7:30 this morning. Every five or six weeks throughout the year we come to this quiet place along side Plattsburg Road. Our numbers are small in January and February. March winds keep some at home. August heat is depressing. But April, May and June!! Cycling paradise.
And this Saturday, July 2nd has come on gentle wings. A soft and cooling breeze. Just enough clouds to hide the sun. The forecast is for rain on the 4th. But none today. Steve and Sharon are riding their tandem. Petra, Melanie and Seth rode the 12 miles from their homes in Liberty to meet us here. Brian and Cindy rode from their home on Petty Road, about five miles away. Bill Hessel rode about a mile from his longtime home on 164th Street. Brent drove from Raytown to ride his recumbent. Connie and Tom from Platte City. Michael from Blue Springs. Antonio from Kansas City. From all across the metro we have come. A marvelous morning awaits.
Mt. Gilead is always our beginning point for our ride to Plattsburg and breakfast at JJ’s. Every other Saturday of the year we begin our rides at Biscari Brothers Bicycles in Liberty. From 30 to 50 miles each week we ride to breakfast in some small town outpost of good food and great company. We sit and talk to one another about this and earlier and future rides. We meet others who have come for breakfast and talk excitedly to them for a while. For an hour and better we are ensconced in an ambiance that will buoy us over the coming week and restore our flagging spirits when the routine and mundane pull at us.
JJ’s knows we are coming. They have tables waiting. We are loud and boisterous. A party atmosphere comes in the door with us. Nick, Kevin, Melanie, Molly and Matthew are first time riders with our Saturday Greater Liberty Riders. They stand and introduce themselves.
I have just written a book, William Jewell College: My Camelot. Sharon took my words on paper and put them into book form, with a table of contents and page numbers. I’ve brought a copy to give her. I pass it around for everyone to see. I announce my goal. “I want to raise $1,110,000. One million for William Jewell. One-hundred thousand for Multiple Sclerosis. And ten thousand for HateBusters. Visit our www.greaterliberty.org to find out how and why.”
JJ’s was one of our sponsors of our Third Annual Greater Liberty Ride for MS on May 21 this year. I have brought a plaque for their wall to thank them. We hold a little ceremony to present it to Jennifer, one of the owners.
A quintessential ambivalence comes always in our rides at just that time when breakfast is over and time has come to go. Is being here or getting here higher on our agenda? After all these years, I still do not know. If the journey is the destination, as some philosophers contend, then getting here by bicycle, working our muscles and releasing all those euphoric inducing endorphins, is number one. But without the vision of these spiritual centers in the guise of small town restaurants, our rides would have no purpose, no ultimate meaning. Having come home from the mountain is not the same as never having been there. If we simply rode out from Liberty some 15 to 20 miles and back again, eating whatever we could carry with us or find at a quick stop, we would have worked our muscles and shared a word or two in transit. We would never know what we had missed.
Brent and I are riding together on the way back. Everybody else is ahead of us. The in my rear view mirror I spot a rider coming from behind. “Who goes there?” I ask as he draws abreast. Lyle Mussman has recently moved back to Missouri from Texas. He lives in a yellow house along Plattsburg Road that we will pass in a few minutes. We stop for a short time to exchange email addresses and then to view his house. Lyle will join us future rides. Her rode a mile or so with us today: 29 then we had. A new record for our regular Saturday rides.
Complete list of riders to JJ’s today: Ed Chasteen, Aaron Sims, Nick Baumgartner, David Eaton, Kevin White, Easel Roberts, Seth McMenemy, Bill Hessel, Sean Mark, Richard Mark, Molly Brewster, Melanie Linderer, Petre Toye, Brent Hugh, Michael Calabria, Tom Solomon, Connie Solomon, Murray Ford, Brian Harvery, Cindy Harvey, Matthew Hermanson, Jeff Dema, Denis Wendl, Ann Dahl, Elaine Ethier, Steve Hanson, Sharon Hanson, Antonio Ford, and Lyle Mussman.
HateBusters
Box 442
Liberty, MO 64069
Phone: 816-803-8371
e-mail: hatebuster@aol.com
No Boundaries On Our Soul!
