Last year, after a bit of a rough start physically, I was able to settle into a pretty simple routine. Big hotel breakfast followed by a long ride in the morning, a late lunch and a comparatively short afternoon ride. Lather, rinse, repeat. The scenery would change as I rode along, but I really didn't have many concerns. Certainly not with the bike. Aside from a single broken spoke, I went nearly two months and nearly 3000 miles with no issues, to the point where I rarely, if ever, thought about mechanical problems.
While this year's trip will be a small fraction of the distance I traveled last year, it has been beset by bike problems that have been described ad nauseum in the previous posts. Today, however, there was nothing. The bike worked as designed, the sky was blue and the sun was warm and bright, and what little wind there was seemed to be following us along and helping us down the road. There were even some changes of scenery today, as we only spent 10-15 miles next to our old friend, I-55. We were on rail trails, and quiet country roads with almost no traffic for much of the day. Before we get too carried away, this is still
Illinois, and we traveled nearly 70 miles with no hill larger than about 20 feet. We found a couple little restaurants along the way, replacing the standard burger for a triple decker, double bacon BLT at Jubelts in Litchfield for lunch. Then after a short 15-mile afternoon ride we found El Indio, a nice little Mexican restaurant for dinner in Staunton. All in all, this is what I had signed up for. I was glad to spend a pleasant day riding with Dan and am a bit disappointed that tomorrow will be the last day of this segment now that things seem to be in order.
Shout out to everyone in the 'Couv.
Not to be left out, a couple for my Oregonian friends as well
Route 66 before the interstates
Strava and Ride With GPS calculate some pretty different results for elevation gain and avg speed. This seems to be about 500' less and 0.5mph slower than Dan's results. Tomorrow I will turn them both on.
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