Week 5 - July 5 to July 12 - Topeka, KS to Champaign, IL - 543 miles

Day 29 - July 6 - Topeka, KS to St. Joseph, MO - 88 miles

Out of Kansas. Welcome to Missouri.

You might have gotten the impression that I hate Kansas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, many things could be further from the truth. But the truth is that there's not much can compare to the beauty and the splendor and the wonder of the Rockies. Nevada and Utah have weird and wonderful geological formations, which are subtly different from day to day. But Kansas - Kansas has wheat fields, corn fields, milo fields, hay fields. Mile after mile of flat, agricultural land. We don't have grain elevators back east, but all the grain elevators are basically the same design, from the same period. The towns range from small to tiny, and are miles apart, separated by fields of wheat, corn, milo, and hay. It's hot in the summer, and (I hear) cold in the winter. And there's nothing to stop the wind, except the lone rider on his bike.

More of the Flint Hills. The rollers are actually kind of fun. Just zip down one side, and roll up the next. Northwestern Missouri is, not surprisingly, more of the same.

The route into St Joe took us through this nice municipal park, with some punishing climbs, and a switch-back descent. I like fast descents, but I like to see what's around the next turn.

There was an unannounced stop at the house of a previous year's rider, who served us iced tea and fruit salad. He's also volunteered to ferry us around tomorrow, and make sure our day off in St Joe is enjoyable. Welcome to Missouri.

Day 30 - July 7 - St. Joseph, MO - Rest Day

A very lazy day. I woke up at 7:00 (a rare luxury), did laundry, got new tires for my bike, washed my bike, and read 250 pages of the new Harry Potter novel. (Yeah, I know, I'm a slow reader.)

This is our first hotel room with internet access. (The hotel in Salt Lake City had only gotten around to wiring their first floor, and we were on the second floor.) Andy has been on my computer all day, emailing everyone he knows (and several people he doesn't).

The hotel is next door to an excellent barbequeue restaurant, where I had lunch for the second time in as many days.

For dinner, we had a cookout, with burgers and shish-kebabs. Sandy's husband is out from Salt Lake City, Carol's family is out from St. Louis, and Cindy's family is out from Boston, so it's a real family affair.

Day 31 - July 8 - St. Joseph, MO to Chillicothe, MO - 71 miles

Andy and I were without a third roommate after John left us in Pueblo. When we got to St. Joe, there was another room shuffle, and we got Fred, the eldest of the three Dutchmen. He's a nice guy, but he likes to get an early start on his day. He was up before his 5:00 wake-up call, showered, shaved (electric shaver, buzzing like an alarm clock), went in and out several times to get ice for his water bottles, and was at breakfast by 5:30. Luggage load was scheduled for 5:45, and breakfast for 6:00, so Andy and I would normally have woken up at 5:30. As a result of this, we left the hotel in the middle of the pack, and arrived early, where we usually leave dead last, and arrive in the middle. I don't feel like my life is improved.

We were riding US-36 for most of the day today. We've had our share of crappy roads, but this was the crappiest - poorly maintained concrete roadway, with even more poorly maintained asphalt shoulder. The shoulder was literally crumbling away, with pot-holes, lots of gravel and debris. My GPS has a battery contact that is just slightly loose, and extreme vibration causes the batteries to shift enough to lose contact, and shut the thing off. It shut off no fewer than 20 times in a 10-mile stretch of US-36 between Stewartsville and Osborn. To be fair, it wasn't this bad for the whole 70 miles, but it wasn't pleasant.

Also, being a highway, US-36 has smoothed out a lot of the little ups and downs, and created some really big ups and downs. The strategy for dealing with rolling hills doesn't apply here. No matter how fast you go downhill (which isn't very fast, because of the poor road surface), you're faced with a long, grinding climb. And another one on the other side.

We had two unmanned water stops today - one before and one after the single sag stop. Water is good.

After dinner, Dan practically led me by the hand to the convenience store next door, where they had Fat Tire beer, an incredibly excellent brew from Colorado. I didn't know it was sold in Missouri, let alone in a gas station/Dairy Queen/convenience store next to the highway in Chillicothe, Missouri. I was in heaven. Andy and Dan drank Corona, as usual.

We heard from Philly Dan and Marnie just before route rap. Remember they took Amtrak home from Grand Junction. They got home that Friday, saw the oncologist on Monday, and Dan had the surgery (orchidectomy - look it up) on Tuesday. The preliminary biopsy results are encouraging; it's either benign, or at least non-agressive cancer.

Day 32 - July 9 - Chillicothe, MO to Kirksville, MO - 82 miles

Fred seems adaptable. I think his last pair of roommates were early risers. We were up at 5:30 this morning, and had as pleasant a time as you can have at 5:30. (And yes, the difference between 5:00 and 5:30 is considerable at that hour.)

We were almost entirely on country roads today - county roads V, K, KK, BB, B, and C; state highways 5 and 11. These were pleasant, little trafficked, well maintained, and (of course) rolling. The elevation profile looks like a seismograph, there are so many little ups and downs. It was fun, but it was about 70 miles of fun packed into an 82 mile day.

The weather forecast was for scattered thunderstorms, severe in the afternoon (40% chance of rain). Andy and I rode as fast as possible (given the hills, heat, and humidity), didn't stop for lunch, to try to beat the rain. In the end, it never came. It sprinkled lightly and briefly a couple times, and there was thunder and lightning 6 or 7 miles away (by Dan's estimate, and he grew up on a farm), but it never caught us.

We usually end up in hotels on the edge of town (because it's cheaper). In fact, we've grwon to expect it. But they outdid themselves this time. The Days Inn Kirksville is not only not near the town, it's not near anything. It's a mile to fast food, more than that to a convenience store.

