Freezy knees. Jacket on. The day’s dimmer switch is slowly tweaked and light pushes dark away. My poor achy knees are not enjoying this. They radiate stiffness and rudely creak as they dash off angry complaint letters to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Knees society. I make a mental note that at some point I should probably invest in some knee warmers for mornings like this. It’s in the 50s for the first time this trip.

I imagine what it will be like later. In the Rockies.

On I go. Leaving the allure of Summersville well behind me in the half light of this new morning. Past farm gates and gravel drives. Past US Mail Service approved mail boxes and rectangular trailer homes with lattice fences half-built.

“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT I DON’T LIKE YOU AND I WISH YOU WOULD GO AWAY I WANT TO EAT YOU”

Or loosely translated into dog speak: WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF GROWL WOOF GROWL.

The black streak of fur and slobber and teeth and gums comes from nowhere. There is anger in its face as it runs towards me at full speed, yelling and showing me its impressive set of teeth. The dribble that hangs there is eager to be on me, but I thwart the attack. Stop. Stand firm. Yell loudly and don’t care who I wake up. And I swear, if one person comes out and says, “Don’t worry, he won’t bite. He just playin’ wit you”, I shall explode.

Explode in reds and yellows and brilliant oranges all over this road and onto the fronts of their shirts.

Two other mutts have joined Kujo, but they’re just interested bystanders. Like kids that gather ‘round a fight behind the bike sheds.

“Gow’on, punch. Yeah. Kick! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Moron dogs.

Slowly, I wheel off. Should I get that can of HALT! back out of my bag? I really thought I was done with the dog thing. What a hassle. I’m lazy. Bah.

Enjoyable morning, take two.

On I go, past freshly slashed grass and pasture. Past white wooden fences and hay fresh with dew.

But here’s another one. The other dog’s doofus brother. Black and muscle-bound and single-mindedly eyeing my poor right calf. Again, I use my outside voice and don’t give a frog’s left testicle who I wake up. That’s right. Get back in your box. I am not afraid of you.

On I go, past…

You’ve got to be kidding me! This one is a Blue Heeler, intent on stopping me from proceeding and enjoying my boring admiration of the morning. I yell at him in Australian and my compatriot is forced to back down. Stupid mutt. What a drongo.

Once I’ve left him behind, muttering to myself about lack of expat-to-expat respect, I start wondering if Kentucky’s got a bum rap when it comes to the dog thing. It’s all you hear about when you start looking into the TransAmerica. Kentucky is thick with the bad dogs. Oh, look out when you go through Kentucky. Dog attack central.

Well, Missouri, you are thick with it too. Three attacks in the first 8 miles of my ride. Seriously. That’s a record.

Before long, I begin to experience a new kind of fear and terror. The fear is sheer, the terror is terrible. On this no-shoulder road with blind corners galore, trucks and cars are oblivious to my presence. They blow by like big blustery bullets shot from a gun of don’t-give-a-damn. No-one slows down at all, and trucks seem intent on creating giant drafts to actually shoot me off the road and into the grassy ditches. Cars do not give an inch, even when there is no car coming from the other direction.

For the first time on this trip, I am afraid for my life.

I anxiously glance at my rear-view mirror every few seconds to prepare for attack from behind. Even when I pull off to the side of the road to let vehicles pass, they do not move out to acknowledge they’ve even seen me or appreciate the effort.

State Route 17, I hate you.

At Yukon I turn, still on SR 17, but suddenly everything is different. Less traffic. The change is immediate, and even those cars that do come along seem to be more courteous and respectful. It takes a while, but the tense drains out of my shoulders and onto the road. Before long I’m enjoying myself.

It’s a sudden realization.

I’m really enjoying this.

Kicking myself a little for not doing this run to Houston yesterday. It’s very easy. I’m suspicious of the ease. Have a little feeling this route is holding something back. A little Ozark torture for this afternoon perhaps? I keep waiting for this horror that East bounders have told me about. Maybe today is the day? Yes, yesterday had some bad patches, but that can’t be what they were talking about. Can it?

Breakfast. I need breakfast. Food is being summoned to my belly and when my belly doesn’t get what it wants, it gets all tetchy and belligerent and starts beating on the drum skin of my stomach lining. The first place it sees in Houston is McDonalds.

No, says my brain. That is just bad news. It turns my head the other way but in a flash, it’s swiveled back against its will and I’m clipped in and moving toward the arches of doom.

There’s something magical that happens when I park Precious in a parking spot. He becomes magnetic. To finger pointers and tire kickers. To those with trucker caps (not worn ironically) and tool belts. I’ve watched many times as people look at him, stop and look at him from another angle, then sometimes say something to their companion and point. As I sit in the booth and eat my $1 sausage burrito and hash brown, I watch a grey-haired man in a flannel shirt stop dead in his tracks and just stare. When he moves on toward the door, he glances back one more time.

Precious does look quite captivating today.

Breakfast finished, I go to leave. The gazer, sitting one booth over, realizes that I must be the rider of the horse outside and peppers me with questions.

Where are you going? How many miles a day do you do? Is it hard pulling that thing? Where do you sleep? Are you on your own? You from England?

After patiently answering each of his questions, I tell him I should be pushing on. Wave my thumb in a direction indicating “I best be off thataway”. Sometimes it’s very hard to withdraw from these conversations politely, but I don’t think he hears my loud reversing beep and I slink off with ease.

Clip in. Look both ways. Again. Out onto the main road, then down to a sign that when cropped a certain way can be made to say Licking Success. Which is now my trip motto. Each day, I will attempt to Lick Success in some way. Though I’m sure on most days it will simply be the success of getting from point A to B that will be licked.

As I turn left and begin leaving town, I spy a cyclist coming the other way. Pulling a Zimmerman of his own. He checks both ways, then swerves over to my side and comes to a halt.

“Are you Janeen?” he asks.

Weird. I think the slow leaking out of the word yeeeeees from my mouth evokes both suspicion and confusion on my part.

He explains that he rode for a while with Sami, a person whom I’ve never met but have had back and forth conversations with on twitter. She had apparently told him to look out for me and by a freak stroke of luck we just happened to run into each other.

Aha. He must be the Scottish guy she told ME to look out for.

As we chat, I admire the bananas strapped to the top of his bag, and just the sheer smallness of what he has packed into that Bob. Jealousy rubs itself all over me and Zimmerman just sits there looking fat.

“Did you send anything home?” I ask, and he confirms he did. But then also says that it just creates space that you fill with other junk. I am in two minds about sending my cooking gear home. What would I fill that space with? Beads? Rocks? Beer?

Lovely. He is lovely. Just the kind of person I would like to ride with for a few days. But he’s totally going in the wrong direction for that. Forty five minutes later and I must push on. In the back of my mind, I had planned to maybe make it to Marshfield. But it’s looking more and more like Hartville, where Lindsay says there is no shower but you can camp on the courthouse lawn and use the bathrooms there.

Buoyed by the good chin wag, I carry on. On a bridge, I watch an eagle dicking around on wind currents for a while. Just having fun I think. It must be fantastic to fly. To tilt your wing and lift yourself higher. I smile and tilt the wing of my leg to push on the pedal and get this train moving.

It’s a smile day. Feel it. Wear it long and hard, like you mean it.

I glide. I sail. Not quite like that eagle but up and over hills, then down and on and swosh we go. I turn onto the 38 and stop. Look to my left, back at the hills and mountains I have left behind. Am struck by the glorious fact that they will always be behind me. That I have conquered them once and once is all it takes. That they must watch me leave and let me go and mourn my departure and say to each other ‘we knew each other, once.’

It is a very good feeling, to see them there. Boyfriends of mountains past.

These roads are lovely. The countryside rolls along and me, though it. Trees. Green. I am singing, but there is no music.

In Ben Davis I stop at The Feed Store and walk in to get a chocolate milk. I walk right into a farm conversation, straight through a sentence about crops and over to the fridge. The three men having the conversation continue, even when I step up to pay. I can’t quite work out if it’s a shop or not, or literally a feed store that happens to have some drinks and snacks.

Once, I had considered stopping here for the night. Apparently, you can camp out the back if you ask the owner, but I would feel odd doing that. Like an intruder. I don’t linger and go outside under the tree where I’ve parked and drink my milk.

While I’m standing there, one of the men comes out to get in his truck. He walks over.

“Where ya headed?”

I tell him Hartville, having half given up on the idea of Marshfield.

“Oh, be careful,” he says “There’s roadworks after the 95. Single lane for quite a ways.”

Roadworks. Awesome. More Fresh Oil signs and heat bouncing off the black top and stabbing my motivation in its craggy face. More tar on my tires and rocks clicking on the inside of my fenders.

Thanking him, but not sure what he expects me to do about it – give up? – I push my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and roll off the gravel and back to the road.

After Graff, it hits me. Just when I’m getting cocky in my brain and saying things to myself like ‘OMG, I’m totally not going to walk up a hill today!’, it hits me. One hill. After a small bridge and a creek called Beaver. I cross the beav and up I go, full of confidence and ‘aw yeah!’ and what a great day.

Muscle it up, McCrae! Oh. Wait. Crap. Wrong gear. Oh. Poo.

I clip out. Strangely, I’m still smiling. Whatever. So I have to walk up a hill. Big deal. I’m 47 miles in to the day’s ride and look at me. Walking and whistling and waving to cars as they pass by my circus.

