Day 33 Belvedere to Coal City

Day 33 Belvedere to Coal City

Essense: Worst day Riding is better than the best day workin'.

1:00 a.m.

The flapping of my tent wakes me up as the breeze blowss acros my face. Taking a few seconds to remember I am under the shelter roof at the Outdoorworld. Right Got it. We were expecting rain.

My tent is on the outer perimeter of tents so that I have a “view” I have also oriented the door of my tent, so that I look out from under the shelter. This provides better cooling as the tent can act like a cave and catch the cool breeze as it comes under the shelter. However it also can catch the rain that comes with the aforementioned cool breeze.

I have been sleeping with the tent door unzipped to let the col breeze in. As I am awakened, I feel a few drops of rain in the breeze. It is going to rain. Having felt enough Thunderstorms, it is not a question of if, but when. I decided to zip up the door and roll over for another 20 minutes of sleep before I really do anything about the rain. Mostly because I am too tired to care... and I thikn I can get another 20 minutes of sleep.

Wrong answer. Exactly 2 1/2 minutes later the heavens have opened up and are trying to recreate a lake right in this campground.

There is a flurry of activity as I hear the high pitched ZEEEEPPPP of several tent zippers. Like Prairie dog protecting our colony, there are several of us standing up trhough our tent doors and surveying the threat. Fortunately since we are on the concrete floor, all we have to doo is move a few duffel bags and drag our tents inward 3 feet and we are safe. Scott helps me move mine and then I shift over and help the Dimmitt’s move their tent.

SinceI am up, a quick potty break seems like a good idea and then, it is back to bed. The whole disturbance has lasted less than 10 minutes and we are back in our tents. This time since there is not the threat of ground flooding, I lay there and listen to the rain. Falling on the metal shleter roof, it is amplified, much like the roof on my grandparents house. Soon the heavy falling rain creates a deafening roar monotone roar on the roof. In fact as I listen to it... it sounds like... yes, it does sound like Kelly, the Audio engineer form my compnay, runnig “White Noise” through the P.A. at about 90db to “ring out” the room. For those of you that didn’t follow the jargon, have you ever been in a room where and audio guy is sending what sounds like “static” through the speakers at really high volume? Well that is white noise and as annoying and deafenig as it is, it has a purpose. But not under our rain shelter. Under the shelter, the sound just refverbs off the concrete floor an dthe under side of the metal roof.

Amazingly, I fall back to sleep as the rain’s racket continues.

About 5:00 a.m. the rain stops like an alram clock and I feel awakened by the ... lack of noise. A few minutes snooze and the daily routine starts.

Prepped to rain, we ride out into the mists of the day and start a rainy 100 mile day.

Getting out of the camp I see this lake with a huge heron in it. This sis the best picture I managed to take and still keep my camera dry.



The rain is heavy the skies are dark with heavy clouds and it never seems to get brighter than a dim pre-dawn glow. We ride on. A Parade of drowned rats who really need to synchronize their blinknig red tail lights. The mood is good. Sort like when you are painting and are nervous to get paint on your clothes, so every movement is careful and planned. and thre is that moment when you do get pain on your clothes and you realize your prevention is fruitless, so you jsut give up and paint happy and don’t care about the mess.

Riding in the rain is the same way. You worry about staying dry... but you can’t. And as you feel the water runnig down your legs and filling your shoes and soaking your socks, you just sort of accept the wet and try to be as comfortable as you can. So as I say the mood is then good in the group.

Our maps are disentegrating and drowning left and right, and more riders are sticking together for the comradery and the co-operative navigating. Our group is the Scott train and “The Kids” and we are about 11 strong.



We hope we are big enough that we are seen before we are run over. At least we can consider those in the backed who might get run-over to be valiant sacrifices of safety. :)

At the water stop, Alison appears to cast spells on us...



And Liz and Dave are Disappointed in Ben, when he doesn’t know the answer to some really obsure trivia question.



Rolling along we battle the forces of rain and wind as we once again are riding West? Finally a tailwind and we are still heading the wrong direction!

At last we come to the sign that states it all so simply.

I

Pictured are
(Front Row: Alex, Jodi, Alison, Dave Lambert and Kari
Back Row: Sean, Scott, Tom - under sign, Ben, Michael Yee, Liz Vern and Ane)
I am taking the pictures with about 8 different digital cameras.)

Trying to keep the cameras dry we pack them in to the middle of our packs and head back out.

