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Saturday, July 8.
Rode 105 miles today, from Springfield, Ill. to Champaign, Ill. Averaged 14.5 mph, 7h 12min 30s total time. Wake up call at 5:30, breakfast at 6:00, off at 7:00. Weather is beautiful, slight head wind, sunny, temp 72. I have plenty of sun screen on and also carry it with me.
We were told at the route rap that this would be the nicest,
most scenic, flattest ride on the trip. That turned out to be
correct! I loved the ride today - pleasant, enjoyable and fun.
I had a great nap in the corn field,
I enjoyed interacting with the soybeans,
and felt fulfilled when I body-slammed the bale of hay.
I did however encounter a sticky situation when we had to travel on a country road (CR 1500N) that turned into a pebble road that had tar applied to it, but it was so hot that the tar was bubbling up and popping when we went over it. Then the road just had tiny loose pebbles on it, and the pebbles stuck to the tar that had stuck to my tires. Then back to a bubbled tar road and more pebbles! I heard a strange scraping noise so I stopped to check over my bike. The tar that was building up on my tires was scraping against the rear rack behind my seat so all I needed to do was scrape off some of the tar buildup on the tire and the rear rack. Easy, right? NO, now a new problem had occurred: My feet were stuck in the tar in the road and I couldn't move! What a stupid mess! I managed to pull free from the TAR MONSTER and plod over to the side of the road. That was a mistake, now more loose pebbles were sticking to the bottom of my shoes!!! Somehow I needed to get on my bike and continue the ride. Of course by now my bike was stuck in the tar... As you can imagine, I was not a happy camper.
And now for the REST OF THE STORY! I did manage to get on my bike and continue my ride, but now that I had clipped into my bike pedals, and my shoes were stuck to the pedals, I knew that at the end of the ride that I would have a mess to clean up, this tar and pebble stuff continued for 5 miles! I did not get off my bike again though! I had several mental concentration lapses from this point on but Chris prevented us from getting lost. We carry route direction sheets that tell us the distance between turns and the cumulative distance for the ride, but sometimes we make wrong turns.
When we arrived at the Comfort Inn in Champaign, I got a message that Louise Allen of the East Central Alz. Chapter, Ill. had stopped by but I had not arrived yet and she had to leave. We played phone tag a bit but we were not able to meet. She wished me well, I took a swim in the hotel pool, soaked in the whirlpool and cleaned my bike (ugh!).
We had a fantastic buffet at a local Chinese restaurant. I ate enough for 3 people... Later in the evening I went to the front desk to get some more copies of my funds request letter. Special thanks to Catrina Rudd here at the Comfort Inn and Cory at the Fairfield Inn for their help. Donna (my wife) called at 9:30 to bring me up to date about things at home. I'm trying to get caught up with journal writing and need to e-mail Ed. Finally went to bed at 12:30.
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