It’s a steep hill. I feel no shame. There is no requirement except to move forward. For the momentum to be carried in the right direction. The anger I feel when I hear people say “Oh, I haven’t walked once” will not materialize to make me feel bad about this.

My ride is my own. I own my ride.

You own yours.

By the time I get to the road works I’ve been warned about, I’m ready. Ready for whatever. The other side of the road is brand new tar, sitting an inch or so above the level of the road I’m on. No single lane that I can see. For many miles, this is the case, and I just carry on with the task of the day. Point A to B.

I look around and note the sounds. I pause in shade and take mental notes. Marvel at an Armadillo on the road. He looks perfect in every way. Flawless. Except for being dead. The armadillos in Missouri have no luck at all. This is actually the most I’ve seen of one, usually being left only with a few scattered shells of their armor to remind the world that ‘I was here. I once existed.”

Finally, I come up behind two trucks waiting at a flagman. This must be the single lane section. As he lets us go though, he says to me “I’ve just told them you’re the last one, so you better pedal!”

Oh, bloody hell. I worry about situations like this. Cars backed up at the other end of the roadworks, wondering why they can’t leave, then seeing a pathetic girl on a bike emerging from the tar mirage and cursing about me being the cause of their wait.

And this road works is a long one. I crank it. I really go for it. For a while it’s kind of fun, but that’s mainly because I’m on a straight and flat section. As the world tilts, my energy runs out behind me and I find myself climbing in the heat and going too fast in my guilt.

It finishes on an uphill and I am wrung out when I reach the top. There are no cars waiting. All that energy, burnt for nothing.

“Why couldn’t you guys be working on a downhill?” I say to the flagman at this end.

He looks at me strangely, then turns in the direction I’m headed.

“It’s all uphill!” he says.

Fair point. Taken. But really, today is not too bad. The climbs are not too viscious and most simply require good gear selection and slow seated constant effort to the top. No killing myself softly. Just ride.

Finally, Hartville. I roll up the main street and see a sign at a cafe welcoming bikers. Decide to go in and look at the map to see where my lawn bedroom is.

Something is in this root beer. Something is in this chicken sandwich. The something is an additive called Why the Hell Not (WTHN).

Push on to Marshfield? Why the Hell Not. Ride an extra 25 miles today? Why the Hell Not. Should I do it? Why the Hell Not.

Get out of this smoky diner? Why. The. Hell. Not.

The road is welcoming to my refueled legs. Miles are dropping off the edge of my map and into the bank. It’s the time of day when shadows start to fall the other way and school buses begin their afternoon crawl. Their yellow presence has become my measuring stick for how advanced the afternoon is.

Still many miles to go, but my tiredness is a happy one. The 25 miles I do now are 25 miles I won’t have to do some other day. Must keep going. Must keep moving on.

A cheeky breeze rides along with me for a while, tickling my face. Lovely. Lovely how it lifts your spirits on this long and lonely stretch of road. I tackle it mile-by-mile and keep my arm coolers damp and my head tilted oddly to peer above the rims of my sunglasses. The brighter light is clearer. The air on my eyeballs keeps me awake.

Long, slow hills, but not hard slow hills. Just there to test my patience and desire to move. But I’m on the home stretch now. The shoulder shrinks and I’m on the straight line into Marshfield. It feels smaller than I had anticipated. Drier. Out the anchor goes and I pull up in the dirt. Pull out the map.

Knees, niggling and irritated, guide my eyes to the hotels over on the other side of town. Feel no guilt, they say. Look after us and we shall look after you. There is no greater comfort than a bag of hotel ice on the knee and the chance to put more cream on the itch of the ivy.

Later, as I escort my chilled legs over to a rib place that is more fast food than local charm, I marvel at the dying light on the horizon. The bright orange turning the sky a purplish blue until it succumbs to the final destiny of black.

Against it, even the impersonal glow of the highway-hugging golden arches looks elegant and well framed.

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Legs dotted with pink cream and the rest of me slathered with sunscreen for a sun that’s not awake, off into the early morning half-light I go. It’s not quite that time when light starts running down the dark to give it a wet willy, so my headlight is washing the road in front of my wheel to guide me. Roll on through, roll on.

Oncoming headlights catch my eyes and my pupils shrink to a more petite size. So much traffic for this time of the morning. Does everyone have a 6am start? It’s certainly waking up my brain.

I comfort myself with the thought that I’m probably more easily seen at this time, what with my three flashing red rear lights, a reflective triangle on Zimmerman, and my awesome headlight of supreme showiness. It’s a theory. I’m sticking to it.

As the light rises, things come into focus. Mostly hills. I kind of wish they would go out of focus again, but I have no time to think about that. I’m too busy climbing them.

It’s not so much that they’re hard. It just always seems to be that just when you get near the top of a hard-won climb, a car will come and hover behind you and get impatient. Or worse still, a truck. Or worse still than that, they’ll come from both directions at the same time and danger will cuddle us all close to its bosom and whisper things in our ears. Take a chance. Who’s game?

Carry on. Carry on.

You know what else, this road surface is a little rough for my liking, so if you could just see your way to fixing that. That and the hill thing. And the truck thing, while you’re at it. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind, it would be just lovely if the heat turned down a bit.

Who the hell are you talking to?

That’s happening a lot actually. I realize ’m talking to myself with alarming frequency. And Precious gets an earful too, though for some reason that seems legitimate to me. Like he is a valid conversationalist.

These one-way thought streams are not riveting conversations either. More like:

“Don’t forget to write the [way you were feeling] about the [thing that happened] down. You won’t forget that will you?”

I will repeat this to myself for a mile or so, figuring the repetition will brand it on my brain, but then I’ll forget it somehow. I’ll start talking to myself about something else. Or I’ll round a bend and see a hill downward-facing-dogging itself before me and say out loud “Oh, you are kidding”, or something equally whiny.

I’m not cut out for this. This solitary existence where the only person I talk to with any frequency is myself. And my bike. But I can’t dwell on this for now. I have a day to get through and this day holds some Ozarks proper. What that means exactly, I don’t know, but apparently I’m to be stabbed repeatedly in the legs around Alley Spring. So. There’s always that.

But that’s still hours away and right now all I have is this rolling canvas toasting with the mid-morning sun. Hammer, hammer down, then hammer gear shift, hammer, gear shift, stand and the don’t-make-it-every-time-but-nearly-every-time routine.

Winding roads and sudden fast downhills. Then up again. Through forrest and flats, up hills and over dales.

A few of these blighters are just too steep to roll all the way over even with a great run up, so I stand on the gear until the last possible second when I realize the truth and quickly clip out. So close to the top at times that it literally takes 3 or 5 steps to get there as I push. Frustration gives way to elation as I’m immediately rewarded with a downhill.

Fast, fast down I go. Trucks fly up and I am very wary at their approach as I get wings, knowing their gusty temperaments tend to make mine wobble a little.

I stop at a bridge and gaze into a wide expanse of green river. Linger. Drink slowly from a bottle and imagine myself in a canoe and breaking the skate-able surface with my paddle. But my canoe is getting restless here, it’s obvious I’m delaying, so I pull my bravado right up next to me and get it to tell me to move on.

A slow climb up a hill. The first stab on the map and it’s not so bad. Surprisingly good actually. I take a break at the side of the road and eat a little tin of peaches with the spoon I now keep in my back pocket for such occasions. Well, if that’s what they’re all like, I think, that’s not so bad. Somewhere in the back of my pea brain, I know that this is the thought of a ego in denial.

We are, after all, in Ozarks National Scenic Riverways. Or as they are now known, Ozarks National Janeen Slaughterways.

The giant sky, decorated here and there with lace-like white, crushes down on me. It’s trying to prepare me by making me feel small. It need not bother. I’m tiny as a cricket on a highway.

I grizzle up a hill into Eminence. Don’t even pause. I think it’s best to get this day over and done with as soon as possible, and the more stops I make, the less likely that is. It’s a sad decision because things start to progressively get worse for me. My legs are being little girls and my brain just isn’t in the mood for positivity today.

Could have something to do with the sudden increase in canoe-laden traffic. Cars with awkward fiberglass or plastic passengers strapped to their roofs buzz by. I stop again, at the top of a hill just outside Eminence, and stuff handfuls of trail mix into my mouth. Mix up a bottle of Nuun. Delay. Avoid.

Press on.

Alley Springs is exactly where it happens. Alley Springs is where I became truly discouraged and am forced to battle with my brain in an old-fashioned bare-knuckled brawl. I can tell this is the hub of it all. The canoe rentals, the shady rest area with fancy toilet (foot pedal flush!), and inviting picnic area.

Just after this area, it goes up. A hill.

I don’t climb this hill. This hill climbs me. An attempt is made to stick at it. To stay in my granny and just persevere. But I can’t do this for long and I just give up. Decide it’s just not worth killing myself for in this heat. Too long at too high a grade and I will give up before it does. So I walk. Take my licks and just walk. Stop. Walk. Stop.

It takes me a long time to get to the top, but like all hills, it’s behind me now. As long as it stays there and they all stay there, I’m fine.

It takes a little while for my enthusiasm to come back, but it’s given a big jolt when I round a bend and there is a magical view of the Ozark riverways. Panoramic even. It says to me “I know you’re tired, but I bet even you will stop and take a photograph.”

