I woke up with a dry, scratchy throat this morning. Not a big deal, I don't feel weak or anything. At this point, I'm not sure if I caught a bit of a cold or is it allergies?? Good thing that we've made our final push to Davenport and have arrived for our much needed day off! Hoooray! Davenport is where we first encounter the Mississippi river. On Monday we will begin the journey north towards Wisconsin and eventually, we will meet back up with the Mississippi and follow along side for quite some time.
Anyhow, in Davenport, we found and excellent Vietnamese restaurant and ate a delicious vermicelli bowl along with a veggie fried rice and some refreshing Vietnamese drinks.
For the record, we completed Section #8 of the Northern Tier Route as well as crossed another state!
I'll be honest... Jake and I are just trying to get through the next 2 days to arrive in Davenport IA for our much needed day off. This was another hot, humid and high mileage ride. We've just not had many options for food, camping and hotels. And the mileage that we are putting in has been the motivating factor for choosing hotel over camping, because setting up and breaking down camp takes about 2.5 hours out of our day.
Below, Jake in the McDonald's drive-thru (bleaaahhhhh). Then a screen shot of my top-of-the-line Garmin cycling computer which has constantly hassled me with navigation. You can probably see why, when the turn directions say to go one way, but the course says to go another.... I bought my son a WAHOO computer, which was about 1/3 the price and it has been flawless the entire trip! I may do a review of the Garmin 1030 Plus at the end of this trip to air all of my grievances :)
Otherwise, we saw 74 miles of corn fields today. I think I need a nap - hahahhahahhahhah feeling salty.
We got a lot of miles going down! Well, at least for us - about 235 miles in the last 3 days! The weather has been very hot and humid, but we had a pretty good tail wind yesterday and a lighter one again today. At this pace, we should be out of Illinois in another 2 days and will begin heading north. Our problem at the moment is trying to find a place to stay between Streator and the end of section in Iowa.
Two highlights of the day:
1) Farm to Table restaurant in Ashkum - Beans & Barley Brews
(815) 322-7122
https://goo.gl/maps/t6B2jUdVzf2xV3K2A
What a pleasant surprise. They had an excellent breakfast menu with lots of fresh veggies and fruits available - exactly what we needed. They also had over 90 craft beers in stock, of which I chose to take two of them with me. Everyone there, including customers were very nice to us, wanting to hear about our adventures.
2) Town of Pontiac and local coffee joint. What a neat little town in Illinois. It's been a while since we've come across such a nice community. At the public square they piped music to enjoy, they had free public wifi everywhere in town (picture below), and they had a super nice coffee shop we much needed! At the coffee shop, we ordered 20oz fruit smoothies. The guy who made them basically made 'too much' and gave us equivalent of two free smoothies (both which we devoured). On the table, you will see some of the fluids needed for our 85 mile journey. Imagine doubling the water bottles in addition to everything on the table and that is how much fluid we consumed (well, plus breakfast water and coffee).
Jake and I got to thinking about the most important changes that we've made in order to make this a successful journey. I think we came up with the following:
1) Change from flats to clips and cycling shoes
2) Car rental to during injury recovery
3) Lidocaine
4)Butt Butter
5) Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires
6) Compromise and willingness to make adjustments to our plans
7) Support network (eg people like Ju, Emily, Tom, Steve, Jill (brought Steve to us!), Bonnie, Alex, and even my yoga teacher Jamie Lange who helped get me through IT Band injury).
After only 3 days of riding in Indiana, we knocked out another state today - later, Indiana!
I'm trying to think of the unique things that happened, and the only thing I can really comment on is that we actually had a tail wind! Much of the time we were just gliding at about 17mph and finished the day riding 70 miles averaging 13.8mph. We've decided that if we have similar conditions tomorrow, we will stretch out possibly a 90 mile day (we will see....)
Also, I just realized today that the videos don't seem to show up in the blog on iPhone unless you choose 'view web version' rather than 'mobile version' when viewing the blog.... kinda wish I would have chosen wordpress.com when I started this!
The start of the ride began with a very short tour of the town of Brunswick. It is the home to Bowdoin College, which is a very good liberal arts school. Our teammate, Bonnie Powell spent a few weeks staying at one of the houses at Bowdoin while she was training to become an Apogee tour guide (bike touring). So we stopped at the Quad and at the house she stayed at and snapped a few pics. I'll add pictures tomorrow, maybe??
This is where we had our lunch (below pic). The golf course is literally in the middle of nowhere... in a sparsely populated area of Maine. We were getting hungry at the time and low on water, so looking for a stop. After peaking yet another hill, we cam across this beautiful golf course called Fox Ridge. I never in a million years would have guessed a golf course would show up in this area. The video above is maybe 1/4 mile away from the golf course.
The manager was very proud of the #5 best golf course in Maine rating and showed me all the evidence he had in various newspaper articles. We ordered a hearty lunch, which included a cheeseburger, philly cheesesteak sandwich and a ceasar salad with chicken. The girl cooking our lunch splashed grease into her eye trying to flip the cheeseburger. And then proceeded to forget the philly steak sandwich (understandably). I felt super bad having to ask her to please cook the missed sandwich.
