Katy Trail ride

[indysteel]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

[Tri Girl]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.

Here are the lessons I've learned from your trip:
1. ride East to West since you had a headwind most of the way (although riding the opposite way will insure there will be a headwind the other direction, too).
2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

[uforgot]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.


2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

You can go to the Katy website and you will see that it is actually slightly downhill west to east from Pilot Grove. It is deceiving, I know! I think I'm going slightly uphill no matter which way I go. Here is an elevation map.

[SLash]

Congrats on your ride!!! I loved the write-up, and now *I* want to do it!!! You can camp along the way, can't you? Or is it only B&B's? I guess I need to do my research. I'm all about getting away from cars and really enjoying the quiet of nature.

Here are the lessons I've learned from your trip:
1. ride East to West since you had a headwind most of the way (although riding the opposite way will insure there will be a headwind the other direction, too).
2. ride East to West since it felt like you rode slightly uphill the whole way (does that mean riding it the opposite way of you will feel like you have a slight downhill the whole way- or do you think part of it was the packed trail making the extra work?)
3. look forward to *lots* of solitude and peace (woo hoo!!!!!)

I'm so excited and happy for you! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us! I'll just bet someone will be inspired and try the Katy because of your blog!

Thanks Tri Girl! Yes you can definitely camp. The guy we met going cross country camped, by no means do you have to do b & b's.

I think we will still probably ride west to east because an east headwind is rare. Surely it wouldn't do it again, especially in the fall... milder winds in fall, right?! Plus we would park our car in Sedalia, ride east and take either Amtrak back to Sedalia or a shuttle.

We saw the elevation map on the KT website but we're going to check our elevation on one of the websites where we can upload our Garmin data and see for ourselves the elevation changes. Goofy I guess but it isn't so much that it felt uphill it looked uphill.

However, the trail definitely didn't have significant uphill or downhill and you're right that riding on a packed trail requires more pedaling effort than the road so it is more work. More fun too though!

3. Lots of that!

[uforgot]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

Oh, yeah, I want to know that too. Did you use one of those shuttles?

[SLash]

Oh, yeah, I want to know that too. Did you use one of those shuttles?

We used Katy Bike Rentals to get back from St. Charles to Clinton. There are quite a few places that provide shuttle service. Here's the website for shuttle info:

http://www.bikekatytrail.com/planari...?chkShuttle=on

[indysteel]

I so want to do this ride thanks to your blog. Even must husband seemed enthused, and he's not all that into multi-day rides. Our biggest issue would be the bikes themselves. I only have road bikes. I do have a Trek FX, but I don't think I'd want to ride it. I'm partial to drop bars.

[TrekTheKaty]

Check out the katy forum mentioned above. We ride our road bikes on the Katy all the time. DH used to have a second wheel set with heavier tires but he decided he didn't need them. There are very, occasional sections with loose gravel and as SLash showed, you may have to lift your bike over the occasional tree.

[SLash]

I so want to do this ride thanks to your blog. Even must husband seemed enthused, and he's not all that into multi-day rides. Our biggest issue would be the bikes themselves. I only have road bikes. I do have a Trek FX, but I don't think I'd want to ride it. I'm partial to drop bars.

That's great you want to do the ride, road bikes should work fine you would just need to change out the tires I would think, but even that may not be necessary based on TrektheKaty's experience.

Hope you do it.

[indysteel]

Thanks for the info. Beyond the shuttle service, were you totally self supported? Did you have any trouble riding a loaded bike? My husband's bike is rack friendly; mine is not. Perhaps this is a good excuse for me to buy a touring bike, however!

We just got back from our honeymoon, so we wouldn't do this anytime soon, but I can't get your blog out of my head. I've been on weeklong tours, and I just love doing them.

[SLash]

Thanks for the info. Beyond the shuttle service, were you totally self supported? Did you have any trouble riding a loaded bike? My husband's bike is rack friendly; mine is not. Perhaps this is a good excuse for me to buy a touring bike, however!

We just got back from our honeymoon, so we wouldn't do this anytime soon, but I can't get your blog out of my head. I've been on weeklong tours, and I just love doing them.

No, we were punks. We used a group that hauled our stuff from each b & b/inn. We did carry stuff in our panniers but didn't have to other than necessities we needed while out riding.

Neither of us had done any touring before (this is the rationalization section of my post.. ) so we decided to pay the extra $$ to use this company: http://www.independenttourist.com/index.html

We will carry our own stuff when we go back this fall. We'll use the same shuttle (was included in the price of the independent tourist package) service or use Amtrak.

We're really sort of embarrassed by it because the main thing they did was carry our stuff, so the moral of the story for us is Pack Light!

Looking back and actually by day 2 we were convinced, we could have easily used a lot less *stuff* (too many clothes) and done fine carrying all our stuff on our own.

With that in mind and to kind of test myself, I packed my panniers full the last couple of days and there was no issue with riding/controlling the bike. I was surprised but I didn't really notice it except for the weight.



P.S. Regarding your need for a touring bike , I can only say good things about my Jamis Aurora Elite. I finally got to see the merits of the disc brakes too.

[SLash]

Susan, if you covered this in your blog, I apologize, but how did you get back to your car at the start once you finished the ride?

We used a shuttle service but you can also use Amtrak. They don't go to Clinton where our car was, we used Katy Bike rentals to get us back to Clinton.

http://www.bikekatytrail.com/planari...?chkShuttle=on