Colleen's Journal: Week Five

An extremely pleasant day.

In case I hadn't mentioned it, I really like Ohio.  It's a state full of good people, interesting things to look at, surprising amounts of history (did you know that Rockefeller founded Standard Oil off of the derricks he sunk in Ohio? I didn't), and roads that, while they could be better, are reasonably good and lightly travelled.  I would live in Ohio, if I weren't already so busy living in Boston.  (Aren't you all glad I live in Boston?  Okay, aren't most of you glad I live in Boston?)

We took U.S. 40 out of Columbus (well, we were dropped onto it by Mark, who was, as always, incredibly accommodating and sweet - big shout outs to Mark and Michelle for being such excellent hosts for two days) and at first weren't thrilled with it.  Partly, I wasn't thrilled with me.  My body was strangely sluggish and whiny - like I just wasn't getting the adrenaline surge I expected.  My foot, my shoulder, my knee were all hurting and I didn't have the energy that I would have anticipated after two days of rest.  Molly explained that it was actually thought better not to rest two days in a row - contrary to obvious expectations.  She said that her husband David, who hiked the Appalachian Trail, said that after a day he felt rested, after two days he felt out of shape.  Strange, but that's what it was like.  We had a pleasant cross-breeze, the road was the flattest we had encountered in four weeks of biking, and there was the most amazingly sparse traffic we'd seen since, like, upstate New York, where nobody lives and nobody wants to drive for fear of breaking down and disappearing forever.  And yet, I just wasn't pushing with the power that I'd come to expect from my body.

Now, that in itself is pretty cool, that I could feel a difference in my body - that I'd been all zippin' along and now felt that I wasn't.  And after about twenty-five or thirty miles, I recovered my zip and was even prouder, that I still had it in me.

Meanwhile, Route 40 was a strange road.  It was a divided highway in immaculate condition, two lanes each way plus a small shoulder.  (We were told a large shoulder by Gavin and Travis, which just goes to show, you can't even trust other bikers!)  But there were no cars.  I mean, there would be stretches of five or ten minutes when nothing would pass us.  Why?  Because I-70 had been built alongside it, a few hundred yards away.  So there was a scant amount of local traffic, the occasional motorcyclist or pickup, but for the most part, we could ride side-by-side and not worry that anyone else would want the lane.  And it was strange to see the way that that large amount of non-traffic was reflected in what lined the road.  Lots more nothing.  A few houses here and there, with huge lawns.  Mostly corn and soybeans (which makes me wonder, are they complementary crops? are they planted in rotation because one helps replenish the soil of what the other takes out?), sometimes even less than that.  It made me feel strange and lonely and isolated, even though I myself didn't live there and would never voluntarily live so far from "civilization."

After Springfield, OH, the road changed in character and became a two-laner, with plenty of churches, business, schools, and little towns to occupy our attention.  Flat, pleasant, and calm.  It was the most peaceful day of biking we've yet had.  And one thing I liked best about it was that I could look at my odometer and think, "hey, fifty miles, only fifteen to go," like eah number was no big deal.  We could just kinda mosey to our destination, in a way that would simply have been impossible for me to conceive a couple of weeks ago.  I keep being reminded and pleased afresh that I'm gaining strength.  It's a nice counterbalance to the fact that my body keeps coming up with new and interesting ways in which to sabotague my ability to bike well - the worst of these being that my deltoid will hurt so badly that it feels like I have a burning ball sitting on my shoulder, necessitating that I ride with my arm behind my back, which of course makes for some jokes on its own.  But yeah, I may be hurting but I can darn well bike sixty-odd miles without thinking twice about it.

Woohoo!  Another state crossed.  Though I take no pleasure in leaving Ohio, other than that we're leaving yet another state, and this one will be slim and quickly crossed.  Midwesterners do seem quite friendly, frequently giving us encouraging toots of the horn and waving, expressing plenty of interest in our journey.  And of course, I highly approve that they've chosen to make their land flat in anticipation of our journey.  Okay, not flat - there are always hills somewhere during the day - but easily traversed.  You know when the roads are totally straight that the hills can't be anything particularly impressive.

Early on, we encountered a bit of an obstacle course.  Granted, we could have avoided it, but because we've had success in the past with clambering our way through closed roads, I decided to try it again.  Our other option would have been going what we guessed was a good many miles out of the way; it was a risk, of course, because we might not have been able to make it through and would then have had to backtrack.  Chalk it up to impatience or overweening self-confidence, but I had no desire to play it safe.  This particular time, we had more of a challenge than normal: the road was not only impassable, it was nonexistent.  Just a big ditch, sloping down into mud towards the edges.  Molly came up with the bright idea of unhitching the horses from the wagons and taking them through separately (I would have just trudged through the mud), which made for some rather butch moments of hoisting our bikes and then trailers through the muck.  Go us.  We came upon a second "road closed" sign just a few miles later, and this time didn't really give it a second thought.  I'd rather have the chance for a bunch of saved miles and butch points, nowadays.

