Day 31 - Strafford to Rolla

On the road  little after 6 and it looked like it was going to be nice day.  It was humid.  So humid and I was soaked.  Wet shirt, pants and gloves.  Nothing was drying at all.

I stopped in a grocery store and got some fruit and drinks.  I thought I would try to dry out my gloves by sticking them on the shifters but after an hour they were just  as wet.

A lot of the day was up and down.  There were a lot of rollers where if you build up enough speed going down it will take you to the top of the next one.  These can be fun and if you keep up your speed you can really get going.

So what's going on here?

Around 11 it started raining.  For an hour it was pretty hard.  I was still wet but at least I was cooler.  Bugs kept flying into my shirt and biting me.  The rain was on and off for the rest of the day.

Coming out of Waynesville I took a wrong turn and after a mile or two checked the map because the drivers were even less friendly than usual.  You know you can sense an angry driver when they pass.  I had a tough time reading the ACA map on my phone ... the realtime weather had a big blue blob over the whole state for thunderstorms and with steamy, wet glasses I could not see the thin blue line for the route.

Most of the roads today were pretty bad.  I am definitely not enjoying the Route 66 as much as the TransAm.  Maybe it's just Missouri.

There was one nice stretch of road coming into Newburg.  Fairly new surface and almost no traffic.  Thick forest on both sides.  

Just after Newburg I encountered my first cyclist in over two days.  Jim Smith from Maine has been doing routes all over the country for years.  We had a good chat as the car passed (mostly angrily).

I had booked a room on hotels.com when I was about 30km out of Rolla.  For some reason I keep getting "accessible" rooms.  This is like the 5th time in the last week.  I must have some setting in my profile that says I'm handicapped.  I don't like these rooms and I hope I'm not taking it from someone who needs it.  Support was not much help and when they finally understood the problem told me to create a new account.

Going to have some BBQ now.  Hope it's good.