It's a nice enough hotel in most respects (for a Days Inn), but the roll-away bed they brought me looked like it was diverted from the dumpster. Springs were missing, and the wire harness that holds the mattress was literally in pieces. To their credit, the maintenance guy fetched it right away, and spent a couple hours on it. Now it at least doesn't look like it's going to kill me.

The storm finally caught us at about 8:00 pm. And it was a beaut - lightning in every direction, rain blowing sideways. Not something you'd want to be out biking in. Naturally, we watched it from the hotel bar.

Day 33 - July 10 - Kirksville, MO to Quincy, IL - 96 miles

You couldn't have asked for a nicer day. Last night's rain really cooled things down, and we had blue skies and light winds all day.

The guys at the feed store in Williamstown said that a couple tornadoes had touched down nearby last night. We saw some evidence of this, with the siding blown off one side of a house.

We had a fun encounter with 3 dogs, who looked like they were out of a Disney Incredible Journey type of movie - a big golden retriever, a medium size coyote-looking mutt, and a little mop dog. They were very friendly, although covered with ticks (and probably fleas). The retriever followed us at about 16 mph for the better part of a mile.

We crossed the Mississippi River by a ferry from Canton, Missouri to Meyer, Illinois. The ferry is like a barge and a tug-boat connected together. The tug part swivels around in mid-voyage, so that it can always be pushing. Cool.

Unfortunately, crossing this way meant that we never saw a "Welcome to Illinois" sign.

This part of Illinois is a lot flatter than Missouri. The 20 miles from the ferry to Quincy were almost entirely quiet country roads - very pleasant.

Quincy seems like a nice little city. We passed a lot of beautiful Victorian houses on the way through town. (Of course, we're staying on the outskirts, next to the strip-malls.)

With one thing and another, I logged a full century (100.25 mi) without even meaning to. This is my second unofficial century of the trip. And the next two days are going to be centuries as well.

Actually, in retrospect, my cyclometer is just off. When I got new tires in St. Joe, they didn't have 30mm, so I got 28mm. The smaller tire means the wheel is turning a couple more times to cover the same ground, so I'm off by something like 2.5%. It's annoying, but the only way to reset the wheel size is to reset the cyclometer, which means I'll lose the odometer reading, which is almost 2500 miles at this point.

Sorry about all the pictures - there was a lot to see today.

Day 34 - July 11 - Quincy, IL to Springfield, IL - 102 miles

Another day, another century. If you recall, Kansas had corn, wheat, and no hills. Illinois has corn, soybeans, and no hills. I wonder what Indiana's like.

Today's big excitement: Jon (one of the new riders we picked up in St. Joe) took a bad fall just before the first sag stop. He banged up both elbows, one knee, and his back. He also managed to bend his handlebars at a 45 degree angle. Judicious use of force got it more or less back into alignment, but it's still in sad shape. After getting bandaged up (with duct tape to hold the bandage in place), he decided to continue riding, to avoid stiffening up, and rode another 45 miles before finally calling it quits.

We didn't stop for lunch, so the second half of the trip is a big blur.

For once, our hotel is near the center of town - about half a mile from the state capitol building. Of course, Andy and I never got further from the hotel than the bar next door. Y'see, Phil's Bar & Grill has Bass on tap. Andy usually drinks whatever, but Bass is brewed 7 miles from his parents' house. We went over for lunch, stayed a bit, came back for dinner, stayed a bit longer. Joe entertained us with his mad karaoke skillz. I met Jennifer, the bartender/night manager and a total babe. Sadly, being Friday night in a popular bar, there wasn't a lot of opportunity to talk, but we did what we could.

Day 35 - July 12 - Springfield, IL to Champaign, IL - 103 miles

Biking 100 miles with a hangover is brutal. Good thing I didn't have one; Andy did.

Everyone was pretty low energy today, even the ones who hadn't been drinking. Three centuries in a row, through 300 miles of corn fields, is pretty uninspiring. The weather was beautiful, and the terrain was easy, so it should have been a fabulous day of riding. But it was mostly a day to turn off the brain, and just let the legs work.

This is the Land of Lincoln. The first sag stop was at the site of Lincoln's first home in Illinois, after migrating from Indiana.

I couldn't make it through the day without lunch, especially at the pace we were setting. The problem was that we were going through a lot of corn fields, but not a lot of towns. Finally, when I was desparate enough to eat at a gas station, my prayers were answered. The gas station had a diner. It's getting common for gas station convenience stores to have a Subway or pizza kitchen, but this one had an honest to goodness diner called Pat's Pantry, staffed by two old ladies. I had a fried egg sandwich and a cup of vegetable beef soup, which is just exactly what I'd been fantasizing about for the last 10 miles. It really made my day.

Incidentaly, the gas station seems to have become the new general store. The convenience stores have been there for years, and they're adding dining and other services. This one also had a bank branch office - not an ATM, but an actual bank. Or maybe gas stations are turning into truck stops.

Champaign is home to the University of Illinois main campus. Our hotel is on the edge of town, by the freeway, but not too far from campus. Even though I checked in at 4:00, I biked into town, and spent an hour just tooling around the campus. Of course, it's summer, so the only people around were grad students and frat boys. But it was pleasant nonetheless.

You see, I grew up in a college town, a short block from Smith College. Between that and the 6 years it took me to get out of UMass, I spent the first 24 years of my life in college towns, so I have a real affinity for them.

Also, after following the cue sheet day after day, it was nice to be able to wander around, taking random turns, getting lost and un-lost, without having to worry about getting to the destination, because there was no destination. I wasn't going anywhere; I was just riding my bike. And after 100 miles on a bike, sometimes it's nice to just go for a ride.