We'd gone about twenty miles today when we decided to stop for lunch.  This was an interesting concept in itself, because we hadn't really had much in the way of breakfast, so our first real food of the day was at noon, after twenty miles of biking.  Odd.  Something I don't talk much about in here is food, because, well, it's pretty boring to relate how often we stop and eat and how hard I try to avoid foods that'll set off my breathing, which are the predominant characteristics of gustatory experiences on the road.  It is significant, though, that we eat a heck of a lot, and that I'm losing weight.  I've never before in my life had to worry about getting enough calories during the day.  Amusing, sure, but hard to adjust to.  Some part of me still reflexively chooses low-fat yogurt and checks the calorie content on the back of a Little Debbies snack cake, before reminding myself that no, I need those calories.  The little devil and angel on the shoulders have switched places.

Anyway, we lunched in Lewisburg, just stopping by a grocery store for sandwiches and odds and ends, and at the checkout we noticed a flyer for the Lewisburg Historical Society weekend of assorted entertainments, including stuff like a demonstration of farm machinery from the turn of the century.  That sounded pretty keen to me, and we asked the checkout girls for directions.  The checkout girls had their own agenda, actually, which was noteworthy in itself. We were instant celebrities in their eyes, these two girls who had biked from Maine in the past month, and one of our new fans literally followed us outside to ask for pictures and, I kid you not, autographs, in case we got famous from this endeavor.  I'm fairly certain it's the first time anyone's ever wanted my autograph, and it's such a stark contrast to how I think of this trip.  To me, I'm fighting a whole bunch of mundane problems, with relative success nowadays, and just plugging away at this little goal of biking across America.  It's pretty basic, it's not particularly glorious.  I'm not breaking any world records in doing this, I'm not doing something earth-shattering or impressive in the annals of Fabulous Biking Deeds.  If we do write a book about this, the working title currently in my head is "Get Up and Get On the Bike."  But I hope the girl got something out of the exchange, hope it inspires her to do something she really digs, too.

So then we went and checked out the Historical Society's shindig, and that was quite cool.  We don't often get to stop and examine the local sights closely, because we really have just about enough time to get up and pack up, bike 50 or 70 miles, taking all the rests we need along the way, and stop before dark.  But I was really glad for the exception today.  We got to see all these old farm machines, plows and all sorts of other things obviously pulled by horses or oxen or mules and having to do with the planting and harvesting of crops.  Then they started a demonstration of a hay thresher, which was hooked up to a giant belt connected to the engine of a tractor and which had a tremendous number of belts and cogs and things moving quickly.  Hay was pitched in one end, chewed up and shaken around and generally digested in its innards, and spewed out the other end as straw, which was compressed into bales; meanwhile, the grain was spewed into another container.  It all seemed very complicated, to end up with a pile of grain and a pile of straw, but it was clearly very advanced for its time.  Then we saw lots of other machinery, which was explained to us (I wish we could have had explanations for the plowing-kinda stuff) - a machine for making rope, one for shucking corn, one for divesting the corn kernels of dirt, one for chewing up the husks into manageable parts for fodder.  Remember that these were all from the turn of the century or so - the last turn of the century - so they tended to be made of thick bits of wood and metal, worn smooth by time.  We tasted the grain, wandered the museum of other old things (newspapers, a "railroad spike puller," a rare poster for a Rudolph Valentino movie), and were awarded cold water for having come the farthest to enjoy the whole spectacle.  I'm really glad we stopped to take it in.  Again, of course, it brought up all sorts of questions for me about how things used to be done, about how life is changing.  We complain a lot about the pace of life, the demands on one's time and the stress of living in today's world, but I think we have only a rather vague sense of what we're comparing ourselves to.  This brought it in a lot closer, to see the machines that made up people's worlds and to be reminded of just  how complicated it could be, the process of trying to plant, say, forty acres of corn, sow the fields, tend the crops, harvest and store the ears, shuck them, dry them, clean them, and separate the kernels from the cob - and then either grind the corn for mealor start the whole thing over as seeds.  Man.  Think about that the next time you eat cornbread.  See where it gets ya.

Other than that, just more biking on 40, which continues to be a pleasant road.  It's easy to see why Lewisburg has such a collection of old farm implements - 40 is a historical road in itself.  It was the road built to cross America in the 1830's and 40's.  Obviously, America didn't extend to the Pacific then, the frontier was always being pushed back, but still, it's really cool to know that we're on a road that's been used to head west for the last 160 years.  It takes us through small towns and through endless fields of corn and soybeans; twice it's topped a ridge that had us biking along at the level of the treetops, which is really really excellent.  I'd be willing to bike up hills all the time for such a reward.  There are frequently historical markers along it, and lots of motorcyclists, who clearly also appreciate the light traffic.  And it's beginning to take us through area that reminds me of the fabled Big Sky phenomenon.  Looking forward to that.

