We drove over 700 miles from DC to just north of North Judson, Indiana yesterday. The Tour Easy was strapped to a Saris Bones 3 bike rack and barely moved the entire way.

We spent last night with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Sue and Leah Mayes, respectively. We went out to dinner in North Judson at the Brantwood Lodge. I had a half order of something called Italian Beef; it was delicious. The Lodge was a bit stinky from cigarette smoke, but other than that it was a decent place for food. Back at my in-law's place we watched the deer at twilight. It was a clear night so we had an impressive light show in the late summer sky.

I awoke at 7:30 and quietly got my bike stuff together. I ate breakfast (Cheerios and OJ) and downed a small pot of coffee. I wear both reading and distance glasses. I spent the next half an hour searching for the latter, which I eventually located under a floor mat in the back of our van. I hugged my kids, kissed my wife, and said good bye to my in-laws, and stood for a Mile 0 photo. Then I walked the bike down the long, sand embedded drive way to the paved county road. And off I went at 8:45.

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Before I made it into North Judson, I was chased by my first two dogs of the trip. Not a great start to the ride. I sped up and they stopped the chase after they reached the end of their property.

The weather was nice and cool with low humidity, perfect for riding. After passing through North Judson, I took State Road (SR) 10 due east towards Bass Lake. This was a flat road with no shoulder, and very little traffic but for the occasional pick up pulling a fishing boat on a trailer. At the town of Bass Lake (I never saw the lake itself), I turned south on US 35. This was a high speed, two lane highway, but since it was Sunday there was very little traffic to contend with. After a mile or two I came across an honest to god drive in, right out of the 1950s. It had Freaky Friday and Spy Kids 3D on the bill. Also, at 8 a.m. Sunday morning they held a drive in church service. How weird! I wonder if the snack bar is open during the service.

My next stop came at a house with short stacks of car tires in the yard. It was as if the homeowner was starting an artistic junkyard. A dog began growling from across the street so I continued on.

A little further on I came across a huge mansion of a home, with extensive tall glass windows across the front. It was really impressive. I wondered why anyone would build such a house on a nondescript highway. I stopped again at a little airport which had a stylized airplane for a sign. It looked as if it was made of cardboard. This was my first Zippy the Pinhead experience of the ride.

As I was riding US 35, I was passed by several tractor trailers. The trailers were little more than open-topped boxes and they were filled to overflowing with tomatoes. And to think I was worried about coal trucks before this ride started.

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All day long I saw corn on one side of the road and what could only be soybeans on the other. I didn't see a single tomato plant. These tomato trucks must each have been carrying tens of thousands of tomatoes. And the drivers were great about giving me plenty of room. From the looks of the roadside they were quite skilled at carrying their load without losing any of their precious cargo. I must have seen no more than a half a dozen tomatoes along the side of the road over the next couple of days. That's not too bad all things considered.

I stopped to fuel up outside of Bass Lake and had short chat with the kid behind the counter. He said that all the bike riders are heading west to Seattle. I can only guess that a group of cross-country cyclists had recently passed this way. His store was only about ten miles off the ACA Northern Tier Route that runs from Bar Harbor, ME to Anacortes, WA.

As I was preparing to leave, a man approached me. He was driving a sedan with a CB antenna. I had seen him pass me several times earlier in the morning. He asked all the usual questions (Where are you going? What kind of bike is that? etc.) and wished me luck.

As I rode on I noticed a headwind for the first time. This was keeping my speed down to 12-13 mph despite the flat roads. I didn't care since I was in no hurry at all. I passed though the town of Winamac, which had some nice old Victorian homes. All of them were, unfortunately, painted in monochromatic white. No painted ladies here.

My intention had been to take US 35 to Royal Center where I would turn east on SR 16, which I thought was the ACA Northern Tier route. After riding through Star City and Thornberg, I stopped in Royal Center in the driveway of a house at the intersection of 35 and SR 16. I checked my maps and realized that I had crossed the Northern Tier route about one mile north of town. The ACA route wasn't SR 16 but a succession of much smaller local roads. As I checked my maps I noticed that the homeowners were preparing to leave and that I was blocking their way. Once again we had the where are you going, what kind of bike etc. conversation. They were nice people; the woman said "Be safe." As they backed out of the driveway.

I needed provisions so I stopped at a convenience store/gas station in town. Down went an ice cream and a Gatorade. As I ate, an old man in a farmer's hat walked up and started asking me where I was headed. He then proceeded to give me directions to virtually every town within 20 miles. He was trying to be helpful, but I had the sense that he was lonely. So despite the fact that I had two maps of the area in plain view I listened to him attentively. After about 20 minutes I rode off, following some of the directions that he gave me. (I did learn from this encounter that Peru, Indiana is pronounced PAY-roo. This is a linguistic oddity that I grew up with in Albany, NY where Cairo, NY is pronounced CAY-row and Delhi is pronounced dell-HI.) I rode a mile or so on SR 16 and decided to zigzag back north to the ACA route in the hope of meeting some touring cyclists. I was also looking to find something other than bone flat road. (It does get a little boring after a while.) In the process of heading north, I caught a nice tail wind for a mile or two.

This diversion gave me my first lesson in the Indiana county road numbering scheme. Each county's roads are laid out in a grid. Moving east from the center point of the county, roads going north and south are numbered 100 E, 200 E 300 E, etc. Each one of these roads is apparently one mile apart. If, for example, you are at the intersection of 500 E and 500 N you are 5 miles north and 5 miles east of the center of the county. This is useful if you find the center of the county important. (From what I could tell, the center of the county was likely to be a cornfield.) If you inadvertently crossed a county line the numbers of cross streets, which had been increasing, started to decline. This became a source of confusion for a few minutes until I picked up on the county line nuance.

After a little trial and error I found the ACA route. They don't call them backroads for nothing! I rode east through Fulton Lake, Deedsville, and then south to Denver, where, contrary to the information on the ACA map, there seemed to be no services to speak of. It being Sunday I should have anticipated this.

After Denver I had a decision to make. I could go on to Peru or continue east then southeast to Wabash. Since I was pretty fresh and Wabash was on a beeline to my ultimate destination, I chose Wabash. Not having seen services for a while, I ate one of my emergency rations, a chocolate chip Clif Bar that tasted about as good as a well worn boot heel. The roads started to roll a bit at this point, and the change in terrain was a welcome relief from the flatlands. Passing through the town of Chili, I caught SR 15 and headed southeast to Wabash.

The first billboard I saw as I rolled into the outskirts of Wabash was a sign for the Wabash Inn. It looked like there would be no lodging problems tonight. Just two miles ahead. Traffic, however, was starting to build as I closed in on the town and the generous shoulder I had been riding on disappeared.

I came to a light and looking left saw a Holiday Inn Express. (He shoots, he scores!) I checked in making sure that they would let me roll my bike into my room. They seemed completely unfazed by the bike. I supposed they get a bunch of ACA riders during the summer. I washed up and headed to the nearby Bob Evans to consume caloric mass quantities. As I ate, I wrote this journal entry. Next its laundry and sleep.

Dogs: 6-8 (lost count), none very fierce. Halt Shots: 0 Road Kill: 1 raccoon, 1 opossum, 1 skunk, 1 deer (gross).

P.S. As it turns out, the fairing is an excellent bug shield. The fields are full of grasshoppers. They would frequently ping off the fairing as they went by.