Day 20: Utica, KY to Cave-in-Rock, IL; Land of Lincoln, I'm in Illinois!

May 25, 2015

Utica, KY (Fire Station) to Cave-n-Rock, IL (Cave-n-Rock Motel)

(Note to readers regarding the elevation profiles; the profile is calculated from Point "A" on the map to Point "B" on the map. Since I am traveling east to west on the first half of this transcontinental journey, my route of travel is usually shown on the map as being from right to left. However, the elevation profile is shown from left to right, so it must be "reversed" in your head to understand it.)

Climbing Today; 2,975 ft -- Total So Far; 55,776 ft

Memorial Day

I woke up with the alarm at 5:00 a.m. to find a rather heavy storm outside. So I'm very happy to be “camping” inside at the moment.

The storm subsided and the rain quit, so I had my breakfast, packed my gear and loaded the bike and got ready to roll – and the rain commenced again. It was hard to get detailed weather info on the cell phone, so I set up my small tablet computer and checked things out – looks like it will pass me soon, so I just decided to slow down this morn and chill till 8:00 before departing. I think this will be my latest departure of the trip. But they have “real” coffee here in my fire station quarters as opposed to the instant gunk I have been drinking, and the concept of safe, warm, and dry appeals to me. Here I am inside my fire station “office.”

Baby It's Nasty Outside; I Like My Fire Station "Office" Just Fine, Thank You

Gee whiz, ain’t technology great? Even on a bicycle trip I have adequate computing power, access to real-time information, and communication world-wide. I’m typing this on a real keyboard (albeit a small one, maybe 10” long), I have a real mouse, and a cell-phone hotspot gives me internet connectivity (when it works). At times on this journey I have felt like I’m really roughing it, but come on now; when the pioneers traveled westward in covered wagons the best they had were dial-up modems (I need more coffee, my history is getting a bit smeared).

Rain has quit, it’s 8:00 a.m., it's time for me to get rolling. Not sure where I will stay tonight, but I have two options and they both involve being INDOORS cause the next few days the weather is a bit iffy. Life is grand, here I go – “Don’t wait for the perfect moment, take charge and create it!” It rained on me for the first 18 miles, anywhere from moderate to an occasional hard burst, but it wasn’t a deluge like the Midwest has been getting. I stopped once for a photo of a lone oil pumper standing desolate in a field of harvested corn stubble.

A Lone Oil Pumping Rig Stands in a Harvested Corn Field on a Dreary Day

Crossing a bridge I stopped for a pic of this bad grating design.

Poor Grating Design Allows Bicycle Wheels to Fall Into the Slots

The design is a bad one because it allows bicycle tires to fall into the slots. It effectively prevents cycles from using the shoulder on the bridge, so they must ride in the traffic lane. I ditched the rain gear and had a breakfast sandwich in Beech Grove, then rolled on to Sebree where they were flying the flags for Memorial Day like all the other small communities I passed through today.

Small Towns in Kentucky Fly the Flag on Memorial Day

Leaving Sebree I spotted this Methodist church which was constructed in 1908.

A hundred year old church doesn’t seem old compared to the Virginia churches I saw, but I still find it impressive. I have both a plan and a hope for today. The solid plan is to stay in Marion at the Methodist church; they host cyclists and provide an indoor stay, hot showers, and even wifi. The hope is that I can continue past Marion and cross the ferry on the Ohio river into Illinois. I will have to stay in a small-town motel if I do so (translation; “small-town motel” often equals “dump”), but by doing so I could possibly reach Carbondale the next day and then take a rest day. Carbondale has a Best Buy store, and I have a charging problem with my cell phone that I hope they can fix. So on I roll; I don’t know where I will end up today, but I’m not concerned because I will be inside one way or the other.

I cycled on, grateful for the overcast sky that blocked the sun. The occasional sprinkling of rain felt good and I quit bothering to don the raingear. Approaching Dixon I came upon these two buildings that looked like a church of sorts but with no identifiable markings;

No-Name "Church" Buildings; Maybe Some Secret Cult?

So is this the secret church of the no-name, some type of cult, or ...? Riding onward, I was on a lonely road and hadn’t seen a vehicle in 20 minutes. I needed a quick bathroom break, so I just pulled off the road a bit and got ready to commence, then – holy cow, where did all these vehicles come from? First from one direction, then the other, it was like some sort of comedy where I was being pranked. I gave up on that idea and decided to wait for the next convenience store. But before I left, I spotted a “poke salad” plant growing beside the road. My mom used to give me a paper grocery sack and send me out into the fields near our house in Little Rock to gather up poke salad leaves for supper. That, and to pick wild blackberries in season. No barn/quilt symbols today, but here’s a sign where it appears that the owner is using the quilt symbol tradition for his business.