True. I will. And what’s more, this seems like an Everest moment. Views mean triumph and so victory poses must be captured. Precious gets a few, then I take some of us together. It’s too bright to see if they’re any good in the tiny LCD screen, the sun robs me of this confirmation, but I have a sense that they’re keepers.

With one last glance at the view, I turn my gaze toward the next climb. It is immediate, but over quickly and things settle down a bit after that. I can just ride and roll and make it through.

It’s not long after lunch when I roll into Summerville and make the decision that I’m done for the day. Short day. Why not? I turn towards the shops and a soda machine beckons me from in front of the grocery store. As I stand there drinking it, I watch the sheriff chatting with a local further down the street. Cars amble by. It is quiet.

A woman comes out of the grocery store and goes to get in her pick up.

“Where you going with that thing?” she asks.

I tell her.

“You crazy.”

You toothless, I think. But I don’t say it. I laugh a quiet laugh and say some dumb thing and she laughs and is gone. Crazy. Pft. I’m not crazy. Although there is that talking to myself thing. And I think Precious is a real live person. But I don’t think that’s what she was referring to.

There’s a sign pointing in the direction of an inn. It’s not the name of the inn that I’m looking for, but when I find it, it’s not called the name I have either. Both the sign and my maps are talking about the same place.

Rose’s Green Roof Inn. I can tell it is going to be special.

As I pull in to the dirt driveway, a woman walking across it and to the office door says hello.

Jauntily and with a little too much joy at having stopped for the day, I enquire as to a room. We enter the office to negotiate.

“It’s $30,” she says, before adding “Cash only”

Cheapest. Hotel. Ever. I’ve got a good feeling about the decor already.

It does not let me down. Sparse and simple. The bedspread is to die for, green and fake felt and adorned with black bears. The mattress on the bed is like one you get at camp. Ready for accidents in the night and slippery even with sheets on it. One pillow looks weird and I pick it up. Compression foam. Methinks it hath been compressed one-too-many times.

But I don’t care. The shower works, it cost $30 and I have a fantastic view of a truck stop.

After my economy shower, I grab my notebook and pen and mosey on to the Trails End restaurant. As I burst through the saloon doors, the piano player stops and everyone turns and stares. Actually no, that doesn’t happen. No piano. And there are only two other customers in here anyway.

A waitress pops by my booth with a girl in tow. It’s the girl’s first day on the job and she’s learning the ropes, asking a lot of questions and being treated to the wisdom of the old hand.

Sandwich ordered and a giant Dr. Pepper on the way, I gaze out the open window next to my booth and let the breeze tickle my freshly showered face.

“Do you always bring ‘em a straw?” I hear the girl ask behind me as they bring the drink over together.

The food is passable, and I hang out writing well after the other two customers have left. The afternoon starts to die. I should really go and type some stuff up, but I’ll be back. Around 5.30. That’s the time I heard the lady tell the new girl that it ‘gets real busy’. I’ve noticed a lot of restaurants close at 8 in these small towns, so I’m learning to eat early.

Back at the inn, I sit out in front of my room on a plastic chair with my laptop and tippety type. There’s a little chill to the air but it feels fresh and good. Every now and then I look up to watch a car pass lazily by and think, this is a really small town.

When I go back to the Trails End for dinner, the restaurant is packed with four customers. The pool table looks longingly over at them. A bored fan whirls.

“Sit anywhere?” I ask, without irony. I go for the same booth I had earlier and order the special from the girl who’s flying solo now. Thrown in the deep end on her first night. She’s polite, energetic and excited.

She even brings me a straw.

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The lawn is weeping with the dew and I screw up my nose as the fresh cut grass from yesterday sticks to my shoe. Walking around to the front of the jail, I try brush it off a little with the inside of my other shoe, then give up.

“Bah! You’re touring,” I say to myself. “You should let yourself get dirty.”

Parking Precious and Mr Zimmerman near the back stairs of Al’s Place in Farmington, I begin to slowly pack. To stretch out the time into a thin string of unwillingness to leave. I know I have to go. To move on. To hit the road. To tuck more miles under my flabby stomach belt.

Dry the dishes. Remove sheets. Clean the kitchen. Leave money in the donation box. One last, longing look as I pull the door closed.

The future. It calls to me.

Down the main street I go, flanked on either side by lavish homes and gardens. Beautiful period structures with manicured lawns and inviting porches. Proudly they stand, throwbacks to a thriving time of iron and industry. Now, just prime real estate.

This place. I like this place.

Before long, my map is telling me to turn off the main drag and onto a a quieter road. Then another swift turn. Small climb. The sign for St. Joe’s State Park flashes by and it takes a little while, but before long it has slathered its good mood onto me. The sun is still low and the morning cool. Trees reach out and touch me with their cool auras and chlorphyll smiles as I pass by. It’s as pretty as a photoshopped stock photo, still and perfect. There’s the smell of morning. Listen. Insects and frogs and the soft whir of my tires on the smooth road.

An effort. An effort is made to enjoy this. To soak up the feeling I’m having of peace and tranquility. Serene quietude. Now this, this is a good start to the day and I’m smiling, even as cars pass close by and a few rouge dogs run out to chase my mood away.

I know it’s going to get worse. That the day is going to head as far downhill as the elevation charts on my maps head up. The words Ozark Mountains are flashed across today’s second map panel, so that’s gonna tear up my afternoon note cards and throw them out the window.

But so far, not too bad. A few quad stretchers, but nothing that twists my gut into a frightening balloon animal that would scare children at parties. Just joyful meandering.

A nice downhill and then I find myself out on the 32. And now, not so nice.

There’s a rough and horrible shoulder with a wandering rash of debris and occasional disappearing surface. Trucks waft on my left and blow grit right into my once-optimistic face. At least there is a shoulder, and I’m grateful that the rumble strip is the kind that’s thin and actually quite pleasant to ride of from time-to-time. Like a little massage of the brain sent via the bum and soles of the feet.

The shoulder gets worse. The shoulder gets better. The shoulder gets worse again and then disappears completely.

Everyone talks about the shoulderless roads of Missouri. The crumbling edges. The narrow paths. So I find myself snuggling up to the white line that’s half missing in places and attempting to appear larger than I am. My mirror, attached to my sunglasses and angled perfectly so that a slight turn of my head reveals all, is eagle eyed in its glint. I’m completely fine with how dorky it makes me look, by the way, as it’s saved me numerous times. It’s on the Janeen/Precious/Zimmerman team. Fletch. I just named it Fletch.

For a moment, I’m very aware of how quiet it is. That it’s past the early morning bird song and insect chorus and has entered a new phase. That time of the morning where you look at yourself hard in the mirror, pause to pep-talk yourself up, then head off to tear a chunk out of the day with your freshly cleaned teeth.

Yes, it’s very quiet. Nothing but the creak of the trailer from time to time and the wheeze of my own breathing as I creep up a rise. For a moment, I feel blanketed by loneliness and a sense of being the only person on earth.

Perhaps the only person, but not the only creature. The road is narrow, twisty and unforgiving and as I round a blind corner there are dogs. Joke dogs, but barky, growly, snappy dogs.

Three chihuahuas spring out of the grass and begin their pursuit. I stop and laugh in their thin little faces, they look so funny. So serious. So ‘objects in the mirror are larger than they appear’. But then I began to think about how they’re in the middle of the road on a blind corner and all it would take is one car to come around that bend and snuff those yaps right out.

“Go home, dummies,” I say, then slowly begin to pedal off. They chase, I pedal faster and I watch in my mirror as they disappear from view.

On and on and here’s a hill and there it goes. I’m still waiting. For the real climbs that surely must begin today. The next corner. Perhaps there’s one lurking around the next corner? Nope, nothing yet. Long, steady, consistent grade climbs rear their heads more often, but I find them quite soothing. Flick flick, down to a comfy, sustainable gear and just stick at it until I’m over.

After one such ascent, I crest the rise and noodle down towards a sign. Johnson’s Shut In State Park. I don’t know what a shut in is, but I do know that water has done what water does and I need to perhaps find somewhere to, you know, use a hand blow dryer.

In a clearing devoid of trees, I see a sad building squatting there. It looks new and quite fresh off the standard tourist building production line, yet the parking lot is virtually empty. As I draw closer, even I can sense how it yearns for the footfalls of nature lovers and their reluctant progeny.

Precious stays outside while I, under the guise of ‘just looking’, wander around looking for the restroom. Mission accomplished. As I emerge, having spent some time inspecting the curious flushing system, I notice some binoculars on the landing and head on over to stick my peepers to its. I peer out into the distance, not sure about what I’m looking at. Looks like a valley full of boulders. And no trees.

It’s then I notice a board with information on it. Ok, I get it. Years ago, this was a well-treed and sexy valley where nature lovers could come and be all naturey and bird lovery. Then, in 2005, a reservoir breached and 1.3 billion gallons of water went WHEE! and rushed through the valley and carved out the dull mess I see before me. Trees were swept off their feet and the facilities that were here before had their knees taken out from under them.

How have I never heard about this?

This information moved the needle in my brain from ‘only interested in the restroom’ to ‘let’s totally look around.’ Downstairs I go. Right up to the automatic doors and into the tourist information center. Inside I find dry and lifeless bones, desiccated insects, rock walls and very lifelike naturalists hovering, ready to pounce on questions curious tourists may have.

