June 19, 2012
Day 4: Olney, IL to St. Francisville, IL
(By Joy)
We thought a night at a hotel would revive us, but my cold was in full force again by morning and I was coughing up a lung (or two) while trying to pack up. It's much harder to pack two bikes in a small hotel room, especially when mine's tough to maneuver in tight spaces. We ended up with Jeff's bike falling over, snapping off the ever-important rear-view mirror. I patched it back together with a couple of coffee stir sticks and most of our duct tape, but we immediately got the computer back out and ordered a new one since I doubt my fix-it job will last very long.
The heat assaulted us as we left the motel, and we made it the few blocks to the city park to see if we could find an albino squirrel. The one we found was obviously accustomed to people and nearly walked right up to us to beg, so we gave it a stale cookie we had. It ran up a tree with it, and we watched in gnaw away at it. I don't know if we were easily amused or just reluctant to leave the shade, but it took us forever to leave the park. At that point, Jeff wasn't sure he was feeling well, so I took some extra time to go douse myself in the bathroom, getting my shirt and everything else wet in an attempt to get some evaporative cooling going. We made it about a mile down the road and had to make an emergency Nutella and banana stop when Jeff started feeling weak with hunger. We'd put the bananas in our newly acquired cooler a while earlier, so they were nice and cold.
The day didn't get any better, though, as road conditions deteriorated as we tried to stay away from busy highways and byways. Illinois has clearly deferred road maintenance for years on some of these roads, and their idea of maintenance is to dump a bunch of loose gravel on top of whatever surface is left, which doesn't much help us.
Claremont offered a brief break for lunch, where I had a surprisingly good gas station taco and Jeff had the first Hunt Brothers pizza of the trip, which we only ever seem to have on bike trips.
I didn't believe it could happen, but road conditions deteriorated further past Claremont and we eventually found ourselves with nowhere to go but gravel, so we both had a brief meltdown/freakout before deciding that there was nothing for it. I think Jeff asked what I wanted to do, and I told him I was just going to have to put on my big girl panties and get me and my bike through it. One sad thing happened on the gravel, though...my beloved peanut butter jar finally rattled out of its cage and I ran right over it, crushing it and making it no longer suitable for use. Sigh.
Sumner brought us a very necessary ice cream stop, but we had a tough road ahead of us with a busier county road and solid headwind. A nice lady out getting her mail stopped to ask Jeff if we needed any water, but we had just filled up with ice water in town, and traffic gave us a lot of room, so we survived.
Jeff was finishing the day strong, but I was lagging, tired from the heat (what's new) and the wind. As we pulled into St. Francisville, we met two nice ladies who told us about preparations for the town's bicentennial and told us they wouldn't charge us anything to stay at the campground in town by the river since there was just a porta-potty there.
The town appeared to be nearly dead but for a bar at the edge of town, but we met local character Bruce Ravellette at a small bodega-type store he had recently purchased. I was nearly addled with heat, but Jeff chatted with him while I got revived with some snacks and cold drinks. The other thing that revived me was Bruce's offer to take us to his mother's house for a shower. That certainly sounded good, so we went down to the river to check out the campground scene, went back to the store to get dinner-fixings, and went back to the campground to set up while Bruce finished his business. He came and picked us up from the campground, took us to get our shower, and gave us a brief historical tour of the town. Like so many other small towns bypassed by busier roads, it no longer has its own local school, so it's been hard to keep people in town, but they're doing their best to preserve the history of the area, including the Wabash Cannonball Bridge we'd cross the next morning.
After our tour, we got back to the camp kind of late, but we still hadn't eaten, so I whipped up some chicken and noodles and we ate in the dark while random people kept driving down to the river, many apparently there only to use the porta-potty, which seemed to be the most popular thing in town. The camp will soon have real bathrooms hooked up, including the longest handicapped ramp either of us had ever seen, but they weren't quite ready yet while we were there.
As we settled in for the night, we were interrupted by some teens who had been out tubing and were *bleeping* cold since they'd been in the river too long and too late. As they pulled away, they had something hanging out the side of their car, which we soon learned was a 2-foot long catfish as they came back down through our campsite to a water faucet to wash it off. The girl kept saying stuff like, 'Live, little buddy. Live!' and declaring that she wanted to keep it in an aquarium. But they left again with it still hanging off the side of the car, so I'm guessing it didn't live long enough for her to realize her dream.
Jeff got scared that some hoodlum would run into our tent, so he got up and moved a big garbage barrel in front of it. There were some coyotes on the other side of the river making quite a racket, but I fell asleep soon after. People kept driving down to the river for no apparent reason, though, and kept Jeff up late into the night.
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Today's ride: 41 miles (66 km)
Total: 180 miles (290 km)
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