On a more personal level, still more indications that I'm gaining in strength.  My thighs, obviously, are undergoing physiological changes (aside from dropping a bit of fat); I can pedal up hills in higher gear than I could a few days ago.  I get tired after about 10 or 12 miles of biking, my knees need stretching and my neck is sore, but I can keep getting back on the bike.  Seventy miles doesn't seem particularly daunting anymore.  It's just what we're going to bike.  In fact, I'm finding that I seem to do better during the second half of the day than the first.  I get my wind along about thirty or forty miles.  What gives?  Fifty miles generally sees me speeding along, not a care in the world.  That's pretty exciting.  Molly points out that my gift seems to be endurance, and while I know it's not the same endurance shown by someone who bikes across America in a week (no, really. it happens. not kidding.), I feel pretty jazzed about that, that the little engine that could is apparently the little engine that keeps on being able to for decent stretches of time.

We did seventy-odd miles today, and I'm tired and hurting and ready for bed, but I feel satisfied.  For the next four days, we only have to average a little more than sixty miles a day.

I really like it that the word "only" occurs in that above sentence.

Ewwwwwwwwwwww.

We started off the day in good spirits, though looking forward to a motel at night.  (Let ya in on a secret: we often look forward to a motel at night.  There are just so many things you can do at a motel rather than at a campground or a patch on someone's lawn, such as washing clothes, staying up late and still knowing that the sleep will be good, and of course, plugging in the computer.)  We had it on the best of authority - i.e., local cyclists - that Knightstown was just around the bend and that we could get breakfast there.  Normally when I wake up, I'm not particularly hungry, and we just nosh on some oatmeal or graham crackers or somesuch and then get our first real meal 10 miles down the road or so.  But today, we woke up really really hungry and headed into town.

Back in Winesburg, OH - remember? - we'd had an audience of Whole Bunches of People quizzing us about our trip.  A couple of them told us they lived in Knightstown and that we could get breakfast there, and it amused me that we were, for the first time that I could remember, following through on a recommendation.  So we stopped for brekky, musing to ourselves that wouldn't it be funny if they came in?, and lo and behold...  Well, use your imagination.  In fact, they only came in long enough to grab the bill and insist on paying for it, and to plant the little seed of "see those girls, they're biking across America!" there.

The seed quickly sprouted into the local press, The Banner, embodied in one Eric Cox, a very enthusiastic publisher/editor/owner and of course /reporter-in-chief, who came and interviewed us as we sopped up the last of breakfast.  He seemed surprised but pleased that this hadn't happened to us before - a little self-deprecating "I got the scoop!"  On the other hand, it was all the more a hoot to us that this was happening the day after we'd gotten the attention in Lewisburg.  No, really, we're just a couple of girls biking across America!  We're not trying to be "famous"!  But it was fun, and we answered lots of questions and told some little stories and Eric wrote it all down.  I'm interested to see what he has to say about us, the two girls who just happen to be passing through town and eating at the local cafe.  Nice guy.  Recognized the "Winesburg, Ohio" reference, too, and even came close on the name of the author. :)  The English major in me squiggles with pleasure.

Anyway, that served as fodder to amuse us for quite some time.  We were in high spirits as we sailed out of Knightstown, getting a rather late start but not caring.  We biked over twenty miles then, which is the longest we've gone yet without a break (my butt, my knees, my shoulder, or my general wussiness normally demand one every 7 to 12 miles), charged with pleasure, playing little games back and forth.  Here's the sort of intellectual pursuit that grabs our attention for hours at a time: name people who are primarily known by three names (like Lee Harvey Oswald, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sandra Day O'Connor), by initials (R.L. Stine, C. S. Lewis, H.D.), with a middle initial (Michael J. Fox, Cecil B. DeMille), etc.  You'd be amazed how long this sort of thing can occupy us.  Especially since Indiana doesn't have 3 letters on their license plates, the bums.  We zipped along, making excellent time, very pleased with our new-found fame.

Indianapolis was probably the largest city we've yet passed through, and even it served to reinforce our impressions of how excellent the midwest is.  Downtown was great.  Clean, pretty, friendly, and when I decided that we weren't getting enough attention and stepped off a curb wrong so as to fall down in front of everyone, further announcing my plight with loud moans, about nineteen firemen bustled over in about six seconds (okay, fine. five firemen.  but several of them were cute.) and immediately put ice packs on my ankle and fussed over me.  La de da.  I felt like a complete dork, of course, but I'd have been glad if that was the worst we suffered that day.

Somewhere past Indianapolis - where we lost Historic Route 40, sadly - Something Happened.  When we set out from Knightstown, we were chattering to ourselves that we'd have to try this "taking advantage of the locals' hospitality" more often, since we'd found out that we could have had showers for the asking and people were about to engage in fisticuffs for the privilege of paying for our meal.  "Hoosier hospitality" is apparently something they pride themselves in.  So we figured, maybe we could find someone to put us up, thereby maximizing the benefits of guerrilla camping (free) and motelling (showers and internet access).  In fact, we were pretty confident about this.  Hence, when we hit Historic (Whee.) Danville (ominous minor-key clarinet riff here), we were pretty dismayed.  For starters, the pavement had been chewed up and spit out somewhere in Uganda or something.  Eaten alive.  All gone.  It was easily the most unpleasant surface I've ever ridden on, and that, my friends, is saying a lot.  Yarg! said we, and sought out advice in a gas station.  Nothing to do but bear it for the length of the town - a few miles.  But the gas station lady also suggested we do a B&B in town, and we go ourselves all hyped about that, until we found out that one was full and the other was empty, including of owners.  By then we'd talked ourselves into staying, and we were pretty disappointed to have to go on another fifteen miles to the next motel.  So we went to talk to the owner of the B&B that was already booked up, asking if we could camp on his lawn and just use the shower.  He proved absolutely incapable of conceiving of such a thing, thinking outside his little Historic box, or showing the slightest ability to accommodate a couple of girls clearly in need of hospitality.  So we went on, thinking, fine, then, we'll just camp for free on someone's lawn.  Right?