Stopping by a table of ‘please touch’ items, I pick up a jawbone and feign great interest while I ponder what to do about being the only person in here and the only object of attention for the naturalist. As I admire the toothy jaw, my eyes drift down to to table to the many skeletal items laid out there.

Now, I don’t know much, but I can tell you this. Drawing on my vast knowledge of animal skulls (and a human one I once picked up by accident – long story), I can tell you that there were no horse, cow or sheep heads there. One looked a little goaty. But the others? No idea. This is not my country. All these animals are alien and weird.

I could find out what each one is if I just ask that naturalist over there pretending to straighten some pamphlets. Do not turn head. Flick eyes over. Think about it. Put bones back. Check out next display.

In the gift shop area, I almost buy a Greetings from Missouri postcard with a donkey on it. But then there’s the hassle of posting it, I think, stuffing it back in its little slot. It takes a few seconds to remove my fingers from it. The regret is adding a time in its appointment calendar when it’ll come back and remind me that I didn’t buy it even though I wanted to.

With one last gaze around the displays and without making eye contact with the naturalist, I back towards the door, hands clasped behind my back in an ‘hmm, isn’t this all interesting’ fashion. Turn, then out.

“Thanks for coming!”

“No worries,” I say, startled, and throw up a wave as I walk out the door. Regret makes another appointment regarding my desire to ask questions but being too shy to do so.

As I mix up a Gatorade cocktail outside, I examine some of the stone garden. Read some plaques. Learn stuff. But before long the lack of shade and the glare of the sun bouncing off the white pavement right into my eye hastens my departure.

One sign reads “An Ozark Oasis.” I think you need more trees for that.

Back on the road and away we go. The trees are changing again, and now pines line the road to escort me through these passes. Even though there are a couple of good hills, I’m not hurting. But still counting down the miles until I can turn over another map panel. Panel turning equals progress and I need to feel like there is progress, else my brittle ego cracks and the fissures work away at my motivation.

A bridge. The water below is crystal clear and green. More and more, I’ve noticed this change. In Kentucky, rivers were brown and mysterious. Here, they’re glassy and all ‘look what’s in me’. They’re also incredibly inviting on a hot day and right now, I just want to get down there and not even take off my shoes and just wade right in. Flop down dramatically. Sit there. Fall back. Submerge.

But hunger snaps me out of it. Push on. Find a feed bag.

By the time I reach Centerville, I decide I’m making good enough time to actually have a sit-down lunch with a plate and chewing and contemplation. Slim pickings in Centerville though.

What one needs at a time like this is a giant arrow to point the way, and there’s one right there. Three of the lights work and flash their noses along the spine of the arrow. The arrow itself points to the 21 Diner, which at first glance looks haunted and empty. I enter and find it charming and quaint. Old-fashioned coke wallpaper runs a rail around the walls, red booths invite me to sit. Records hang on the wall and each booth reminds me of Arnold’s on Happy Days. In the middle, random grocery items and a book area that’s a little reminiscent of a library but probably isn’t.

The lady at the counter waits.

I order a chicken BLT and don’t expect much, but when it arrives, it’s seriously top notch. The lettuce fresh, the chicken tender. I pour my coke into the crushed ice-filled cup and it spits a little in my face as I take slug. Glorious fizz down my parched throat.

Refreshed and thoroughly charmed, I feel ready to tackle the afternoon. Not far to go to my stop and so far, the Ozarks haven’t bitten my legs too hard. Just little nips. I head off, belly full but waiting, always waiting for those hills. I spy a giant spider’s lair and it triggers the thought that I have seen one of these nearly every day since I started. Giant sections of a tree branch wrapped in a fine net of web and containing a cemetery of bodies and dark looking objects. What kind of spider makes a home like that? Is it big? Does it jump on your face when you get close?

I’m not going to find out.

The Ozarks hold back their punch. I wait, it never comes, and before long I’m rolling into Ellington, my designated stop for the night. I turn and head towards my accommodations. Now here is an establishment trying to elevate itself from the from the smoking embers of cheap motel mundaneness.

The Shady Rivers Motel could look just like a hotel, but it chooses to make an effort. The impressive columns that stand tall and proudly as they hold the awning suggest an impressive nobility. One you know it won’t have when you get in there, but you appreciate the effort.

After checking in and confirming this, I slow-walk to the shops, pick up some pull-top peaches for my panniers, snacky things, and on a whim, a tub of ice-cream DIBS. Fast walk it back to the room so they don’t melt before I get a chance to eat them.

Later, after inhaling an entire tin of peach halves, I sit on top of my very attractive duvet, admire the hotel room art – I have a serious obsession with the art choices in cheap hotels – and methodically pop DIBS into my mouth one after the other. The weather channel keeps me company. I can’t seem to stop shoving these ice-cream nuggets in, but I don’t even notice until the entire tub is empty. Hmmm, that’s probably not good.

This thought is confirmed about 10 minutes later when I’m caught off-guard by the need to throw them all up. Now, see, I have no issue with throwing up bad food, but who the hell throws up ice-cream? Sacrilege. But perhaps too much sweetness so soon after riding confused my stomach and it just said ‘enough!’ and decided the best way to handle it was to get rid of it. I felt fine after it was gone.

Which is pretty much how I feel most days after I finish riding. When the pain of the day is just a dull memory imprinted on my aching legs and behind my slowly falling-asleep eyes.

Fine. I feel fine.

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We interrupt our regular bloggish for a quick video that I’ve been meaning to make for a while. I’ve poked around a little on sites to see how people are reacting to Precious being an auto-tweeting awesome bike. I notice that there seems to be a little confusion around certain things, and I think some folks are over-thinking it.

Then I saw a comment on Precious’s Twitter – from someone I also follow – saying that they didn’t believe his tweets were automatic. It upset me a little. I’ve since decided I don’t care what people think. It’s much easier to be a critic than a creator so I’ll leave people to it, but I wanted to make a layman’s video to show a little of what’s going on for anyone who might be interested in what’s actually going on.

I’ve also reset my LIVESTRONG goal to a very ambitious $5 per mile of the 4,262 route. That makes it now $21,310. Can’t wait to see how close I can get. Thank you to everyone who helped me reach my initial goal. You rock the Casbah.

Now, about today’s blog. Ugh. I’m still writing it right now but I need to beddikins soon as tomorrow has the potential to be a GIANT day. So…much as I want to, I might not finish it. The reason is simple: I need to continue to push on to stay on a schedule that won’t see me freeze in the Rockies. Just know that they will be released as they are done, and the next couple should be a smidge shorter. I think. Maybe.

Ride on!

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Flicking from gear to gear I hear…nothing. Precious has a new chain and it’s flawless in its movement. Silent. Smooth. Unmolested. I wonder how long it will last, the easy amble from cog to cog. No hesitation, no grind. How long until I panic on a hill and realize too late the gear is too big, the climb too angry, and begin my mash. Mash on down lower and apologize, apologize, always apologize to the bike.

“Last time. Last time, I promise.”

I hum along. The morning air fills my lungs with hope. This is going to be a long day, but I have big plans and much determination. It is bubbling in the lower quadrant of my heart.

Racing. I am racing to Farmington. Racing to a potential beer paid for by a complete stranger, who for some reason has a desire to meet me. To subject his family to me. Six thirty, I say. I will be there by six thirty this afternoon.

It’s an ambitious goal. Ninety miles in hilly terrain. With me. Being me.

There is a vague sensation in my legs. An ache and a question. Why, my quads ask, why do we feel like that rest day was a bust?

It’s a valid question, but I’m too dumb to answer it. I took the day off, it’s not really my fault it wasn’t as restful as it should’ve been.

I mean, ok. So, I rode my bike on a rest day. Big deal. Hotels are always a long way out of town and in order to get Precious to the bike shop there was no option but to ride there. And if I’m to stick to my plan of getting him a new chain every 1,000 miles, I’m going to need to ride him to the store.

Strange feeling too, dropping him off at the Carbondale Bike Shop and seeing him wheeled away by Cho. Into the back room. I just leave him there. With a complete stranger. Trust issues. Yes, I have them.

But then off I went to slack off in a funky cafe and twitch while I waited many hours for him to be ready. Even sticking my face in a bucket-sized latte and enjoying a moment of quiet reflection over the yogurt covered crunch of granola didn’t calm me down. What if there was something else wrong with him? Did I wait too long with the chain? Technically, we are at 1,300 miles on that thing, and who knows if changing it this often will actually make the cassette last longer.

This whole thing is a gamble.

Back in the hotel room that afternoon, I park him against the air conditioner and notice his frame is dripped with streaks of ancient liquids. A mix of Gatorade and water and probably my sweat. Rag out, water warm, I clean his frame to match the glint of the chain. Stand back. Admire.

Next, a mad scramble to get laundry done and write up a blog entry and look at photos and call my Dad and my brother and get a dose of family support. I tend to sores and weeping insect bites. Wait, insect bites aren’t supposed to weep, are they? I inspect one, an angry welt across my ankle that looks more like an acid burn than a bite.

Thinking back, I realize its circumference has been slowly spreading. Like a front line advancing, its troops are on the move and trying to claim more territory. Tiny clear bubbles glisten on its surface.

Now I’m no doctor, and I’m not from a land where this exists, but I’m pretty sure these wicked bites are actually a poison ivy rash. I think back to falling in the ditch about oh, um, seven days ago and thinking ‘huh, that looks like poison ivy’ as I pulled myself out of the weeds and bracken and brambles.

