On the Road. The Rider's Journal

Part 06:
Keokuk, Iowa, on the Missouri border. October 4, 2006.

From Le Claire, I followed the river west into Davenport late last week, a clean and friendly place and a part of what they call the Quad Cities. The only real story I came across there relates to a chap called Chad Pgradik (correct spelling, I believe). Trouble was, he was out of town but I was able to catch up with him a few days later on the phone. His is a great story, which I'll relate in a moment.

From there, it was on to Muscatine and then to Burlington last Sunday. Sharp-eyed regulars to this site will notice that I made an error in my schedule, thinking there to be 31 days in September which there are not. So I was forced make up a day - which was just as well, since there was no accommodation available anyway in the stated stopover of Oakville.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, peace, even goodwill. Well let me tell you, if you want to sample purgatory, then try cycling Highway 61 from Muscatine, 50 miles south to Burlington on the Lord's Day - particularly if that day happens to present you with unrelenting 25-30mph headwinds, a single-lane road with zero-shoulder, and a road surface that might have been carved by a drunk with a chisel.

The headwinds roared into my ears, so loud that I could not hear the approaching traffic - not even the flow of 18-wheeler semitrailers thundering down on me. One of them left a gap of no more than one-and-a-half inches, which had me scurrying onto the roadside gravel, my heart beating like a drum-roll. Last Sunday was no fun, but then neither am I complaining. Such things are all a part of the ride and therefore I suppose they should be looked upon philosophically.

Burlington was just-reward for a hard day on the road. It is a lovely place, it's hills stacked high with the renovated mansions of bygone timber barons. Staring at one particular house from the street, I was told an amusing tale by a chap called Lyle Magneson, the city's official, unofficial historian if you see what I mean. In this house had once wotked a washerwoman by the name of Laura. Because the house was situated by a natural spring, she also did the washing for other mansions in the area, and in time became known to all the assorted residents of wealth and oppulence. This is an 'Only in America' story, because via her working hours she met, and subsequently married, a rather well known character. In fact, she became Mrs John D. Rockerfeller.

To me, Burlington has two very special features. The first is a cut at the top of a hill, leading down to a busy street - and is reputed to be the 'most crooked street in the world'. Known as Snake Alley, it twists and winds at impossible angles down an equally impossible slope. Once a year, they hold a bike race around town that includes a climb of Snake Alley, which even with all the miles I have behind me now, I would find far too daunting to attempt.

"There's a street in San Francisco also claiming to be the most crooked street in the world" Lyle went on. "But actually, both of us are wrong, and d'you know why?"

I shook my head. "Because the most crooked street in the world has surely got to be....Wall Street."

Haw, haw. Good point.

From (perhaps) the world's crookedest street, he took me on to the world's smallest piece of parkland. It cannot be more than 120 metres long by maybe 15 across, and named 'Mosquito Park' because somewhere in the annals of Burlington history there is reference to it being no bigger than the size of a mosquito. But I'll tell you this much. The view from there, high up and overlooking the Mississippi, is nothing short of breathtaking. Tree-lined islands sit serenely in midriver as the water rolls gently by, glistening in the early evening sun. It is a sight that quite simply obliterates all pain. A sight that would bring the terminally-sick back from the dead.

Perhaps it wouldn't be at all like that were it not for the efforts of the pre-mentioned Chad Pgradik, who started life as a commercial shell per on the river. One night while camping out on one of the hundreds of midriver islands, he noticed a disturbing amount of rubbish either floating along, or washed up on the shore.

There were fridges, washing machines, tyres, beer cans, bourbon bottles, plastic shopping bags, supermarket trolleys, you name it. Chad was 22 years old at the time and the sight made him angry, sick to his stomach.

Few people who resolve to do something about the environment actually make a noticeable difference, I'm sorry to say. But this young man has done just that. Since starting his clean-up campaign in 1997, Chad has attracted volunteers from every port in the Upper Mississippi. He plies up and down the river, he and his volunteer-crew living in a converted four-storey barge, pushed along by a small towboat, which also pushes three other barges into which the volunteers will pile the river's flotsam and jetsam, all the waste from an industrial & consumer-crazy society.

Let's not forget Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans lies on Chad's river. After it hit, he and his crew filled the barges up with building materials and other supplies, spending nine weeks down there helping out the victims. His price? Zero dollars & zero cents.

His organisation is now called Living Lands & Living Waters. An interest was shown by the singer Billy Joel and other artistes, following which, commercial outfits became involved. Budweiser now donates $75,000 per annum; assorted river barge companies do the same; green-minded agricultural companies add to the coffers. At present, Chad pulls in $750,000 per annum in the name of clean river ecology, and that sum is growing all the time.

Some of the garbage can be fun stuff. One day he fished out a surveillance tape from a bank robbery, along with a stack of (empty) money bags. And dozens of messages in a bottle. "They are anything from love letters to suicide notes." he told me. "Though once, up in Fort Madison 20 miles north of here, I fished out a dead body."

His next project is to plant 65,000 oak trees on the plethora of islands around here. Now that, you'll agree, is a good number of trees - which fade into total insignificance when you consider the project after that - the plantation of one million trees along the entire length of the Mississippi River.

Phew.

National Geographic are to publish a book about Chad's achievements in April of next year. It is called 'From the Bottom Up', so if you've enjoyed this little tale, you'll most certainly enjoy the book.

It is somehow apt to end this week's entry with something I never thought I'd see along this river. Here in Keokuk, I found myself chatting with another cyclist, a local who gets around by bike. Together we cycled to water's edge, where he said, "I gotta show you somethin', man."

From the riverbank, he lifted a pair of sizeable green objects, still attached to their roots in the earth. "I ain't never seen this before" he said happily, staring at the two ripening water melons that he'd discovered growing wild by the river.

Maybe there is hope for us all yet.

Until next week kindest regards to all,
Quentin.