Lafayette-Gilman

Today was an exhilarating day—we rode really fast, with a tailwind, for about 44 miles, and then waited for lunch behind a truckstop diner, with a tilting incinerator and a towering turbine and a grease dumpster.

In the sun.

It was actually a very pleasant lunch spot. Perfect Americana. People kept going in to the diner for slices of pie (pecan, peach, strawberry-rhubarb, and blueberry, I think, though there were more cooling) and when the van got in, finally, from Lafayette, we feasted on donated Subway coldcuts and Panera baguettes, which I think is against sandwich chain rules or something. And it was 72 degrees, and cloudless.

After lunch we got the inside scoop from Ed, a really nice electrician who told us that Route 24, which we were planning on taking, was the state’s official thoroughfare for wide-load trucks. And that we’d be better off taking “1700N,” which was apparently a paved backroad through the cornfields, to Gilman. If you’ve never seen a state map of Indiana or Illinois, they look like checkerboards. Or circuitboards. All the roads go in straight lines, all oriented in cardinal directions, around gigantic corn- and soybean-fields. So all we had to worry about was that, once we got going, rights were North, and lefts after that were West. So we tried to take a few rights, and a few lefts, and make it in one piece to Gilman. Marie and Courtney both had cheapo drugstore radios, so they tuned to the same station for much of the ride, and we all danced/rode along. One of the stations had a “Sugar Ray Greatest Hits” playlist or something, which, unfortunately is just two songs. But they’re great songs, especially for the summertime.

We all agreed that the cornfield roads were like 2-lane bike paths, like limbo on two wheels. There could have been no time, or hours could’ve passed; no miles, or hundreds. The whole crew was struck by the same simultaneous euphoria, again and again.

We made it into Gilman after crossing a state line (many hilarious pictures) and a time zone, Eastern into Central. Every state that we enter since Pennsylvania will be a new one for me. Despite my earlier, somewhat grumpy blog post, OhIndianIllinoIowa reminds me a lot of the Connecticut River Valley—fertile soil, friendly people, and no pretensions. And lots, and lots, and lots, of corn. And soy.

All for today. More to come tomorrow.