The trip objectives were obviously not met. I did not even get to the end of the KATY Trail and Rock Island extension, much less ride back. While this failure is disappointing, it was my first trip and much was learned during the past three days.

The first lesson, and the root of my difficulties, was the schedule of riding 50 miles a day. It was just a little too much. As much as I dislike the idea, I need to plan on traveling only 30-40 miles a day. This will chew up more vacation time, and, will eliminate some trip possibilities. Unfortunately, I do not see myself getting much faster and stronger, anytime soon.

The next lesson was the surprising difficulty of finding of food, water, lodging, and other services. Finding these facilities, even in small towns, was not always intuitively obvious. Sometimes these facilities would often be a mile or two or more away. This was not a fun round trip for a tired rider to make. For the next trip, I will need to make better use of the online maps on my phone.

The lesson of carrying less weight should be obvious, but despite my backpacking background, I did a really poor job on this trip. But, the real lesson was learning how difficult it was to handle a loaded bicycle. Now I know why many touring cyclists don’t use bicycle locks. It is just not that easy to run off with a loaded bicycle! In the future, I will have to be considerably more ruthless when selecting items for the trip. 

The bicycle malfunction that prompted the decision to end this trip, was actually quite repairable. But, I couldn’t tell that at the time. As far as I knew, crucial pieces of my rear bicycle rack were littered on the trail behind me. While it is not practical to take along every possible tool, I could have done a much better job of selecting the tools I did bring.