Is it illegal to pass in Missouri?

Another rainy morning. We got up and rode .. there's not really much more to it. Chuck bought some rain paints at the first Walmart we found and we had a dicussion with a local regarding the best roads in the area.. he suggested taking 19 north from Winona, which was our plan.

And that road was fantastic! 88 miles of moderate sweepers and smooth pavement. For the most part the it remained dry. At one point we got stuck behind ~ 15 cars behind a truck with a camper, going 35 mph. Despite several passing opportunities the other cars never passed .. they just tailgated each other for 20 miles. That was the point Chuck and I decided to start passing them (actually I was leading so I made the decision and Chuck followed). We managed to do it in three passes, but not without angering the local drivers. Their response was to tailgate us. Are all Missourian's asshole drivers? Do they, like Minnesotan's, feel the need to force everyone else to be miserable like them, and just tailgate and not pass when the opportunity arises?

Anyway .. after enjoying hwy 19 we continued to ride to St Louis and met Paul at Phil's BBQ. He rode down from Rockford through a lot of rain. Anyway .. Phil's BBQ .. the ribs were dry, but the pulled pork and sweet potato fries were very good.

After the BBQ we made our way to the hotel and clowned for the camera.


A quick walk found us at Schlafly's brewing company. Although we had just missed food serving hours, the bar was open for a few more minutes. We had our samplers and a beer (most of which were EXCELLENT!) and then walked downtown.

St Louis itself was pretty quick. No, I take that back .. it was DEAD. Traffic was non-existent. We could hear some heavy metal from the downtown area, so we walked down there and found a sculpture fountain. We made Chuck take some measurements (after all, we are software engineers).


and I had to get rid of some beer.

The music we heard was a Memorial Day festival and it was pretty dead. They were charging for a band we had never heard of (Paul suspected it was Jackal, with the chain-saw song) and they were charging $5 to get in. It was all pretty lame.

In the end, the only place downtown that was open for business was a Hooters, so we stopped in there for a beer and had a Budweiser "knucklebuster". This is AB's attempt at a dry irish stout ... it was 'ok'. It had a little bit of roastiness to it, but there wasn't enough sweetness to say it was a 'true' stout. Sad to say, this is the best Anhueser Busch I've ever had.

Back at the hotel we hopped into the hot tub where three people had already taken up positions. In an amazing display of dialectical knowledge, Paul managed to guess thier home state of West Virginia based on thier accent .. that's quite impressive!

Tomorrow we ride to Kentucky. We're not expecting anything exciting to occur ... it will probably rain and we have some south Illinois/Indiana prairies to put behind us.