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ROUTE 66 Challenge 2,280 miles / 3,669 Km, 300 days, NEW POSTCARD
TheEdge949
Member Posts: 5,686
Hey hey hey, it's official.
In order to generate more accountability for the cardio aspect of my training I thought a little sojourn down one of the USA's most iconic highways would be the order of the day and as per the last challenge ( Great Wall ) plant a few trees to keep Greta happy.
This is going to be mainly achieved via cycling although, hiking, rowing and skiing will also be a factor and who knows maybe even the odd bijou jogette / waddle / stagger.
Finishing target is Christmas Day so if I time it right the final day will be finish line crossed, shower, pub, dinner, snooze. Happy days eh?
As usual feel free to shout encouragement or hurl abuse as you see fit. I'm sure at some point I will encounter a meltdown and you can all get to share that exquisite anguish as I question myself, God and the Universe.
Ok, that's all. Let's do this.
In order to generate more accountability for the cardio aspect of my training I thought a little sojourn down one of the USA's most iconic highways would be the order of the day and as per the last challenge ( Great Wall ) plant a few trees to keep Greta happy.
This is going to be mainly achieved via cycling although, hiking, rowing and skiing will also be a factor and who knows maybe even the odd bijou jogette / waddle / stagger.
Finishing target is Christmas Day so if I time it right the final day will be finish line crossed, shower, pub, dinner, snooze. Happy days eh?
As usual feel free to shout encouragement or hurl abuse as you see fit. I'm sure at some point I will encounter a meltdown and you can all get to share that exquisite anguish as I question myself, God and the Universe.
Ok, that's all. Let's do this.
Comments
VBOL with this Mark.
Think it's more likely that your challenge will be successful than Stoke's challenge tonight.
Welcome to Chicago, Illinois Mark, the third largest city in the United States of America, and a trading post since the late 17th century. The first permanent resident was a free Haitian man, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable - little is known of him before he first appears in Chicago in the 1770s, but he was certainly resident there from 1790 and is known as the founder of the city. By the time Mark Twain said "she outgrows [a man's] prophecies faster than he can make them" in 1883, Chicago had gone from trading post on the river to thriving town.
When the Willis Tower - formerly known as the Sears Tower - was completed in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, and remained so for 25 years. Although still impressive, the tower is only the second tallest in the States, and has slumped to 14th in the world. It gets its original name from Sears Roebuck, who at the time of construction required a staggering 3,000,000 square feet of office space for its employees.
After 40 years, Sears' naming rights bizarrely expired, and in March 2009, Willis Group Holdings not only leased part of the building but obtained naming rights too. Potentially, the name could change again in 2024, when rights become available again, although the Chicago Tribune notes that "we're stubborn about such things", and that the current name hasn't yet stuck in the mind of locals, let alone the world.
"After 40 years, Sears' naming rights bizarrely expired,"
That's curious. Whatever commercial deal is done, & whoever wins the new rights, it will always be known as Sears Tower.
Route 66 is on my Bucket List. I've done short sections of it, along the beautifully named Pacific Highway, but I'd love to do the whole route.
Well after a hiatus, it's time to get this challenge truly back on course. I've given the pacer enough of a head start, almost 400 Km so now I'm head down and grind this.
The finish day is set for Dec 25th which meant that at the start I had to ride 12km or 7.5 miles per day, so 20km a day which takes me about 45 minutes will reel in the distance with plenty to spare. In fact as other training becomes a priority (trek 26) then I will probably opt for longer rides of 90 min or so but reduce the number of riding days.
Anyway I shall post milestones, postcards and any other things of note as I go so that's me done for the moment.
See you down the road.
M.
You have received a new postcard!
You've made it to Springfield, Mark, capital of Illinois and sixth most populated town in the state. Like Chicago, Springfield's early history is intertwined with the fortunes of travelling fur trappers and traders. By the time a young Abraham Lincoln moved here in 1837, Springfield was an established town.
Lincoln met his wife, Mary, in Springfield, and practised law there for 24 years, also taking a healthy interest in politics - a good pursuit for a future president. He was elected to office in November 1860, although was singularly unpopular in slave states; in fact, he only won two of 996 counties in the South that year.
A two-term president, Lincoln can also be credited with founding Thanksgiving as a national holiday in America. Before, it had been a small holiday in New England, but he fixed it as the final Thursday in November; something we can be certain retail employers don't thank him for today, with Black Friday falling the following day.
Although buried in Springfield, Lincoln is perhaps best known for being murdered in a theatre. John Wilkes Booth, his assassin, was a well-known actor and a vocal racist; Lincoln promoting equal voting rights for freed slaves didn't go down well, and when watching Our American Cousin in Ford's Theatre in April 1865, he was shot in the back of the head at point blank range. African-Americans, whose rights Lincoln championed, openly wept at their president's death.