But then nothing happened, so I figured I was mistaken. That it wasn’t poison ivy at all.

It’s not just my ankle either. My poor knees are dotted with it. Just below the knee actually. I tend to rest my pedal there as I stand and drink on a hill to stop the bike rolling back. So every time I do this, I must rub more of the urushiol on them.

Great work, dumbass. I google it and confirm my suspicions. Yup, and I’ve been scratching like crazy.

My body is falling apart. All over. My lips are cracked and dry and windburned from yesterday, which had made eating the hot wings the night before very interesting. My poor hands, tender and tight from riding in wet gloves are now cracked and peeling. Sunburn on my arms is rashy and I’m in denial about it blistering. I’m angered by the sunscreen not working, despite re-applying it during the day. Angry at myself for trying to ride for LIVESTRONG and setting a bad example with the sunburn thing. Australians are supposed to know better.

So the rest day was kind of a bust what with the riding and the body folding in on itself.

But today is a new day and off I ride. Legs dotted pink with thick cream and arms hidden beneath some SPF arm coolers I found tucked in the bottom of my bag.

I make my way out of Carbondale in ok time, marveling at the amount of travel for a Sunday and kinda creeped out by the drunk who says ‘nice bike’ to me at a traffic light.

Plod. Plod along. Quiet in my head. Not really thinking. Just moving and waiting for inspiration to strike.

Wrong turn. Or should I say, lack of turn as I realize that in my barely awake daze I have gone past the turn point. Only about a mile, so not too far. Turn around. Go back.

Back on track and I creep through pokey, shaded lanes and before I know it, I’ve missed another turn. This time due to distraction and a general inability to read maps correctly when too busy lalala-ing about the prettiness of the day and having ‘isn’t life great’ thoughts.

I’d seen a stop sign ahead that didn’t seem to be on the map, so I’d followed my gut.

My gut is full of it. Doesn’t know anything. And it causes me to swing around the corner at a speed not correct for the number of corrugates on laying in wait there. Water bottles bounce out of Zimmerman, right out from under the mesh net, and for a moment I think something catastrophic has happened.

But no, it’s Zimmerman trying to tell me I’m going the wrong way. Trying to get my attention so that I LOOK UP and see the sign informing me that I should continue straight, and not follow this ‘gut turn’.

But I ignore Mr. Zimmerman’s warning and go right, as gut directed. This time, it takes much longer to realize my mistake.

“That’s not right,” I say to no-one in particular as I find myself stopped at the corner of old highway 13. I could just follow it straight to Murphysboro, but I’m too confused to realize that and decide to go back to where I made my mistake. More miles I will regret later in the afternoon when I’m trying to make it to Farmington by 6.30pm.

Such an ambitious time I’ve set myself. I have forgotten one thing: Ambition is the half-baked pie in the oven of potential disaster.

A few stiff climbs to wake up the legs and before long I’m in Murphysboro. Pausing, I look at the map and the stabbiness of the elevation chart. It is then I lock down the decision I’d half-made earlier: I’m taking the Mississippi Levee Alternate Route. It’s less hilly. There will be plenty of hills later in the day to depress me, so why dose up on them now?

Off we head, a girl and her bike and a wayward trailer. Off on this alternate route with dreams, and hopes, and joy. Off and running and completely failing to notice this route adds an extra six miles to the day.

Flood plains. Crops. Open and airy land. Big Muddy River. It’s the name, not just an observation. Water lies in sheets, crops spread their girth as far as they can. Grey birds, legs long and water proof, tiptoe through the mud.

I creep along the shoulder of the road, whistling in tuneless distraction.

Miles trip by and suddenly I’m attacked by hunger near Neunert just as I spy a welcome shady tree. Time for a pannier peach. It’s juicy and dribbles and quells the growl in my belly a little.

With regret, I leave the shade and the teasing tone of a Pabst sign.

Wrong turn. Again. Looking for a Levee Road and not Little Levee Road and ultimately trusting my gut too much again. Looking for the highest point, I figure that must be the Levee Road and head up there. This must be right, I think, then proceed cautiously. Water stares at me on my left and I wonder if it’s overflow or the actual Mississippi proper.

Cars. I haven’t seen any in forever. The breeze is wafty and hot, the grass dry, and silence is broken only by insects chatting and frogs clearing their throats in croaky tones.

Down the Little Levee Road, then back to the main one. Now THAT’s the Mississippi. It’s flowing fast and I come over all Huck Finn at the sight of it. Does it always flow that quickly? Huck must’ve been booking it down there.

A deer pops up the side of the levee in front of me and over the side towards the river, its white tail flapping and waving hello. I say something out loud and it stops to glare at me. Decides I look sketchy and tears off back from whence it came.

We are rolling freely along beside the river now and I see barges from time to time, signs of activity and commerce and coal. At a railway crossing, progress is halted for a never-ending train with carriage after carriage of mystery contents. Where have they been? What have they been doing? Does anyone ride the rails anymore?

The levee road spits me out onto a busier stretch of road with more traffic and barely any shoulder to speak of. It’s really steamy now. Just like every other day. I’m not in the mood for this but I have no say in the matter. Suck it up.

As I head towards Chester, the hills come back into my life. Like an ex you never want to see again, I run into them at every turn. Oh, hi hill. Yeah, how you going. Oh, I see you’re still as painful as before.

“Home of Popeye”

Chester has finally entered my world and bragging about its connection with a large forearmed sailor, and all I’m thinking of is lunch. Food. Cold drinks. Food. Lunch. Eat. Time.

There is a decision to be made. Yes, I would like to make it to Farmington to meet Patrick, the guy who’s kindly offered to buy me dinner, but I’m not sure I have it in me. If enthusiasm is a ballon, mine has a very slow leak. A slow, painful leak that might cut my day short here in Chester at a cool motel.

At an intersection, my gut directs me to turn right. That there will be food that way. You know what food is that way? McDonalds. But at this point, I don’t care. I pull into the parking lot, throw myself through the door and order the biggest, fruitiest, iciest drink I can find. And a chicken sandwich to wash it down.

The drink is inhaled at speed and I feel the ice right behind my eyes and hugging my brain. It is delightful. I seem to eat fast now. No time to enjoy. Just EAT and the sandwich is gone. The effect is pretty immediate.

It is the chicken sandwich of confidence. I can make it to Farmington, just a bit later than I had intended. Hills, shmills. No bother. Sure, there are a few jagged bits there that fill me with dread, but dread’s nothing but a feeling you have to choke out on the carpet so you can sneak out while it’s sleeping.

I’ve got to stop saying this, but how bad can it possibly be? I want to be in Missouri today. I want to get another state under my belt.

I’m going for it.

I text Patrick that I’m running late. That the time is probably going to be more like 7.30 or 8 o’clock and that I understand if he’s unable to make it. He replies that it’s not looking good, so that relieves some pressure.

Out of town, I zoom down a hill and suddenly throw out the anchors to take a photo of the Mississippi river sign and bridge. My grin is wide as I trundle over, though there is absolutely no shoulder so I’m hoping no cars get stuck behind me. Their impatience is aggravating when it comes.

Missouri. I am here. And I have a photo of your welcome sign to prove it.

The roads are immediately flatter and good. I’m strangely chuffed by it. Through crops and flatland I ride. And then it starts. Slow at first. A few little hills. I’m not quite in the Ozarks yet, but this is taster country. A prep day.

Between St. Mary and Ozora, I am punished for my foolhardiness most cruelly. The tiredness is a’creeping and a’sneaking, and I have to walk for the first time that day up a long slow hill in the afternoon heat.

I know I will make it to Farmington. I just don’t know when. At a gas station near Ozora, a man tells me I’m crazy for riding in this heat. I want to punch him in his chubby little air-conditioned face until his mouth comes out of the back of his head. But I just squint at him and chuckle as I suck down my gatorade.

No time to dawdle punching people in the face.

The afternoon is dying. Faster than I had anticipated. I can feel it. Shadows are stretching out and the heat is rising to the threshold of its power.

Push on. I am leg tired, and even though I struggle for as long as I can up some of these hills, I splutter out on more and more and just give up. Just walk in the afternoon sun.

The country has changed. Rolling hills but with wineries and a different spirit.

The cold coke can I had stashed in the back pocket of my jersey is no longer keeping my back cold, so I pop the ring pull and slam it down. The brown foam tickles as I stand and contemplate the afternoon ahead.

More signs for wineries. Cars give me a wide berth. I wonder what they think as they see me push this rig up hills. I can almost hear people saying “Wow, If she’s pushing now, she should see what’s ahead!”

I hope they’re not saying that.

A white pickup comes down a hill in front of me and goes by. I hear it slow down somewhere behind me, the growl of its engine as it maneuvers and turns around.

My cranks turn. My speed remains constant. I am in thought. Pedal.

Growl, I hear it rev and come back at me from behind this time. What to do? I try not to look as it pulls up and drives slowly beside me.

“Are you Janeen?”

Startled at this development, I turn towards the voice. Weird. In the middle of nowhere, in a state I don’t know, and here’s someone driving up beside me and asking me if I’m me.

And I am me.

“I’m Darrell,” he says through his open window. “I’m a friend of Patrick’s!”

We are awkwardly moving, and rather than continue driving on the wrong side of the road, he says he’ll meet me a bit further up the road. Off he goes.

