Day Thirty-seven: Beardstown, Illinois to Litchfield, Illinois

July 16, 2019

I was so anxious to get out of this dump, and out of Beardstown, that I was up and ready ridiculously early, when it was still far too dark to ride.

I went down to the lobby, still hot with the fans blowing stale air around, and parked the bike just outside, waiting for first light. This was the only place of the entire tour where I was slightly uneasy about leaving the bike unattended, so I kept an eye on it from the lobby while I observed the owner of the motel set up the "continental breakfast", which was meager indeed. I noticed that he had on the same rumpled clothing from the day before. (Of course, so did I... although I'd given mine a perfunctory rinsing in the bathroom sink last night.)

It was finally barely light enough to ride. I turned on both blinking red lights and left. It had rained a lot in the night; water was standing everywhere. I quickly got onto a country road, successfully avoiding seeing anymore of Beardstown than necessary.

After several miles I took the back way into Arenzville, population 409. Nothing was open this morning.

It was starting to sprinkle, so I quickly worked out a route using Google Maps on my phone, before it started raining too hard to bring it out of the handlebar bag.

I decided to ride to Literberry, which was just a name on the map - it looked too tiny to have any services, but I assumed there'd be a church porch, or an abandoned building, or something where I could take shelter if I needed in order to figure out the next part of today's route. I really was figuring this out as I went along now.

I put on the rain jacket as it began to shower. There was zero traffic on the gravel roads, which turned to pavement after several miles as I entered Literberry.

As I'd expected, there was nothing in Literberry. Even the post office was gone. But there was a church with a porch, where I got out of the rain, ate some Grandma's Cookies I was carrying, and looked at the map on my phone. I barely had an cell service here, but I could see just enough of the map to work out a route for the next several miles.

The sun came out by the time I reached Prentice, which was nothing but a crossroads with a grain elevator and a farm implement dealership.

It appeared that the next real town with any services was New Berlin, which was just off I-72. New Berlin was more or less in the direction I needed to go in order to reach Litchfield, which I'd decided was a reasonable destination for today, so I headed there.

Before I got to New Berlin proper, I stopped at a truck stop just off the interstate. There was a Subway inside, but they didn't make the pizzas that I like. The convenience store inside the truck stop DID make pizzas, but, as is typical in these kinds of places, they didn't have any meatless pizzas already made.

I asked the man and woman behind the counter if they could make a cheese pizza, but they told me they couldn't do it unless I bought the entire thing, which wasn't practical for me, of course.

As I walked away, the woman took pity on me: She called out, "Sir! I'll make a half-pepperoni, half-cheese pizza. It will be fifteen minutes."

I bought a fountain pop and some snacks, and when the pizza was done, a couple of large slices, which I took into the Subway and ate there. This was not a busy truck stop, so it was pleasant sitting in a cool, clean, quiet place for a while.

After a while I left and rode through New Berlin, population 1,030. I didn't spend much time there, and didn't see anything especially interesting.

It was hot and sunny now. I was constantly stopping to look at the map on my phone. I pulled off at tiny Lowder, where there was a county road department building, a grain elevator, and nothing else. I was running low on water, and the water I did have was disgustingly warm, so I asked a man at the road department if I could have some water, and he gave me a couple of bottles of ice-cold water from the refrigerator. That was nice - I'd have been happy with some water from the tap.

Girard, about eleven miles down the road, had a couple of convenience stores. I went into one of them, bought some cold drinks, and sat down on one of the stools at a couple of tiny tables. Two teenage girls were sitting there, gossiping about some "frenemy" of theirs. They seemed displeased with my presence - well, too bad. They left not long after I sat down.

I left too after drinking my bottles of "Body Armor" - which is much, much better than Gatorade, I've determined.

There was more rough, disintegrating chip-seal, and gravel as I made my way to the outskirts of Litchfield, population 6,939. It rained a little, but I avoided the worst of it, and didn't bother putting on my rain jacket.

I decided I needed a little bit of luxury after the last couple of long, hard days, and especially after awful Beardstown, so I checked into the expensive Hampton Inn, where there were only three rooms left, and my negotiating position was weak indeed as the clouds opened up and it started to pour. Still, I convinced the guy to give me a little bit of a discount.

Later it stopped raining and I walked next door to a pizza place, where it took so long to get my food that I briefly considered walking out, but ultimately waited for the pizza, because the alternative would have been a meager dinner of squashed granola bars I was carrying in my panniers.

Today's ride: 104 miles (167 km)
Total: 2,993 miles (4,817 km)

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