Day 25

Ashley came late today and we loaded up our bikes and gear into her Dad's GIANT pick up truck. We're going to drive up to Grand Rapids MI, where Ashely is originally from and has been living the past few months with her parents. SO we are going to stay there for a little while, hang out and relax.

Outside Georges friends apartment in the back is a cool mural for an Argentinian restaurant.

Day 24

We are in Chicago. It has always been one of my favorite cities. Last time I was here I went over to the lake and just watched it for hours while getting whipped by the cold wind. George's friend is pretty awesome, she lives above a bar, and her boyfriend is a pretty awesome guy that reminds me of our friend back in Philly who sold us our bikes. We for the most aprt have just been hanging out, drinking local micro-brews. George got his first deep dish Chicago pizza last night, and took pictures of it in comparison to his fist. Today they took us to this awesome old school ice cream shoppe, and I mean old school, it was definitely one of the cooler things I have been to on this trip.

Day 23

It rained in the middle of the night, which contrary to thought....helped me sleep. We woke up pretty refreshed at quarter passed 7, ate breakfast and did morning rituals, and rode out about 8am. Again it was mostly cornfield and soybean, and to our misfortune it was also far hotter than yesterday. Yesterday had more cloud coverage and grey skies.

While riding along George gets a flat (#5?), and of course it starts to rain, and then it starts to POUR. I mean it was coming down, it literally hurt to get hit in the face by one of these rain drops. After he fixed his flat tire the rain stopped so we continued riding. Our plan was to get to Chicago and meet up with George's friend and stay there for a couple nights. We rode into Chicago and were ridfing through the city and about 12 blocks away from the goal it started to rain again. Since we were already wet and only had a short distance to go we just kept up pace.
So we made in to Chicago riding a total of 114 miles. It was nice to ride through city streets again, running red light, cutting through traffic and weaving about. So we are staying at his friends house for a couple of nights before heading to MI. Which means we'll be off the bikes for about a week. THANK GOD.

Day 22

Rode out of Indianapolis around 11am. We made it a good 101 miles to Winamac IN. Not much interesting along the way. Lots of corn fields and soybean farms again. It made it probably one of the hardest parts of the trip because there is literally nothing to look at, it's by far my #1 complaint. We found a place to camp on the side lawn of a Mansion behind a tree line so we couldn't be seen from the house. We were in this small line of trees next to a little creek. The water was actually sparkling clean and I wanted to take a swim, but I didn't want to deal with the fact that I had nothing to dry off with and soon I would have to crawl into a sleeping bag. The darkness fell and it turned into a living hell, because of the water the mosquitoes came out in force and they were huge and hungry. Luckily I was able to fall asleep even with the distraction of being bit and smacking myself constantly trying to kill them.

Day 21

been here in Indianapolis for a little bit now. Hanging out with Georges friends that he knew when he lived in Denton TX. It has been nice to sit and rest, especially since my right knee has been hurting lately. I think I am having problems with lateral knee motion while riding, which is a serious issue. On another note, we randomly went to see the band "Queens of the Stoneage." George's lady friend knows the guy who does the lighting for the band, and since they were int own tonight, she gave him a call and he left a couple tickets at the front desk. The band was terrible, but it was nice to go see live music randomly in a strange city.

Day 18

Worse sleep EVER! We hit Indiana, and took various pictures of poses at the welcome to Indiana sign.
We stopped in Lynn IN, which apparently holds the record of the highest peak in IN, which isn't saying much since we could still ride 15mph up their hills. Lynn is also the home town of Jim Jones the kool-aid man. We met 2 very pale cyclists who were casual bikers, but they were pretty cool and gave us a decent idea of what we were up against down the road.

It started getting dark, but we rode on until 12:30 am, and made it all the way to Indianapolis which put us at 137 miles. The Most we've done in a single day. Almost 2 days worth of mileage of what was previously our best.

We made it to Georges friends house and I fell asleep almost immediately on the couch.