Well, that was odd. I roll down a hill, then back up and grind slowly. He’s not at the top of that one. Where was he going to? I am puzzled by this encounter, but my main thought is just how awesome I’m going to look when I get to him. Climbing in heat makes my face un-naturally red. I look beat and sunburnt and my legs are still covered in pink patches of poison ivy cream. My lips are flaky. Ugh.

Perhaps he’ll offer me a ride into town? Will I take it? I’m at 98 miles, would I sacrifice my first 100 mile day for a lift? No, I think. If he asks, I will turn him down. I will say no.

Will I?

I find him parked in the gravel parking lot on an uphill corner. Pull in. Say hi.

People are actually awesome. It turns out he’s come out to make sure I make it in to Farmington. He and Patrick have been talking on the phone and were worried that it would get dark before I got there. I feel funny in the tummy and for once it’s not hunger.

“Oh, I got you this,” he says, handing me a clear plastic zip lock bag filled with an assortment of energy bars and gels, then proceeds to tell me that this road is where a lot of cyclists do their hill training. I can see why.

“Just wanted to make sure you made it,” he says.

Grateful. It’s just a word people throw about, but when it has meaning behind it, it’s very powerful and I have to say I’m grateful. Grateful that someone has taken an interest and is looking out for me. That these little encounters happen.

Darrell takes my photo and gives me his phone number in case I decide to hang around. He’d like to buy me dinner and he’d like his family to meet me. At no point does he offer me a lift and I’m glad. Because I’m not sure I could’ve resisted.

“You’ve still got an hour-and-a-half of daylight,” he says. And only 12 or so miles to go, I think. Yeah, that’s doable. I tell him I better get at it, then pull away confidently.

Bathed by the glow of the golden hour, I push on. I am suddenly alive, though very tired. My legs are solid blocks of blech, but the road is now flowy. I am flying. I am hammering. I will beat the night. I will win!

Slog it out. Slog slog. I turn a corner and am riding into the low light of a sun keen to get off the stage. If I can barely see the road, I think, chances are someone driving from behind won’t see me. I pull off to the side when I hear cars coming. This bad light section doesn’t last long and I’m really going for it now. Feeling good. I’m going to make it.

Lower. Lower.

In a shady straight, I am passed by a large pickup. A young man standing in the back turns and salutes.

“White power!” he whoops.

Did I just see that? I think it might’ve just pushed me back three feet. I think it might’ve just pushed evolution back three feet, actually.

But I go on.

Rising up on a long corner, the sun is orange with impatience and tapping its foot on the horizon. The hues of the earth have changed. Greens are warm and soft. Yellows are rolling in lazy, effortless sexiness.

On a straight, a red SUV pulls up to crawl beside me and the driver begins to speak out his window.

“I just wanted to check on you,” he says. “My wife saw you ride past a while back.”

He drives ahead and pulls into a driveway.

“My wife saw you and when I got home, she said she didn’t think you’d make it to Farmington so I had to come and check.”

He’s Australian and we chat for a bit. From a winery down the road. I’m aware, always aware of the time slipping under the door and the darkness falling, but I don’t want to be rude.

“I better keep going,” I finally say, and he wishes me well. Gives me directions to Al’s Place, the bike hostel in town, and I am emboldened by the encounter. Encounters like this wipe out the “white powers” and remind me of the general goodness of human beings.

I’m going to make it. I will make it.

I stop to attach my headlight and turn it on. It’s really coming fast now, the blackness creeping, and the light gives me confidence of being seen and seeing potholes in the road.

The last wink of the sun and it sinks. It’s gone. Goodbye. Just me now. Me and the road and the occasional flash of head or taillights.

I turn onto the 00 and it’s the town home stretch. Little white arrows appear from time-to-time on the shoulder of the road. Al’s Place. This way. I feel the heart of the town open up, the embrace of its good intent drawing me in.

And yet I get lost in the town. I’ve made it but I haven’t made it. The arrows disappear in the skirt of some roadworks and I try remember the directions given to me. Past the police station. Something about a court house.

I stop in the darkness and get out the phone, pray for a signal. A google search reveals two addresses for the bike hostel and I ride by each one. Nothing. Round the town grid I go, in the darkness and feeling beat up and bone tired. Searching. Searching.

I decide to go one block higher and there it is, recognized not by its address but by the front of the building which I’ve seen in a photograph just once.

The old county jail. Here is my home. Here is my salvation.

Glancing at the Garmin, I sigh. 114 miles. Those wrong turns have taken their revenge. As I call the number to get the door code, I find it has somehow crept up to 9 o’clock. I can’t even fathom how that happened. Door flung open, lights flipped on, room gasped at. This is better than a hotel. Comfortable furniture, soda in the fridge.

A decision is made.

I will stay here a day.

Freshly showered and sinking onto the cool leather of the sofa, I upload a photo and lie down with the laptop on my stomach. Just for a minute, I think. Just while the photo uploads. Forty-five minutes later I wake with a harsh twitch and the laptop burning my belly, the fingers of my left hand numbly hovering over the keyboard.

Pack up. Bed. My sleep is long and dead.

The next day, I walk around the corner to the Bauhaus Kaffee and drink and eat and sit and write and soak up the sense of being with people but not. I know this is a wasted day, but I need it.

I want to live at Al’s Place and spend every day here. For a second, I dream and plan what I would do and how I could craft a life around sitting in this cafe every day and living above the county jail.

But I’m just passing through.

Darrell arrives at 6.30pm with his son, Ian, and they take me to dinner. I eat a massively bloody and awesomely flavored steak and when the bill comes, I feel great discomfort at not being allowed to contribute to the cost. But am also incredibly humbled by the gesture. We chat about the trip and how they’ve been following, and about Patrick who was the one who told Darrell about me and I’m bummed to have not met him.

Later, sitting on the couch and working out the plan for the next day, I read some blog comments and emails from complete strangers. I wonder if people out there know how much their spirit and good energy is transferred through the ether and into me? If they know that sometimes a well-timed comment will lift me out of a dark place? It helps, knowing people are there. I’m not doing anything new or original – I meet people every couple of days who are doing the exact same thing – but each person’s journey is their own.

And this is mine.

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I suck at this. I am the worst. Most people, the more they do something the better they get at it. Not me. I slowly slide down the slippery sinkhole of gutwrenching suckage until you can barely make out the top of my head in the goo. I make a slight gurgling wet-lung sound as I go. The surface of the suck swamp ‘plops’ from time to time as I expel air.

Yes, I believe it is official. I am the worst cyclist ever. Worse than that relative you know who can’t even ride a bike.

Today is proving it. Over and over and over and yes, I get the message. This was a dumb idea. But I’m committed now. There is no stopping. All I have to do is keep turning the cranks. Keep the miles ticking by. Face each hill one at a time. Drink. Die. Ride. Pretty much in that order.

And you can’t say I wasn’t given an out for today. Pastor Bob had patiently shown me a short cut from Sebree to Carbondale. One hundred miles compared to one hundred and thirty five.

“Oh. Hmm,” I said. “I was planning to stay at Cave in Rock.”

He, being polite and hospitable, had told me about great catfish at Cave in Rock, and beautiful scenery, and just how nice it was and how you could catch a water taxi to Elizabethtown. Just charming. Then once again, he pointed at the map he had printed out. I followed his finger as he traced the shortcut route.

“This way is faster and flatter. The other way, though beautiful, is very hilly,” he said, cocking his head and making eye contact.

There was a look in his eyes as they connected with mine. As if to say “I want to make sure you are hearing me.”

I heard him. But the next day I’d ridden to Cave in Rock anyway because I’m a dumbbum. And here I was, experiencing what ‘a little hilly’ actually meant.

It really isn’t painful being a stubborn moron until you learn the lesson of whatever it is you’re being moronic about.

The morning starts off well enough. In fact, there is a gorgeous sunrise over the Ohio River and I’m up early enough to go down below my cabin and take a photo. It’s a good omen, to have something so beautiful illuminate the day.

I need a good omen. The feeling I have inside the pit of my stomach is dread.

Feet dragging. Slow packing. Not sure how, but I manage to get out of the room and drop off the key by 7.30am.

It’s not long and it’s on. A narrow road with blind curves, deceptive slopes and grumpy surfaces. I’m left struggling on a few steep uphills and find myself angrily giving up and walking. Today. Today will be like this forever. Locals fly by. Dogs bark. Roosters crow.

It’s a short ride to Elizabethtown, but it’s already set the tone for the day. That tone is in the key of ‘slog’ and I will sing it like a canary. One of those coalmine ones who catches a whiff of gas and dies. My face is already a picture of sweat seepage. Need to do a top kill operation on that.

As I roll into Elizabethtown I realize that it’s really just that I’m tired. Sure, it’s hilly and hot, but I can normally tolerate a lot before my brain shuts down. It’s shut down already. Thinks the rest day has already started, and here am I with a whole day’s worth of riding to do.

Breakfast. I’m going to sit down and have a damn breakfast.

I see a sign for a restaurant and tacked above, another handwritten sign saying “Fuel for cyclists”. It is a false omen, for when I ride up the street to the front door, there’s a note saying the owners are away for two days. Just my luck.

Down on the main street, I look at the word Restaurant on an older building and decide to take my chances. The place is almost completely empty, save for an elderly gentleman and a woman cleaning the counter.