That all for now folks.
You have received a new postcard!
At first glance, Stanton might not appear to have much to recommend it to someone taking in the sights and landmarks of historic Route 66, but this small, unincorporated community is up there with every other example of not judging a book by its cover. It has even apparently shrunk since Rittenhouse's 1946 Guidebook to Highway 66 - then it had a garage, a gas station, a café, a shop, and a few cabins. Now, the only business open year round is the gas station, although the famed Jesse James Wax Museum does a good trade in the Summer, when it is open daily, and at the weekends in Spring and Autumn. Like the town, it pretty much closes down in Winter.
Stanton is, however, close to the famous Meramec Caverns, where the James gang holed up to avoid arrest. The caves are natural limestone, formed more than 400 million years ago, and have been used variously for shelter by Indian tribes, to collect saltpetre for the production of gunpowder in the 18th century, and even as a venue for ballroom dances in the 1890s - the same area of the caves can still be rented today for private special events.
The wax museum is devoted to all things Jesse James - including photographs of the outlaw, plus several personal items and vintage firearms. You will also hear the legend of what was possibly the greatest feat of James' criminal career; officially, he was gunned down by Bob Ford, a member of his own gang, in 1882, but legend has him escaping and dying at the grand old age of 101 in Texas in 1951. It would make a fitting end to the tale of the modern-day Robin Hood, but family questioning and recent DNA evidence have sadly debunked this.
New milestone reached!
Hi Mark,
You just passed the 20% milestone on the Route 66!
This is great news because it means we will plant a real tree thanks to you!
Each time you reach one of the milestones shown on the map, we will plant a tree to help restore healthy forests in locations around the world.
We have partnered with Eden Reforestation Projects to plant the trees.
You can check out our current partnership status with them here.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for helping our virtual global community make a difference in the real world.
You have received a new postcard!
For a relatively small place, Rolla produces a lot of professional sports men and women, and also an impressive crop of politicians. Although incomes are a little below the national average, the surrounding area and amenities help rate the town higher than it might otherwise sit for quality of life.
In terms of its history, it's a relatively short one - the first house within the current Rolla city limits was built in 1844 by one John Webber. The following year, the railway came to town - or at least the reconnaissance mission did - led by James Abert, the first professor of Civil Engineering at the Missouri School of Mines, which later became Missouri S&T. The official town founder, however, was Edmund Ward Bishop, a construction contractor who was tasked with the job of building that branch of the Southwest Railroad.
There are two entertaining stories about the name; both might be true, or at least contain a grain of truth. In the 1860s, Rolla and neighbouring Dillon were in competition to be the county seat. Rolla won, but part of Dillon's consolation prize was to choose the name of the new city, which they did - after a particularly useless hunting dog. The official version is that it is a phonetic corruption of Raleigh in the emerging North Carolina accent, the origin of many of the settlers.
The modern Stonehenge reconstruction in the grounds of Missouri S&T is a must-see; partial, and a scale model it might be, not to mention erected with the use of modern equipment, but it underlines rather than detracts from the fact that the original prehistoric monument was an incredible feat of engineering.
Oh well must be cracking on.
Well done Mark, you'll soon have your own little forest.
Congratulations on making it to Spencer, Missouri Mark, an actual real-life ghost town. Although Spencer was never much more than a wide place in the road, it did actually have not just people but a post office in the late 1870s. The local population were nearly all connected with agriculture, and Spencer gained both a church and a general store to cater to them.
However, less than forty years later, the road became unusable, and the town more or less emptied - at least for a while. By the late 1920s, when Route 66 was constructed to pass through the derelict buildings, the town reopened for business, with two shops - one grocery, one dry goods, a barber, a garage, and a Tydol station. The second death of Spencer occurred when Route 66 was bypassed by I-44 and until recently, the whole town was a row of vacant premises left over from the still rather quiet heyday of the 1920s.
In recent years, the site has been purchased by the Ryan family - bought from the Caseys, who first owned the land the 'town' was built on in 1925. The gas station has been restored, and although non-operational, is full of authentic memorabilia of the period it was first constructed, including a vintage police car parked in front. Spencer never required or got its own police station, but it's a nice touch.
Just to prove that vandals really will trash anything, the restored (but closed) barber shop was damaged in 2015, including the theft of its nostalgic red and white pole. They may have caused a few thousand pounds worth of damage, but Spencer will carry on - a lovingly-restored, slightly creepy non-town along historic Route 66.
Have a great week all and see you with another one soon yeah.
Interesting, that.