FRIDAY July 16, 2010

Another day of corn fields and an occasional field of soy beans. How much corn can one nation produce? Apparently A LOT!

Today was not as far as yesterday but it sure seemed as long. It was very hot and the humidity has picked up as well. Not too bad when you are moving but when you stop……oh boy! We didn’t stop much but we did have to stop at one interchange because of construction on the right ramps which was backing up traffic in the left ramp lanes as well. Sitting in the sun, with the heat off the bike (the ambient air temperature, according to the bike’s temperature gauge, was just over 100 degrees (that’s 37 degrees for you Canucks out there). We were over two miles from the interchange when traffic came to a crawl. We took our cue from another rider and rode up the left shoulder (our interchange was the left one) until we got past all the traffic. We had wondered if you could ride on the shoulder on a bike in Illinois like you can in some states so we just followed suit. Turns out as we got closer to him and he had to move over into the right lanes that he was from Washington! Oh well, it saved us a lot of misery. So, for those of you that are sitting in traffic and you see one of those bikers go by, just think how miserable that guy was sitting in the heat with no A/C.

So, we traveled about 350 miles today from Waterloo, IA to Champaign, IL. Champaign is about 70 miles south of Kankakee, which is where my Dad was the minister at a Church of Christ there until they moved back to Oregon. Last year my Mom and I visited there while out for a nephew’s wedding. I am sure it was a bitter sweet visit for Mom since Dad was no longer with us.

At this point we are sitting in chairs, doing our blogs and looking out over the little lake by our camp site. We have done laundry, which was much needed, I sent home a couple of boxes of stuff I no longer needed in these warmer climes, been into town for dinner, showered and are now relaxing, waiting for the sun to go down so thing will cool off some, we hope.

We will be up early in the morning, headed to Louisville first to get oil changes done on the bikes and then on to Mike’s daughter’s and my friend’s, Parker Hahn, respectively. Saturday and Sunday nights in the Ft Knox area and then to Tennessee to a family member’s of Mike’s and then Wednesday and Thursday nights in Radford, VA at my son, Jeremy’s, and his wife Pam.

Good night all, sleep well and God bless.