“Do you do breakfast?” I ask from the doorway.

“Yup, sit anywhere you like.”

I choose a booth, scan the menu and before long I’m looking at a cheese omelet, pancake, coffee and giant orange juice. Pick, pick. Eating is still a problem and I’m not sure why. Surely I should be packing food away like nobody’s business. Blue. I’m feeling a bit blue. About the day ahead of me and the fear the Pastor Bob’s words have injected into me. I realize in that instant that I have become hill shy. That knowing what’s in front of me is dangerous. That to not know and to be surprised actually helps me get through the day.

Elevation charts, which are always deceiving, are not helping my brain prepare for these things. But it’s too late now. I’ve looked.

The elderly gentleman walks by.

“You rode that thing all this way?”

“Yep,”

“Through those hills?”

I nod.

“Be careful. Snake’s liable to get hold of you,” he says, and we both laugh. The only snakes I’ve seen so far have been dead on the road. He shuffles out and I see him take a long look at Precious.

Suppose it is strange. Riding by myself. In this heat. With that rig.

On my way out, I ask the waitress if I can take some ice for my bottles and she tells me to take as much as I need. Some people want to charge for it, but she’s free and easy with her frozen water.

Sucking in lungfulls of courage and pushing back the dread and tiredness, I shove off. It’s not that bad. A few long climbs in the Shawnee Park. Coal trucks galore.

And there before me, a sign for the Trail of Tears. Now THAT’s an omen. Before the end of today, there will be tears alright. Fat, salty tears. Called sweat. It’s getting hotter and hotter and I feel a strange headache stab me in my right temple from time to time. Sure. That’s great. Give me something else to complain about.

But it’s beautiful. I stop from time to time to snap a photo that is probably only interesting to me. Want to remind myself later of how the landscape changed. How the trees turned from one tribe to another. What the grass was like from one day to the next.

Rollers. Rollers. Long, long rollers fill my morning with pain and joy in equal measure. The thrilling downhill to get momentum, the sharp uphill where it all runs out. Many times I don’t make it to the top and there’s a scramble of gears as I try not to hurt Precious. Sometimes the gear selection is just plain wrong and I find myself standing and groaning as I Try. To. Turn. That. Crank. Over. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t and I grind to a slow, uphill halt. Quickly clip out before I fall. Walk it. Push. Argh.

The day soldiers on with me in it. Face flushed red and radiating the heat of a nuclear bomb, I am dragged along by it. Up down. Up down. Up.

The sign has a picture of a truck and 9% above it. I fly down the hill. Fly. Really fly. Navigate over the rough, narrow bridge at the bottom before seeing how far I can get up the other side.

Dog. Then there’s a dog beside me. A great lumbering beast of a bloodhound. He makes no sound, save for the click of his nails on the road and the heave of his breathing. His jowls flap and his tongue is flying like a flag.

I stop, mid-hill, not sure if this beast is about to eat me whole.

“Go HOME!” I say in my big girl voice and he slopes off to the bushes. Sniffing around. I see bushes move, hear twigs snap under his weight, then he pops out and looks at me.

I watch as he lopes over the road to the other side and into the bushes there, his giant head glued to the ground one minute and flinging saliva around the next.

It’s steep where I’ve stopped, so I push the bike a little further up to where it’s not so steep. Push off again.

He disappears. And then he’s beside me and running. Then down in the ditch and running. Then crossing the road, still running.

And then he’s gone.

I pull up at the top of the hill to catch my breath, suck down some water, and look back. Nowhere to be seen. A car passes.

Clipping in, I wobble off.

All slobber and languid lope and he’s right back with me, looking at me from time-to-time as if to ask “Where are we going?”

Each driveway we pass has me hoping it’s his. That he’ll give me one last look and go home. Because it’s hot out here for a human on a bike. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a running dog. Worry. That dog is gonna stroke out. Worry. Why won’t he go home?

Finally, a long downhill where I figure I can lose him. I hammer down and he’s gone. Safe. Free. Cruising along and argh! there’s this heaving form of fur and sweat and flapping tongue right beside me again.

When I have to walk up a hill, he wanders around patiently biding time until I get to the top. Then he runs with me again. His movements are relaxed, but I can tell he’s hot.

A crossroads ahead. A gas station. I’ve pulled away from him again so I don’t know where he is, but after I park the bike I see him jog in through the pump area towards me. His mouth is white with foam, his coat glistening with sweat.

“I’m getting you some water, dog,” I say.

In the cool air of the store, I explain the situation. A girl looks out the door.

“Aw, Winston,” she says in a tone part love and part ‘aw, grandpa’. “He likes to follow the bikers in.”

“He’s been with me for 3 or 4 miles,” I say after we get outside, then watch as he inserts his massive head into a bucket of water. It’s a load off my mind. He will live. He is loved.

It’s sad to leave Winston behind, but also a relief to have someone to hold him while I ride away.

Goodbye, sir. Ours was a brief relationship. A beautiful distraction that got me through a tough part of the day. But now, I must away. I must make it through this entire day.

Now it’s a real slog, but I just keep on going, mentally checking off miles and calculating arrival times. Drinking. Turning pedals. Counting down.

It starts to cloud over and it’s sort of cooler. But it doesn’t get really cool until I turn into the Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge. It’s pretty and shady and the hills seem to have abated. I begin to enjoy it again. About 10 miles to go, which is a signal to me that I can actually start getting really greedy with the water. I’ll make it to Carbondale ok. I’ll make it on what I’ve got.

Like most things I’m close to getting, time stretches out until its almost unbearable. An idyllic scene. Seen it. beautiful lake. Yeah, yeah. Where’s the town.

A few climbs are thrown in to make me really work for it. The light is sinking, but it’s still not headlight time. As a precaution, I flip on my rear lights. Not much further, right?

In town, I take the main drag to go find some hotels. What’s a few more miles between friends? I end up in a Quality Inn with a funky smell, but I don’t care. It’s next door to a wings joint. My goal is clear.

Later, one beer in my belly and quite drunk from it, I feel pride in having stuck it out. Even with the doubt. Even with the pain and the heat and the general lethargy, I made it through and tomorrow I can sleep in and not do anything I don’t feel like doing. It will bring me back so that I can do another brick of days.

I just wish I didn’t suck so much at the whole bike riding thing.

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Rules of the Road.
1. Shade will always be on the opposite side of the road to you.
2. If you don’t see cars for miles, when you’re about to reach the crest of a steep hill, there will be a sudden rush-hour from all directions.
3. If an insect wants to bite you, it will do so at the worst possible time. Like when you’re sweating up a hill and can’t take your hands off the bars to swat it away. And then it will deliver a stinging pain to you as though injected on a hot, poisoned, acupuncture needle.

I am parched. Completely parched. The water from my bottles is so hot it runs down my throat and simply makes it dry. For the last two miles, I have been riding waves of hills and thinking about one thing: the next rest stop. Shade is hard to find, though I find myself continually scanning the road ahead for it.

Eyes squinting into the distance. That 1.000 yard stare to nowhere cool.

Sometimes I’m tricked. I see it at the top of a climb near some trees. But then I get closer and the image will collapse like poorly folded origami and reveal itself to just be a mirage of heat and gas and gotchasucker attitude.

My start had been late. Intentionally. I figured it wasn’t going to be a long day and John had mentioned perhaps swapping some advice on the road ahead, since he was going where I had been and I… well, I was just going.

We roll through the streets of Sebree around 9 looking for somewhere to eat and arrive at a place with the word Kangaroo in the name. Standing in front of the hot glass of the food dispenser, I eye the tightly wrapped biscuits with edges of slick bacon poking out. They glisten under the golden bulb.

John looks similarly struck mute by their appearance.

“You know, we passed a dairy bar and they had a sign out for breakfast,” he says.

“You wanna go there?”

“Well, I don’t really min…”

“Let’s go there.”

“Ok.”

Our exit is quick and we ride a block or two back in the direction we came.

At the counter, I order a bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. Inquire about orange juice.

“We only have soda,” says the server.

I have only recently started to consume soda on a regular basis. A coke. Usually if it’s exceedingly hot and about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve ridden a long way. I slam it down and wait for the eye watering moment where the fizz hits and love every minute of it.

But I’m not ready yet to have it for breakfast. Water. Water will have to do.

As John examines the elevation chart on my map for his day’s ride (he has an older version of with no chart), my sandwich arrives and I take a distracted bite.

And then I pay attention. The bread is thick and made crunchy by the butter slathered on the outside of its freshly toasted glory. It hits my lips and my tongue and my eye twitches a little with the joy of it. The bacon is salty, the egg not too oily. But it’s the butter that has my devotion. The tips of my fingers are slick with it and I lick it off digit by digit.

“This is actually not bad,” I say between mouthfuls.

That breakfast seems so long ago now. I gradually make my way through this hazy landscape. It’s getting hot very quickly and I pull over to take a photo of a collection of eagles circling above me. I think they’re eagles. Perhaps buzzards? Perhaps they know something I don’t know?

Further on, I see two rise from a corpse in the road and screw up my nose as I ride past its entrails and lifeblood on the sizzling hotplate of a road.

Hotter still. A few climbs in full sun. It’s the full sun that gets me. That drains and sucks the life from me. But on I go. On. I am in a section where there are no service stops for 22 miles and although I have plenty of water, I know that it will boil and bubble and be very uninviting for my throat by the end of that.

