I was awake by 7:30 and left by 10:00. Thirty minutes later I was crossing the Wabash river into Indiana and taking a picture of the state sign. Since I was in a car when I crossed the Mississippi river bridge from Missouri into Illinois, I walked across the street and took a picture of the Welcome to Illinois sign as well. 

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

When I reached the far side of the Wabash river bridge I stopped at the toll booth just beyond it and asked, 

“Do bikes have to pay?”

“Yes, OHHHhhh…. No.” 

I took the Yes/No answer as a No, then smiled, waved, and started riding.

I rode to Mt. Vernon (the one in Indiana, 72 miles away, not the one in Illinois) and asked an elderly man where a good, cheap place to eat was. He answered the grocery store, so I immediately rode to the Dairy Queen instead where I ate a couple of burgers, then cleaned up in the bathroom (including shaving).

Having shaved the hair and bugs off my face, then reentered the dining area, I was more presentable when an attractive young woman asked me about my bike tour. An attractive woman talking to me hadn’t happened since Scott left our party of three back in Denver, so I was a bit taken aback. I don’t remember her name but, coincidentally, one of her best friends, Kathy Grief, was a freshman at Baylor, my alma mater as of May, who was majoring in International Business.  Hmmm....  "International Business" .... I’d seen those words during my undergraduate studies, and could even count the number of syllables in them, and possibly even accurately, but even so I was pretty sure I’d never met Kathy.

Later, sitting at the table after my meal and staring at my maps in an attempt to figure out the best way to navigate to Cookeville, TN, I asked the woman in the booth next to mine if Highway 136 crosses the Ohio river into Kentucky. After figuring out that it didn’t, we continued talking. 

I learned that her name was Mrs. Margaret Hare, and her job was to go from business to business putting up boxes of candy in which people pick out what they want and pay on the honor system. She asked me to pick out my favorite one and, never one to turn down candy (thank god the guy at the rest stop didn’t have any), I selected a chocolate.

She had to be back on the road by 1:00 but before she left called a friend with whom she’d planned on going swimming and asked if I could come over as well. I got directions and we went our separate ways, planning to meet at her friend’s house. I covered the ten miles to Heidi Schmidt’s house in thirty minutes  (in my notes I wrote “she’s from Germany”) and drank the two large glasses of orange juice I was proffered upon my arrival. Without waiting the customary thirty minutes, I changed into a pair of her husband’s swimming trunks and was in the water shortly thereafter. 

The large pond behind their house was cool and refreshing after the heat and humidity of the past few days. I learned it had been dug during the Depression as a work project. When Margaret arrived, Heidi left, and the two of us babysat three small children as I went back and forth from the pond to the table filled with cold slices of watermelon.

I eventually changed back into my stinky cycling clothes and, after getting names and phone numbers, started riding towards Evansville.

Halfway to Evansville, I saw another cyclist pull onto the road about half a mile in front of me. I started hammering the pedals in an attempt to catch up but after forty minutes he was exactly the same distance away. I felt like the rabbit at the racetrack.  

Then, suddenly, he disappeared. 

Weirdly, at the location where he evaporated, there wasn’t a turnoff. I even backtracked a little to see if I had missed one, but there was nothing, and no one. Poof!