I suspect you already know the answer to that.

From there it was an ever-worsening success of astounding inhospitability.  Soon after that, my shoulder started in on the big pain, i.e., burning ball of fire sitting on my deltoid, and we determined that we needed to stop.  So we asked at a house with a Mary-in-the-bathtub prominently displayed in the front yard.  The woman wouldn't even open the door, let alone invite us in or agree to let us camp on her lawn.  So much for "the least you do this for any of my brethren, you do it for me."  Another time, we were turned down with a "I don't think my husband would like that."  Cripes!  I was pretty disgusted by that one - not only do you not have the humanity to allow a couple of girls to pitch a tent on your lawn, you don't even have the decency and backbone to take the responsibility for yourself: you have to pass the buck to your husband!  A whole gas station of people proved themselves incapable of thinking outside the box; everyone, short of showing any sympathy or interest, was bent on pushing us further down the road.  Everyone kept telling us, "Go to Bainbridge, they've got a motel there."  And Molly was literally asking just for a patch of grass, nothing more, because I, her friend, had hurt my arm and couldn't bike that far.  Eventually we bit the bullet and biked all the way to Bainbridge, some 72 miles in all...

...To find that the motel was closed.

Choose a few colorful adjectives and put them here.  Multiply them.  Then plug your ears, 'cause mine were worse.

At that point, I had no patience left and went after the local law enforcement to take us on as their responsibility.  Finally, finally, one of them - a state trooper - started putting some initiaive and thought into the problem and called the town marshall, who also, coincidenally, owned half the town.  The marshall pointed us at a patch of grass he owned, once we'd explained the whole problem through again.  "And showers?" I asked hopefully, having biked some 145 miles since my last one.  "Um, that'll be harder to arrange," he said, and left us with the magnaminous suggestion that we could wash up in the bathroom of the Dari-ette that he owned.  Such generosity.

What do you think, kids?  What would you have done if a couple of hurting, tired girls had showed up in your town and asked for a place to pitch a tent?  How far would you go to show them a little human kindness?  We've had people take us in off the streets, straight up offer their homes, go out of their way to get us medical attention or just smooth the corners of our journey a bit.  And it's not that I've come to take this for granted, but I didn't think it freakish behavior either, something from the Journal of Irreproducible Results.  So what was up with this stretch of 20 miles?

The weirdest part about it was that this was nothing like Canton, OH, except in its unfriendliness.  It was clearly an area that had benefitted from, I dunno, good crop sales or something.  The houses were new and well-built; the lawns were huge expanses of grass, meticulously manicured; most of the cars were things like huge new pickups, often with an RV or trailer parked alongside.  These people, well-nigh uniformly, had money.  A lot.  It felt like, I swear, that section of A Wrinkle In Time where Meg is watching all the kids outside the houses bouncing balls at the same time, and then the mothers all come to the door and clap their hands, synchronized - it's all very creepy and there's this terrible underlying fear that pervades and dominates the planet.  And it's all ruled by a giant disembodied brain at the center, pulsating and dictating the lives of those in its demesne.

All weird literary allusion aside, I really do wonder, what were these people afraid of?  Why were they so ungiving, that they begrudged us a place to pitch a tent?  What makes a group of people horrible and closed, when thirty miles away their neighbors are delightful and giving?  Something in the soil? the water? do they choose to move into neighborhoods together - "Hey, honey, let's go to Screwemville, I've heard they're equally nasty there."  Any hypotheses?

We're finally in what I think could accurately be called the Great Plains.  Previous to today, it's still been plenty of small hills - nothing to make me quail, but still quite present.  Actually, I've thought about the fact that we haven't be doing much grunting uphill, and about the fact that we're going to have to again in a short while, because there's a certain famous mountain range spanning the trail we're taking.  Molly has suggested that we could keep our climbing-mountains muscles from atrophying by doing some squats at night, and this seems like a good idea.  If only we have the memory, energy, and time for it after we finish biking.

The Great Plains are pretty much what one would expect.  Long, long stretches where nothing much can be seen but corn, soybeans, sky, and 18-wheelers.  There's little for me to say about the corn and soybeans, except to note that whatever furor might be going on over genetic engineering in my liberal little corner of the world, obviously it ain't affecting anyone out here.  A large portion of the crops have signs telling exactly what hybrid is growing there, what experiment is waving innocuously out into the distance.  A lot of the corn is what I would think of as abnormally tall, but what from I know of corn, it doesn't seem to be producing more ears, so I wonder what the point is - ya'd think it would just be taking more nutrients from the soil to grow it.  I find the few signs indicating genetically engineered soybeans more disturbing.  There's just something in me that rebels at that, soy being (at home) a backbone of my protein and the sort of earthy-crunchy food one shouldn't tamper with.  For the record, we haven't been able to find anything resembling soy in even the largest grocery stores for a long time.  Even things like hummus, tabouli, pitas, even English muffins - gone with the wind.  I'd never thought of them as regional or big-city foods.  Guess again, cee.

