Day 4 – Galena to Moline: Andy Kittsley …
… Sez: Today, day four of the Tour, started and found us breakfasted and eager for the challenge of the day. Unfortunately, the first thing was to get out of Galena.
Galena, for those of you who have not been lucky enough to visit this place, is a charming 19th century gem. With, like 70% of the buildings of the village listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
Anyway, like I was saying, getting out of this wonderland is another story. There are two ways out of Galena. One is on a packet boat on the Mississippi River. The other way is UP.
We were told the boat wasn’t an option.
Up we went, our bellies filled with breakfast supplied by the Desoto Hotel.
A bit about the Hotel. This is a great old creaky hotel in downtown which has hosted generals (Ulysses S. Grant’s house is a few blocks away), and presidents, just take my word for it ‘cause I didn’t write their names down. Anyway, all the rooms are named for persons real or imaginary (Tom Thumb for one, Booker T. Washington for another).
We stayed here about 9 years ago on the Minneapolis to Milwaukee Tour. Those of us who rode then were happy to be there again.
When we left the town, up we went. Climbing a few hundred feet in a half a mile doesn’t translate well. So imagine a sprint from street level to the top of the Empire State Building with a belly full of food, and you get an idea.
We got to the top.
Vistas of the Miss-ippi River were tantalizing because we knew that eventually all that climbing would mean a zoom-zoom to the bottom. And zoom-zoom describes it.
Land speed records were shattered for several riders, posting speeds in excess of 50 mph.
Fifty miles an hour on a bike with tires about an inch wide is seriously exciting fun.
And at least one van owned by someone in Illinois was damaged when it pulled out in front of Quadzilla. He was not going 50 mph, but did a bunch of damage to the van anyhow, and some to his own self, too – as you might imagine. But he says he’ll be ready to roll tomorrow.
After the verticality of the locality was horizontalized, the route became a shady rolling fun ride into Moline.
Moline, for the uninitiated, is a smallish Illinois city on the east side of the Miss-ippi, (across the river from the smallish Iowa city of Bettendorf). Moline used to make the Minneapolis-Moline Tractor in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. This farm tractor was way ahead of it’s time in that it was fully enclosed and climate-controlled. It looked like a Plymouth on steroids.
Others may have differing views, but so far this tour ranks in the top three for me.
So now we are at dinner. I’m hungry. Love to all!
Hey, just want to let you know I enjoy the site. Keep it up.