A great report posted by Rick Armstrong (ricka) on Attackpoint on Monday morning:

Sunday evening, Fran and I met the team at Marthasville MO and at the Mississippi River (Time Stations #34 and 35). (We provided another Big Mac fix at #35.) 2/3 of journey completed.

The RV had a long stop at 34 (very hospitable family provided food and access to their house). Brad napped; Eddie fine-tuned Brad’s bike; Ken looked real good (don’t make him laugh though); Lex was tired but in good spirits as she struggled with finding best site along the way to dump gray and brown water from RV.

They reported tough biking and following in MO. Besides the weather, they had recently had 5 flats due to lots of stuff on shoulders. With narrow windy roads, traffic backed up quite a bit. Good navigation required with all the small roads used.

Dave rode strong past #34 as the 2nd vehicle stopped for 10 minutes. During the heat of the day, Dave and Greg had been trading off, giving Brad a chance to recuperate. Vehicles left together. In late day, Brad and Dave traded off.

Taking over an hour to drive to #35 highlighted the logistics problems with only two support vehicles. One is usually with rider, but other has a hard time getting a big jump ahead to stop and rest – especially if they have tasks to do. For example, the crew is troubling over how to get enough sleep. And Lex and Eddie report that trailing/protecting a rider is a tough way to drive across the USA 🙂 (especially at night). Eddie took some pictures of the Mississippi River Bridge at sunset.

Overall, they’re doing great! Illinois is very flat and good chance they had a tail wind with no rain last night.