We ended up doing longer than we'd hoped today - since yesterday we went fifteen miles beyond what we'd intended, that meant we got a short day today.  But it didn't really pan out, because the one thing on our agenda for tonight was getting a hotel, and the one we were likely to find was some sixty-five miles up the route.  I really can't believe that our ill-reception of last night was an indicator of things to come.  I can't let myself think that people are going to be so hateful from here on out.  So hopefully we won't have a hard time finding just someplace to rest at night, but I expect it'll be increasingly hard to find motels.  We've pretty much taken them for granted, heretofore, that if we wanted to spend the money on one, we could; but crossing Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, Utah...?  It's going to be a different experience than New York or Ohio.  Fortunately, we'll be back on the Adventure Cycling maps for that, not forging our own way.

Today was easy biking in terms of terrain, but worrisome in another way.  A couple, actually.  My left arm is just barely surviving, day to day.  I take ibuprofen several times a day, tie the shoulder tightly with a bandana, massage it with red flower oil at night, and take Valerian before bed (a muscle relaxant).  And hold it behind my back at various points, which of course is a strain on my right shoulder when I do it.  I really really wish I could ride this bike sitting upright, but it just doesn't seem doable - I'm not sure why, because it's so "nimble," because the roads are difficult, with tons of potholes and such, the effect of the trailer...  I used to do it blithely when I was a kid, taking corners no-handed on my ten-speed, but I've somehow lost the gift.  Anyway, I'm keeping my thighs in decent shape by massaging them a lot of the time when we've stopped and for up to an hour at night (I have to rely solely on massage now, because I can't use the Neoprene braces: they started giving me an excrutiatingly tender rash, feeling like burning underneath them), but the shoulder may be beyond my pale.  It does worry me.

The other concern is Molly's health.  She really, really can't handle heat.  It doesn't particularly bother me, especially when we're moving, getting a breeze going; I rarely even feel sweaty, until we stop.  But it's really hitting her hard, sapping her energy and making her feel nauseated.  Very hard to bike with.  And today was only about 85 degrees.  It was disgustingly muggy all day - the air was so hazy that trees at the end of the fields would be murky blue to us.  It actually gave me problems breathing, too; at least, I hope that's what it can be attributed to.  But it was really taking a toll on her.  What's going to happen when it hits 95 or 100?  What about when we have to sleep in 85 degree weather and can't function because we're suffocating in our tent at night?  Will she be able to bike at all?  This is a problem on the level of my breathing, I think.

Oh, and the 18 wheelers.  Y'know, everyone hates driving with them.  But I've gotta admit, they seem to be the most courteous drivers around.  They always give us a wide berth when they can, they often give little toots after they've passed - sometimes several in a row, which makes me wonder if they're talking to each other about us.  Kinda neat.  And if it weren't for them, I suspect that we wouldn't have so many options for food in the coming weeks, when we'll be in sparsely populated country with truck stops to rely on.  And it's a fascinating culture unto itself.  I don't relate to the Leviathans the way I do to, say, motorcyclists (who clearly see us as somewhat closer to them than cars do - they're the most consistent in giving us encouraging signals), but I feel that perhaps there may be a strange empathy there anyway.

On the whole, I enjoyed Indiana (the Pocket of Inexplicable Evil notwithstanding), but I gave it a very cheerful goodbye three miles into our day.  It's always encouraging to cross into a new state.  After Illinois, this will happen far less frequently, but for now, it's fun, crossing a state in a few days.

Today was simply one of the most lovely we've had.  Period.  We crossed the border and were in Danville, IL, immediately, wherein we had several exchanges that confirmed that yes, Illinois too is high up there on the friendly register.  And then this guy gave us money.  I find this more amusing and less touching than when one of the grounds-workers at that earthy-crunchy camp in Ohio did so, but still, it had its charm.  He'd been peppering his speech with "honey" to both of us, and we were actually giggling and comparing notes about him as we prepared to leave, when he approached us again.  Chatted for a minute, then asked us if we'd do him a favor.  "Sure," Molly said; then, more warily, "um, depends."  "Be safe, be careful - and have a nice dinner this evening and think of this guy from Danville, Illinois."  And he handed me a twenty.  It was surprising, strange but nice.  If there are any five-year-olds reading this site, well, skip the above paragraph, you're not supposed to take money from strangers.  But we did, because hey, why not?  What's he going to do, track us through the $20?  I don't  understand what impels a stranger to give money to a couple of girls biking cross-country, but I assume he gets some pleasure out of it.  Perhaps he gets more bang for his buck of vicarious experience if he actually contributes the buck.

You'd be amazed how many people tell us that they're experiencing this thing vicariously along with us.  Okay, maybe you wouldn't be, because you're possibly one of the people who's told me so, but I'm amazed.  I don't know, vicariously-having-trouble-breathing-while-grunting-indelicately-up-a-hill just doesn't strike me as my idea of a great time.

