We have finally seen the end of Missouri. Not long into today’s run we came upon Louisiana, Missouri. Louisiana was a little town built on the top of a huge hill, it also ran smack into the Mississippi River.

City Names
One thing I noticed about towns in Missouri and Illinois is that a lot of them are named after other existing cities, states, or countries. We have come across Paris, New London, Jacksonville, Florence, Winchester, Louisiana, Detroit, New Hartford, etc. Of course Kansas has it share of those also, Minneapolis, Detroit, Manhattan, etc.

The previous observation is a product of the fact that we have hit hardly any cities or towns in the past few days with a population over 50,000. In fact on several occasions our very presence has increased the population of a town by 10% or more. However, I am glad that we are running through such small towns because larger cities are harder to navigate through and more hazardous.

Hills
While running through Missouri one thing that kept bugging me was the lack of significant hills. Everyone had always told me that Kansas was flat, but it was much hillier than Missouri, and I like hills. Illinois is a different story; so far most of this state has been windy roads that go up and down hills, over and over. Sometimes it even seems like miles and miles of up-hills or downhills that go on indefinitely. I am writing this after running four miles up a hill, my legs may never feel the sweet sting of flying down the hill they worked so hard to climb for four miles, and that is a cruel injustice. I love running the hills, and while Missouri seemed like a long arduous trudge through boring flat roads or small hills, Illinois has been awesome.

There is one downside to hills. Back in the flint hills of Kansas every runner’s quadriceps were ravished day in and day out. I would get out the car hoping that my quads wouldn’t burst forth from my legs during my next leg, and I would spend all of my extra time in the van with a massage-roller trying to squeeze the pain of my flesh. Quite oppositely the one upside to Missouri has been that my legs are virtually sore free for the last two days, in fact they have been feeling better every day. I cannot decide whether to contribute the considerable lack of soreness to lack of hills in Missouri, or my getting used to the constant torture that I am giving to the muscles in my legs. In the morning I will know for sure which of those two is correct.

Wildlife
Another advantage of Illinois is the scenery, Missouri wasn’t bad, but in comparison to Illinois it was rather drab, in short Illinois is beautiful. The spaces in between are more wild and natural in Illinois. On one hand you have the towns, farms, and other signs of man, and then there is the forests and fields. Missouri’s forests and fields were somewhat restricted and often trimmed, Illinois’s are wild and untainted, the grasses sway in the wind so that when you look upon them from a high vantage point it they seem to make a living swaying body, and trees are everywhere.

My final point of comparison is road kill. In the show me state, road kill abounded. In one day I counted some 12-15 dead turtles on the side of the road, many dead birds (including meadowlarks!), a couple decapitated raccoons, some flattened opossums, and innumerable unidentifiable carcasses. It was ridiculous. In Illinois I have only seen a few dead miscellaneous animals, in fact we found a gargantuan box turtle alive, it was the largest box turtle I have ever seen.

Many of you are probably wondering why I was counting road kill, and that is an excellent question, but you have to have something to do while you are running.

The Team
Everyone is doing fine physically, but most of are going a little insane, for example, I just about spelled the word “fine” with a “ph” instead of an “f”. Right now we are listening to trip’s anthem “Handlebars” by the band “Flobots”. We have invented thousands of reincarnations this song by inserting our own words into its simple melody. The first time I listened to Handlebars I had much disdain for its style and sound, but the Sirius radio station “AltNation” insists on playing it at least 10 times a day and I am starting to enjoy it, go figure.

Insanity through repetition seems to be a theme on this trip. Today we were in Subway (we eat at Subway every day for lunch), and we were looking at an advertisement for the upcoming Steve Carrell “Get Smart,” it is the same advertisement that they have in every Subway, Chris Parker, Aaron Gurley, and I started analyzing the indications of Photoshop present in poster.

However none have been injured, and we are all in decent spirits, I would say we are holding up better than I expected to be at this point.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am by Jacob Heil and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.