Coming up on a turn the directions are matching up, but I see Jerry in the support truck coming up, so I wait for him to see what he does. Jerry goes throughthe intersection and honks and waves happily as he goes by, so I follow. 2 miles down the road, we realize we are off the route and have missed a turn. I call Jerry to see if he is off route and yes he is very lost. We advise him to turn around and scoop up the other cyclists who have already passed us, and we retrace our steps to the intersection and get back on track. Right back on to one of our favorite “Ka Chunky” roads.

This road is particularly bad and every 1/4 mile or so it has a full trench cut across that hs just been filled in with dirt and makes for really nasty riding.

At the water stop down the road, we are stopped and mildly griping about the road and such things that cyclists do, when dear sweet Lisa comes by and expresses her opinion in one vehement sentence. “Get me off this&*@#%(#@ road!”

Lisa never stopped at the water stop, her goals were set on escape, I think.

The rains stop. The road finally dries out. We take off our rain gear and cover the miles. Honestly it was numbingly nonmemorable. Navigating around corn fields in flay Illinois.

I will say that the terrain here is flat. As a cyclist you still feel every last hill and bump, but by and large it is just flat and rural corn fields. The house on the farms are growing in stature, size and investment. McMansions as we call them. Many newer larger homes that have much of the same wasted space architecture as many of today’s modern homes, and aren’t the efficient use of spce and resources like the older farm houses.

Some houses have been obviously added on to 2, 3 and 4 times.

Mother-in-law units are now full size houses set jsut apart from the main house. Life must be good in these parts.

At the Check point, Pollie tells us that we are ordering pizza tonight and polls us on how many to order. alison and I are in agreement that 1/2 a pizza a person is not unreasonable. Fo I suggest about 25 pizzas. Pollie’s estimate was 20 pizzas. In the end she order 27 and after dinner there were 8 or 9 left over. Guess we were wrong. It is hard to estimate ho hungry you will be after a ride.

Here is what 27 pizzas look like!



We camp in Coal City. I am starved by the time I get there and Kari and I stop for food before heading into camp. We are supposed to check-in first and then we can leave if we want to. Having just seen the gear truck go by, I know that it will still be unloaded and I don’t have the energy to pedal the last 2 miles, much less unload the truck, so I opt for late lunch.

In camp, we have a huge open area with some nicely arranged trees just forming the backside of camp. Of course we are inconveniently placed between 3 far away bathrooms and we have to walk waht feels like miles to the bathroom. In reality I bet it is 1/8 mile. Still a hike but not as far as we think.

Pizza and beer has us all in a pretty jovial mood. I miss the best picture of Bob, being silly. Doing his best to model the Miller beer and his Miller Jersey



he gives a come hither look that had me laughing so hard I couldn't take the picture. Forever burned in my memory as sight never to be repeated. Here is a a close approximation:




The Big news is that Kelly, the Hand cyclist from Scottsdale, rolls in having just completed her 1st Century ride ever! She is ecstatic and we are super proud of her. Hugs, and pictures go around. 109 miles. The Kids and Jo played a supporting role when then formed a cylcing pod around Kelly and cut the wind so much that she increased her speed 4 mph to over 20 for quite a portion of the morning. Seeing hte community help others in our community was very invigorating.

Late that night we had disturbances as it was Friday night and a huge group campsite had a bunch of college age kids come in and proceed to see how loud they could turn there stereos up and how loud they could shout and get themselves drunk. It was live living next to the frat house, while there are having their once ayear anual “Kegger” WE didn’t getmuch sleep. In exchange we called the police and they cme out and at least threw the underagers out, which cut ome of the noise. But mostly it was just a trial.

The air was also densely think with fog. Warm and muggy humidity lingering from the earlier rain hung right at ground level. Worried that we might have another midnight storm, I put the fly on my tent and slept wher eI could open my eyes and through the clear sky see a star.

Several times throughout the night I woke up to keep track of that star, but always the sky was clear and I could see it and in the end we never did have a storm.

This picture I took right after nightfall when there was still just a bit of dusk light out. The dark under the trees was really fascinating to me.



WE have also entered Firefly territory for about the last 3 nights which just thrills me. Having never grown up with them, I didn’t first meet them until I was Junior in high school. Then again in college and in my 20’s. Everytime I see them, though I jsut love them and I regress back to 5 years old and loving them. They at least make the calml evenings wtih dreaded mosquitoes more enjoyable, since I can slap the skeeters and watch the fireflies.


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