I've also gotten email recently that indicated that people think I'm having a rotten time.  Like, still.

I had a rotten time for a while.  It makes for a boring entry for me to write and you to read, to say "Boy, I'm having a rotten time," so I didn't try to belabor the point.  But that was a while ago.  Now, I'm not.  Just in case I don't say it often enough, I really am enjoying making this trip.  A lot more than I can communicate in whatever-blather-comes-to-mind at night.  I mean, I could try to enumerate what I'm gaining and learning, but that would be so... flat.  Meaningless.  Sure, I'm building up thigh muscles.  Sure, I'm overcoming challenges.  Sure, I'm learning about myself, my abilities, my body.  My country.  The landscape, the shape, the people in it.  The way we relate.  I'm learning about the things I notice.  But y'know, whoop-de-do.  That's just data.  It's not meaning.  Much larger than any of that is the fact that I'm really glad I'm making this trip.  It's a great way to spend my summer, something that I'm proud and excited to be doing now and, I expect, will be proud and excited about having done when it's over.  Whether I bike every single mile of it, whether I prove anything to anyone but myself, whether I fire the imaginations of stymied young women everywhere or just jaunt my way across America, this is a good trip.

In Danville, we went next to a bike shop, to get a minor adjustment done to my seat.  One of the service guys, when he heard what we were doing, said, "You don't have any idea how lucky you are."  And the dead-seriousness on his face spoke so loudly that I thought at first he meant we'd just narrowly missed some disaster in our wake and he was about to tell us of it  But then I realized, no, he just means, you're getting to live out your dream, you get to take three months off just to do what you want to, and very, very few people can say that. My response is, essentially, yes we do know.  I know in my everyday life how easy I've got it, how great my life is, how rare it is that I'm doing exactly what I want and benefitting lots of people's lives at the same time.  Kinda hard to miss that.  But yes, I consider it a blessing that I'm doing this.  And maybe that's the point of going through all the "can I do it? will I be able to continue beyond today?" fear and difficulty.  It's made the trip so much more precious to me.  I figured it would be hard, but I took it for granted, once we set out, that we'd spend our summer biking across America.  And I really treasure it, that that's what we're doing.

So enough.  In Danville, we lingered until about 1:00, having done less than ten miles.  That's a new "low" for us, amusing because yesterday, with 23 miles by 10:00, was a new "high."  Then we lit out, on all these flat, flat roads, across Illinois.  Flat.  Very flat.  Weirdly so.  I thought a lot more of America was flat before leaving for this trip, but at this point, it looks unnatural to me, I'm so used to the notion that there are hills everywhere.  Bike across America sometime, you'll probably notice them.  It was really strange, though, to see the horizon every direction I looked.  To see soybeans extending out, looking like the sea.  Ride down a road paralleled by corn into the distance, feeling like I'm taking part in some obscure Bibical drama replete with the parting of a green sea.  It's beautiful in its own way, though I still find mountains more satisfying.  Except when biking them.

We kicked butt all afternoon.  Again set a new record for miles biked without a rest, this time about 26.  Kinda forgot to stop.  Until our butts told us to.  Have I never mentioned, I wonder, whether our butts and other tender bits might get really really really sore, being squished for 70 miles during the day?  They might.  Just possibly.  Anyway, our butts dictated a rest, which we didn't even take until we'd gone several  miles more, putting us in Champaign-Urbana.  (Ur-BAAN-uh, not Ur-BAHN-uh, Molly corrects me about nine times a minute.)  Molly accosted a poor innocent college-looking type, and he directed us towards one of the best meals we've had on this trip.  You have no clue how good salads can be when you just can't get them most of the time.  And at the end of food-and-lingering, we were still ahead of schedule and I suggested that we try for Internet access while still in town, since we'd then head out and be in Nowheresville for the rest of the day, including when we camped.  We hadn't been able to post entries for about five days at that point, so that seemed a wise choice, and splendidly enough, our happy cafe-place could direct us right around the corner to a free independent media reading room sorta place, a little nook where I could read horribly liberal propaganda while Molly did unto the webpage and interesting people wandered in and out.  La!

Finally, we made to go, expecting to do another twenty miles or so, and hadn't gotten far when we remembered that we'd hoped to set up lodging for the next night up the road, since there were people on the Touring Cyclists Hospitality Directory there.  We pulled over to check that, and a woman pulled up next to us.  "Excuse me, are you cross-country cyclists?" she asked.  First time we've been asked that straight out, though perhaps the laundry flapping off the bungee cords on our trailers was a giveaway.  We confirmed and she asked if we'd like to stay with her that evening - showers, a meal, beds.  We thought it an incredibly sweet offer and were distressed that we couldn't take her up on it, but we needed to get in more biking before nightfall, as we needed to make a specific destinatin by the following evening.  "It's only fifty miles away," she said, and we said true, but we needed to take this other, longer route, to take us by a post office where we'd set up a mail drop, so we could get something very important and time-sensitive to Molly.  She thought about that for a moment, then said, "Okay, come home with me.  Tomorrow my husband will get up and drive you to the post office, then drive you back, and you can bike to your destination."

