The race against today's heat has started! As I finished packing the tent and securing everything to the bike, I was met by another police officer making her way into the dept. She asked if I had a good night's sleep and we chatted a bit about us crazy cyclists and then I was off!
About half way to Kewanee as I stopped to take a drink under a tree an older guy in a pickup stopped next to me and asked if I knew it was suppose to be very hot today. I told him I did indeed but I had to press on, and he said that he would be coming back this way in an hour or two and he would watch for me and stop if he saw me laying on the side of the road passed out. I thanked him and pressed on.
It was still pretty early in the day when I reached Kewanee as it was only 20ish miles away. I made my way to post office, very excited to finally get my hands on a replacement phone, and right as I was parking my bike, an older gentleman, Wayne, came over from the library next door, introduced himself, and wanted to hear all about my trip. It turns out he's in his 70's and back in the day (when he was in his 50's) he and his wife also did some long bicycle tours, from Alaska to Illinois and from Maine to Illinios. He invited me to the cafe across the street after I got done in the post office to talk some more about biking, and I accepted.
I went into the post office and retrieved my new phone! Appearently this general delivery thing works just fine. After messing around activating the new phone and restoring contacts, I packaged up the old one in the box it came in and sent it on its way, good-bye lil' fella!
I made my way over to the cafe and met up with Wayne again, got some food and enjoyed the air conditioning. We probably talked for a good 2 hours, I found it amazing that he hadn't owned a car in 20 years, he just bicycles everywhere. He has grandkids in Missouri and just takes about 5 days to bicycle down to see them, camping along the way, then bicycles back home when he's done.
After I wished Wayne well, I travelled across the street and hit up the library, where I hung out for an hour and wrote yesterday's blog post. As it rounded 4pm, I figured I should get a move on to Cambridge, IL, where I was going to stay with another warmshowers host.
Oh man, it was still raging hot! I hit up a gas station before leaving town and loaded up with gatoraid and took off. There was a mild western headwind, but I was loving it because it gave me a nice breeze as I cycled against it. I found out very quickly that as soon as I stopped, the breeze stopped, and I started sweating buckets so I just kept on cranking, slowly, but at least I was moving.
I finally made it to Cambridge and found the house of my hosts for the night, Stephanie and John Taylor. As I got off the bike, I was greeted by a friendly cat who plopped right down next to me. I met Stephanie and her super chill baby Miles, but John was busy tonight teaching an evening class at the local college and unfortunately I never got to meet him as I left early the following day. Stephanie told me how they were hosts on couchsurfing, warmshowers, and another site for traveling bands, betterthanthevan. They've had lots of band guests since a large recording studio is about an hour away from them and they've become a popular place for them to stay, not to mention John is in a band.
I was pleasently suprised to find out that my hosts were a little geeky like me, and Stephanie (with Miles in tow) and I reminiced about all things 90's when we were in school, and she told me about how she's been working at home doing internet media relations... I must say I was impressed as she rattled off a bunch of programming languages she uses! She then cooked me up some 'tators which I happily ate after a long hot day, and then passed out in their guest room.
Start: Bradford, IL
End: Cambridge, IL
Distance: 42.19 miles
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