Day 18 - April 29 - Cairo, IL Rest Day - Crossing the T.....Part One

Day 18 - April 29 - Cairo, IL Rest Day

It’s Like Being Nowhere At All

John’s Story

It feels a bit like being under house arrest without an ankle monitor. Sure, we could try to escape the Quality Inn, but where would we go? Cairo is 3-4 miles south of us, but we’ve already exhausted all of the entertainment and cultural opportunities there. The Ohio River is less than a mile east of us, but no way to cross. The Mississippi River is a mile west of us, but no way to cross. There are a few very small towns several miles north of us, but nothing much on offer there. We did walk to the edge of our current universe, the Dollar General across the highway. It was exciting.

The promised rain actually made its appearance today, so we feel our decision to hide out here for the day has been vindicated.

The rain is basically streaming south to north, our poor man’s atmospheric river.

I suppose it’s a bit early in the season to open the pool, and doing so before the algae crop is harvested would be poor form.

I especially want to obey the last two pool rules. I would add one more rule to the list: “Stay out of the pool!”

Being a rest day, it was mandatory to check every bolt, nut and screw on the bike and clean and lube the chain. I also tried to lube the leather saddle. It likes to creak and groan when I pedal, and all that sound is wasted energy. A seat lube lasts for 2-3 days.

This is one of my prized tools. A 4mm ultra low profile offset Allen wrench to get into those hard to reach places on the bike. (Didn’t I tell you yesterday that today’s journal would struggle for content?)

Today’s highlight was meeting a fellow traveler. Bob is bicycle touring solo from Angleton, TX, south of Houston, to Toronto, Canada. He’s discovering that he doesn’t like camping, so he’s spending more and more nights in motels. He tried last year to go from Angleton to Montreal, but ran out of money in Cincinnati due to his lavish cycling lifestyle.

Bob has spent some of his tour riding on the shoulders of interstate highways 😱. In most places east of the Rocky Mountains that’s illegal on a bicycle, but he insists that in Missouri it’s allowed. Last year we rode 12 miles on I-80 in Wyoming and 6 miles on I-84 in Oregon, but only because there were no alternatives, and it was legal. My hat’s off to him.

Bob rides only 35-40 miles per day, versus our 50-60 mile average. After a long discussion, he decided that perhaps our secret was looking for a beer at the end of each day.

I was busy doing bike maintenance when Bob showed up. We sat outside talking until the rain started in earnest. He had planned to set out for the next town 28 miles north, but reconsidered when the deluge started. Having to put on rain gear in the middle of a ride is one thing, but starting out into a rainy day is quite another. He extended his stay here for another night. Wise choice.

End of the day we traded more war stories with Bob before retiring. We’re headed northwest tomorrow; he’s headed northeast.

Tonight’s repast was bean/corn/green chile burritos with salsa and chips, nuked to perfection in the motel microwave. Tomorrow’s a short day, only 31 miles to our WarmShowers host in Cape Girardeau. She is something of a legend among bicycle tourists, 85 years old, experience riding on 6 continents, and a house rumored to be like spending a night at the museum. We’ll let you know.

Ed’s Story

There really is not much else to say. There is s T-shirt I have seen that says “Sleep Eat Ride Repeat”. Well that’s what we did except for the Ride part.

John showed me a post from the Hickman ferry company from yesterday where they addressed closing for the day. Whether or not they posted it before or after we got there doesn’t matter, our actions would have been the same. We just might not have bitched at the ferry company for closing willy-nilly. Mmhh..,maybe we should see if the ferry we hope to take this coming Saturday has a similar page.

If we had followed the ferries fb page, we might have known they close for high winds.

We try to keep our hotel room neat, especially since there are two of us. Bob joined us for a bit here and said his room was a mess.

The breakfast lobby of the hotel has a St Patrick’s Day tree.

The visit to the Dollar General was productive. I was able to find a salad and a can of won ton soup for lunch. I didn’t feel like more beans especially since I had beans last night and will have them again this evening.

Since we are not where we should have been yesterday, we generated a route we could put on our GPS devices. During my tour around Lake Erie when I retired I used Adventure Cycling maps and an offline map of Ontario to verify my location (while in Canada) and Google maps when back in the US. Are we spoiled?

Already had a nice long nap this afternoon, since the is nothing else to do. I did watch a portion of a TV show where a tsunami hit LA (no big loss), but instead of the water receding as it should, it raised the entire ocean level at least 20 ft. Gee, who does the research for the shows. Don’t get me started…being a submarine officer for my first career, I cringe when I watch shows with submarines in them.

Tomorrow is a short day and looks like it will be a cooler start in the morning. Looking forward to visiting with Judith, our host tomorrow night.

Looking at our itinerary we have a total of 10 days left, which includes another rest day in Hannibal MO. We have 4 camping nights left and 5 indoor nights.

Until tomorrow, happy biking!

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Jeff DeLukeHey guys glad to see you’re enjoying yourself and moving northward. I took your advice and will be making a Journal in the same app as well, I’m less than 30 days out and getting very excited. Hope to see you guys during my trip. Take care, Jeff.
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