If I'd had any lingering miniscule doubts about whether our horrible experience that one night in Indiana was an anomaly for the midwest, that drove them craven and cowering from my mind.  I had already been totally charmed by the town, didn't need any more to clinch it, but she just had to go and do that.  She directed us to her house and we've spent a lovely evening here with the Brocks, enjoying the luxuries of washing machines and long showers, having fresh sweet corn and Italian ice, talking about bodywork and music and cross-country biking and such. It's the first time since the Romps that someone has gone out of their way to take us in, and it's just about as serendipitous a meeting as you could ask.  The Brocks are themselves on the Touring Cyclists Hospitality Directory.  (There are about a dozen in the entire state, one in this town, out of 100,000 people.)  They've saved us mileage and time both days, plus giving us a lovely evening and bolstering my faith in people and in this trip.  Amazing how that works...

Apparently, Illinois is filled with modern-couplized towns, hyphenating their names and passing on the curse to their children.  "I live in the township of Le Roy, Illinois, a suburb of Bloomington-Normal."  Or whatever.  Anyway, whatever else may be true of Illinois, it's filled with nice people.  Tonight we're staying again with people from the Touring Cyclists Hospitality Directory, and we've finally figured the darn thing out.

In 1976, there was a bike ride across America, the BikeCentennial (get it? America's 200th anniversary?).  Of that came both the Adventure Cycling routes (which were originally called BikeCentennial) and the fact that some really forethoughtful and ambitious people culled names of the participants and set up this Directory for future use by touring cyclists.  Especially John Mosley, I think his name is.  Now, since then, the list seems to have fallen into some disuse, or at least disrepair; some of the entries are clearly outdated, and the three couples we've stayed with thus far have all been surprised to find us utilizing it, saying that they rarely get cross-country cyclists in this way anymore.  That's kind of saddening to us, partly because were excited about getting other cyclists at our own home and partly because it brings up the question of "why isn't this list being used anymore, it's such a cool idea!"  Perhaps because Adventure Cycling now publishes very specific maps and cross-country cyclists are more likely to use it?  Or possibly for the very mundane reason that it was something known mostly to the people who'd done the first BikeCentennial trek, who are  now obviously getting on in years and settling down with kids and such (the Romps being an anomaly in that they have kids but have failed to settle down) and who don't tend to ride around America anymore.  At any rate, we startle those with whom we stay, but they certainly adjust fast and welcome us in with open arms, and, even better, showers.  And it's almost embarrassingly obvious to say that that's among the best parts of making this trip - staying with other people who know what we're about, understand our needs, and generally know more than we do about cycling and even our own bikes.  George Brock, our host of last night, made some suggestions to me about adjustments on my bike to alleviate the ongoing pain I have in my knees and shoulder.  What?  Biking can be relatively easy and pain-free?  No!  You jest!

Anyway, we left this morning refreshed and delighted, as usual, by the hospitality and generosity of the midwesterner.  Started out our trek with a test of our intrepidness, a rather amusing one: we came quickly to a "detour, road out, local traffic only" sign, but bolstered by our previous successes at overcoming such obstacles, we didn't even stop to think about whether it could apply to us.  Just sauntered on, if one can do so on a bike.  "Bridges?  We don't need no steenking bridges!"  Um.... yes we do.  If all that's there of the bridge is some girders and guys in hard-hats, who, cartoon sequences aside, probably wouldn't take it kindly if we utilized said hard-hats as a bike path.  So we tromped and shoved our bikes all around the construction site, which lasted almost a mile, emerging to find that the road we'd been so butchily and diligently following didn't even go where we thought it did.  Hah.  Last laugh on intrepid dorky heroines.

The day was pretty uneventful after that.  Lots of biking through gigantic swathes of soy and corn.  (Yes, we found out, they are complementary crops.  For those of you following Really Assiduously Along and actually reading my musings from day to day.)  Also grain elevators, which are bigger and different from silos.  I bet you don't know the difference.  I bet you think silos are for storing grain.  I bet you don't know they're for fermenting straw.  Um, okay, so now you do.  I bet you also didn't know that tall corn crops are, like, the best place in the world for a side-of-the-road pee break.  And if that sort of observation is distasteful to you, go have your memory wiped so you won't know it, again.  Really, though, they're great.  You can disappear in about six seconds, meanwhile amusing yourself with thoughts of "Field of Dreams."