I pushed on to Clay, which would be the last services for the next 22 miles. I’d ridden 47 miles so far, 18 of which were in the rain, and I needed refueling to be able to continue. A restaurant called Jeri’s had been suggested to me by a fellow I talked with in the previous town of Dixon, and I was looking forward to their home cooking. But it was Memorial Day – DOH! – and Jeri’s was closed. I HAD to eat, so I searched for a grocery store or whatever. I waved at a fellow at a stop sign and he rolled down the window and directed me to a convenience store. They made sandwiches, so I had a turkey sandwich and something called “cheese bites” that were actually kernels of corn smothered in a liquid cheese contained within a bread batter, washed down with milk. You can eat most anything while cycling, cause anything will burn if the furnace is hot enough. I filled the tanks and loaded a Gatorade onto the rear rack and a Snickers bar into the handlebar bag to give me energy down the road as needed.

I worked rather hard to reach Marion, but finally I was there. I stopped under the eaves of a closed feed shop that had a coke machine, bought a pop and sat down and stretched out my legs to rest while I studied the map to decide if I should push on to Cave-in-Rock, IL. I wanted to make it there so that it would be doable to make it to Carbondale the next day. Recovering a bit, I decided I could do it; it was mostly downhill to the Ohio River with just a few climbs along the way. Calling ahead I secured a room at the only motel in Cave-in-Rock. The lady answering the phone told me that if I was going to use a credit card for payment, I had to do it now cause she was leaving for the day and she was “the only one who could do credit cards.” That should have been a hint as to what I was getting into, because, I mean, who pays cash for a hotel room? It didn’t matter anyway; it was either stay there or not go to Cave-in-Rock, and I was anxious to make it to another state. So I secured the room and headed off. As I was cycling the 12 miles to the ferry, I spotted this sign;

Approaching This Sign All I Saw was "Ferry Closed" - Oh No!

The sign gave me great concern because as I approached it all I could see at first was the top line which read “Ferry Closed.” That would have been a problem, as I was half way to the ferry and did not have the energy to cycle back up the hill. I stopped for one last view of Kentucky, and it was a truly magnificent view of this Appalachian state.

Finally making it to the ferry I was happy to see there was only one vehicle ahead of me. Here’s the ferry approaching;

I have been passed on the road by vacationers driving recreational vehicles, or RVs for short. They carry food, water, and gear for the occupants. My bike is the bicycle equivalent of an RV. It’s a sturdy machine designed to carry a heavy load including food, water, and gear. Many owners name their bikes. It’s almost hard not to, as you may spend 8 hours/day or more on the bike during a tour. My bicycle is an RV, and his name is Harvey; yeah, I know it's corny, but it is what it is. Here’s a shot of me and Harvey on the ferry;

Harvey And Me On The Ohio River Ferry, Leaving Kentucky & Headed For Illinois

Approaching Illinois, this is a view of the caves where pirates used to lull unsuspecting ships in.

Site of the Cave-In-Rock Where Pirates Hid

Cave-in-Rock, IL welcomes cyclists by displaying brightly painted bikes all around the little town. Here’s an example;

Cave-In-Rock, IL Welcomes Cyclists With Colorful Bicycle Art

After reaching the motel, I can truthfully say that the $40 I paid for this room is probably twice what it was worth. But Harvey and I were inside and I had a hot shower. Just as I was preparing for bed I saw that Harvey had a flat! What was going on with two flats so close together? I removed the tube and located the puncture by pumping it up and holding it underwater in the sink, then I patched it. It was dark in this $40 hotel room, as only one desk lamp worked in the room and one light in the bathroom, so it was hard to see as I was doing the patching. Probably just as well that I couldn’t see as I may not have liked what I saw if I could see well in this dump of a hotel. I patched the tube that had flatted yesterday, then I took both of them over to match up with the wheel and tire to see what was causing the problem. Both patches were in almost exactly the same location, so I carefully examined the tire at this location. Nothing had punctured the tire at this location, or at any other location. The tire was in great shape. I hadn’t had a flat tire, I had a flat tube. Looking at the wheel, I saw the problem; the punctures had occurred at the location where the wheel had been welded together, and the weld area wasn’t perfectly smooth but had a rough surface.

This is rather frustrating to me; I had paid Peter White to have custom-built wheels handmade for me. Mr. White is located in Hillsborough, NH, and is renown for his skill in building wheels. He guarantees his wheels for life, but that’s meaningless for folks like me who live a long ways away and would have to pay more for shipping to fix a broken spoke than to just have a local bike shop fix it. It’s not the wheel builder’s fault that the rims were manufactured with this defect, but it seems as though he could have filed or grounded them smooth to remove this imperfection. Regardless, now that I knew the problem, how could I fix it? If I had some rim tape with me I would have used a small piece to cover the rough area on both sides of the rim, but I didn’t have any rim tape. I did have a shop towel for wiping grease and such when I did bike maintenance; the kind made from very heavy-duty paper. So I cut small pieces of it and slipped the edges under the rim tape on the wheel to hold them in place, and covered the rough area where the wheel was joined together.

Rough Area Covered With Heavy-Duty Shop Towel Material

Hopefully that will work. It really should work. When I get to Carbondale I will visit a bike shop and get a short piece of rim tape to have on hand in case I need it, but I don’t think I will. It is 11:00, I am weary from a hard day, and I expect a harder day tomorrow. Good night all…

Today's ride: 84 miles (135 km)
Total: 1,103 miles (1,775 km)

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