Shortish day, bike-wise - and would have been shorter, if there hadn't been a dysjunction in the direction-giving-and-direction-receiving for how to get to our hosts' house tonight.  We somehow ended up on the other side of town.  Pretty impressive "lost" factor there, especially on bikes.  Still, even with that extra five or six miles, we still only did sixty-one or so.  And yet, I feel pretty wiped.  A few things are slightly worrying me, at this point: my knee pain is pretty consistent, and obviously I can't use the Neoprene bandages anymore.  This may be alleviated by other bandages or by adjusting my seat, but for now, it's worrisome.  As much as I value massage, doing it to my own legs every time we stop seems a bit excessive and an unappealing way to cross America.  My butt is getting really sore.  Raw, even.  We've only been going hard six days in a row, and it's just getting worse at this point.  I wonder if there's some kind of ointment...?  George showed me a new stretch for my shoulder, so there's some hope there that I can keep the pain  under control; and, well, the breathing is what the breathing is.  I mean, there's really no way of approaching an inability to breathe right in a non-Zen way, at this point.  Either it'll let me over the Rockies or it won't.  But we have a new and troubling problem, at this point: I've had "weak spells" the last couple of days.  They don't seem related to a lack of calories in my system.  I just feel, inexplicably and suddenly, weak.  Like my muscles are floppy noodles.  Not tired or hurting, but weak.  My energy is suddenly sapped.  I can bike forward well enough, but any even mildly substantial hill brings me down to the lowest gears.  Don't think I can cross the Rockies like that.

So we've come almost 400 miles in the last six days, from Columbus, OH to Bloomington-Normal, IL.  Molly, being the more safety-minded of us, points out that it's not brilliant to tell everyone where we intend to be in advance, so I've been a good little girl and not blathered it for the world.  But here we are, this has been our intended destination for a week, because Molly is flying out tomorrow morning to return to Maine for the weekend (personal business) and my parents will drive up from Alabama to join me here.  We'll pick up Molly on Sunday night and then all go biking together for a few days.  Whee!  Which means that your intrepid heroine here, reporting from the scene, will be off for the weekend, just living her life like a semblance of a reasonably normal human being.

In the meantime, a couple of thoughts.  We could make it to Burning Man at this pace, if we didn't need rest days.  But we need rest days.  If my parents were biking with us for a long stretch, we could maybe make up more of the distance quickly, since my mom will be carrying the trailers in her van.  But they'll only be with us for 2 1/2 days or so.  And unless something changes and we both have fabulous health and no tiredness and an immunity to butt-rashes from here on out, we're just not going to be able to keep up this pace for 40 straight days or so.  We'll see what happens, but I think I'll be taking a bus for part of it.

Some more thoughts.  There's very much a pattern to what we do, to getting going in the morning, to breaks, to stopping at night.  There's even a pattern surrounding us, that we seem to engage in frequently, and this is Answering the Locals' Questions.  I'm considering making myself a t-shirt, "Maine to San Fransisco, since you asked."  We get some of the same questions every single time - where are you coming from, where are you going, how long are you taking, where do you stay, are you biking back, how far today, aren't you scared, why are you doing this?  I'm more pleased when we get other questions, rarer things like how well do those trailers work, what kind of roads do you take, what's the hardest thing you've had to overcome?  But there's almost inevitably, along with these questions, something that we have to address as well, and that's the self-deprecating "I could never do that."

Well, why the hell NOT?

Everyone seems amazed at the concept.  Biking 60 miles every day for a month, or what have you.  I just wish I could communicate, it's really not that insane an idea.  Not that impossible a proposition.  I didn't start off this trip capable of biking 60 miles.  I built up towards it - and it was exciting, watching that building-up.  Almost as if I were a creature separate from my body as it tried out this new demand of mine, week by week.

I'd like to say this once and for all: I am not an athlete.  At the end of the summer, hopefully, I will have biked about 4000 miles (currently it's about 1450, for those of you keeping track), and I will eat my bike helmet if you catch me thinking of myself as an athlete then.  I am absolutely serious: biking across America does not one an athlete make.  What's the difference?  Well, my arbitrary and entirely personal definition would include the fact that an athlete enjoys exercise and is good at it.  I don't particularly, any more than the rest of you who fight to make yourselves go to the gym or don't even bother fighting.  I like doing some energetic things - dancing, whiffleball, biking - but not for the exercise itself.  I'm a slug.  I sit at my computer for three hours before I can make myself get up and do something monotonous and sweaty because it's good for me.  I almost never get endorphin highs.  I breathe really strangely, even when I'm not fighting reflux disease, and I sound like I'm having an asthma attack.  I'm not strong or fast or at all confident in my movements.  But I am biking across America because I decided to, because I wanted to see America, see the shape and scope and people and glory of it.  I wanted to know what this nation is made up of, do something very different, challenge myself and maybe even come to rely on the kindness of strangers, with all due respect to Tennessee Williams.  And in the process, in the meantime, I've become a better biker.  I'm proud of this, I'm glad that there's something to combat the knee pain and shortness of breath in the annals of Colleen's Attempt at Regular Physical Activity, I'm excited that I'm learning about my body and experiencing it differently.  But still, I am not an athlete.  And I am not doing anything particularly amazing, out of reach of the normal human being.  Believe me, I know - I've heard plenty on this trip about people who are.  For example, the guys who came to climb South America's three highest peaks, finished so far ahead of schedule that they had to do something else too, bought bikes, and headed north, making it at least as far as Illinois, where they stayed with our hosts of last night.  You wanna be impressed, go be impressed at them.  In the meantime, don't worship me for doing something you could never do.  Just go out and do it yourself.  It's much more fun and at the end, you'll have more to show for it.

And now, a few days of rest for your poor sore heroine and her whimpering butt.