Turning onto a wide baking road I spy a giant sign indicating “Flagman ahead”. The asphalt is new and smooth here, and I wonder if I’m to endure another spell of that ‘Fresh Oil’ smell and blackened tires.

Straight I go. Forward. The compacted dirt by this new road is broken by cracks where water has run, probably in a recent storm. I go up a small incline then breach the surface of the day. Ahead I see the ripple of movement in the distance. Of gravel trucks and a flagman walking towards me, pulling something.

Although it seems close to the eye, the distance is deceiving and it takes me a while to get up to the yellow-coated stop/slow sign holder. It is a woman, heavily tanned and squinting into the sun. She is pulling a small piece of luggage on wheels. I’m not sure what’s in it, but as I pull to stop by her, she points and Zimmerman and says:

“I need one of those. Stop me dragging this thing around.”

“You don’t want one of these,” I say. She really doesn’t.

She says something into her walkie-talkie, then tells me that it shouldn’t be long, but that I should try keep as far right as possible as there are a lot of gravel trucks going in and out.

As she flips her sign around to SLOW, I say “that’s the only speed I do,” and we both laugh as I pull away.

I creak and groan along. Even though it’s flat it’s very black and very hot and very roadworky. I pass a line of gravel trucks waiting their turn to dump their loads, then I’m waving to the workman as they spread and cajole the tar into submission. Once past them, more trucks, a roller, and eventually the flagman for the other side.

We nod at each other, but I’m still not done. I wind up an incline, snuggle up to the very edge of the new tar to let empty trucks go by, and on for more miles.

Eventually it ends, but my torture has barely began. I head deeper and deeper into the cauldron. The long straights roll out before me, rippled slightly like a picnic blanket being flapped free of crumbs.

For agonizing miles there is absolutely no shade whatsoever. Not even a hint. Trees are shy participants in this scene, choosing to be far away from this black line across the landscape. I continue to stop and drink every so often, knowing that the water is too hot, the quench will not come, but I must be very close to Marion now and then I shall have some relief. Then I shall go into a building, any building, and I will be shaded by its love and quenched by any liquid I can get my hands on.

But for now. Now I cook.

Roadworks again, but this is different. This is sticky. So sticky and new that at one point, I run a bit close to the edge and the road slips away and crumbles off like cookie dough. I notice as a car passes that it’s leaving a trail on the surface and now that I think about it, my tires feel like they have more resistance than normal. Like I’m riding in treacle. Like the road is unwilling for me to leave. It likes my company.

I crest a hill and see a nice downhill stretch out in front of me, with the end of the new tar near the bottom. As I fly my sticky way down, I notice the unevenness of the ending, the gravel and messiness that splutters out in a stretch of about 40ft.

Forty sticky, gooey feet. Tiny bits of gravel click against my fenders and are flying skyward in my wake. The sound is suction, and even once I’ve passed this section it continues.

Something is wrong. I ride further and think this. Have I got a puncture? Why is the bike so sluggish? What’s going on?

Pulling over onto the grassy edge of the road I see the problem. My tires now have a new coating of tar on them. Gravel appears in it like nuts on an ice-cream cone. I attempt to scrape it off, but it’s thick and wet and won’t budge, even when I take a stick to it. Rather than waste time, I determine that riding on the road will probably dislodge it. Eventually. And so off I go.

The next few miles are filled with random flingings of gravel off the tire and into my periphery, the not-very-soothing sound of it hitting my fenders, and still the drone of this new tire coating on the road. I hope it comes off.

Finally, in Marion, I pull into a gas station with convenience store attached. I am practically drooling at the thought of cold water, but just before I head in I notice a Subway next door.

Lunch. I haven’t eaten. I’m gonna git me one of them thar footlongs and a giant cup of freezing soda and I’m gonna sit inside that place and eat the guts out of that thing and swill down that drink and get a refill and more ice and eat and more ice and more drink and I’m not going to be in the sun and I will be so happy I will probably cry a little. If I have any liquid left in me for tears because I’m pretty sure I sweated it all out earlier.

Turkey. Wheat bread. Sweet peppers. And the biggest cup money can buy. In my ears, my gulping is in THX stereosound and before I even take a bite I am up again to get another icy beverage.

I don’t care what I look like. More so than usual.

Before long, the energy of the sandwich has revived me. I can’t drink any more, but I fill the cup to the brim with ice and have the brilliant idea of putting it into my water bottles for the rest of the miles. Time to test my one insulated bottle and see how it holds out.

Refueled, refilled, remounting and I’m off.

Although it’s just as hot and painful, I reach for the fast melting bottle and take a slug. The ice is almost gone in it, but I top off my slug with a sip from the insulated bottle and hear the clink of ice in it. The joy in my heart thrums along with each stroke. The power in my legs is increasing after the chow and I start putting my back into it.

A ferry is in my future. Illinois is in my future. Kentucky is fast disappearing out my back window.

Hills, climbs, heat and then I’m flying along a straight section of road and see in the distance cars waiting by a river. I have made it.

Cave in Rock, Illinois is but a boat float away. A boat float and a wait in the full sun queue away.

Two ladies on Vespas pull up behind me to wait.

“I wish I had your energy,” says one. I look around and realize she’s talking to me. She doesn’t know how little energy I have. She doesn’t know that if she had my energy she’d probably drop that pretty pink Vespa onto the angry road and scratch the crap out of it. That after, she’d just lay there looking up at the sky and feeling very sorry for herself.

But I smile and laugh and we chat a little about where I’m going. It passes the time and it’s not long before people are starting their engines and pulling onto the ferry. I am last aboard, choosing an open spot to the right of the platform and pulling Precious up against the railing. I obsess for a second about something falling off and into the Ohio before calming down and stepping back to take a photo of the boy on the boat. (The boy being Precious, of course.)

And we’re off. The ferry heaves its way to the right and churns water behind it to change directions. To push its way up and off towards the bank on the other side. It is a peaceful, easy ride and there’s a perception of it being somewhat cooler. The water slushing around has a lot to do with that. I snap some photos of the dirty brown river and the rock cliffs of Cave in Rock.

It’s a quick ride and again, I’m last off. Past the line of traffic waiting to board, I turn right and into the park where I plan to camp. Plan to camp. Plan to. Plan. And then I don’t. As I wheel up the road I’m taken past the turn for the campground and find myself being carried towards the cabins.

They are not cheap, but even as the woman says the price, I decide I don’t care. That I need to be in a cool room and sitting on the floor of a shower while water rains down on me.

It is a good decision. The cabin is cute with a verandah that overlooks the river. After unpacking and showering and opening my eyes to what it is to be human again, I wander off into the afternoon air. Camera in hand, I head off to find the mythical Cave in Rock that this town is named after.

It is literally a cave in the rock. It smells damp and earthy. Pirates booty was once here, I think, then giggle to myself about how my booty is now here.

Time to get this booty to bed and falling asleep to rubbish TV.

Another tough day. Another hot one. Another one on the way, according to the woman at the lodge.

“Gonna break on Thursday though,” she says, cheerily. I nod, but my heart is suspicious.

Rules of the road.
4. Heat will make you hate. But you’ll get over it eventually.

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The heat is jumping up to punch me in my face. It rolls and pushes, jabs and uppercuts. Every part of me is bruised by the violence of it. I dream of a giant watermelon in a chiller. I dream of removing it from its chilly tomb and smashing it to the ground. Of picking up a broken jagged chunk and burying my face into the reddish wet flesh.

I dream about this for miles as the sun hits a high note that pierces every nanometer of me. I still have twenty miles to go today. Twenty miles. Damn this heat.

It’s been building all day, right from that first spurt of dawn.

Right from the get go.

Earlier.

It’s 6am and I’m breaking down camp. The cool and fresh air is tinged with a waft of warmth at its edges. I am methodical, meticulous even, as I fold and organize and lay out things ready to be packed in military formation into Zimmerman. A woodpecker taps away somewhere above me and I look up but cannot see it. It’s still magical to me, the idea of a bird who pecks wood. Musical. Foreign.

Will I get this packed before the rent collector pops by? It is doubtful. Even though the signs look good, I will no doubt find something to dick around with and suddenly the time will ooze out of the morning like the oil from the fresh roadworks yesterday.

I see Jim and Kathy – the cyclists from last night – slowly ride up the long hill to the gate of the campground around 7am. They have made it and I’m still standing here sipping on water and wrapping cord into a neat roll.

Ah, I don’t care. I should pay for the site. I expected to, it is wrong not to. And so I take my time. No rush. No panic. My hip hurts a little from my embarrassing spill yesterday, but I’m lucky in that no-one has seen me fall yet. It’s just Precious. Giving me the eye.

As I approach the gatehouse, I see a light and the attendant in there. I wonder how much it will cost as I pull up and say ‘hey’. I tell him I want to pay. Reach for my wallet.

He doesn’t get up. Simply lifts himself a little in his seat and peers over the window sill of his little house. Sees the trailer. Looks at me.

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” he says, and waves me on. “Have a safe ride.”

Again, I am caught unawares by the heart of people. The warmth flows from theirs to mine and I am embiggened by it. I’m aware that’s not a real word, but feel it encompasses the feeling more fully.

Parking Precious behind Jim and Kathy’s bikes, I say hi. They’re planning an alternate route today and just working it out. It’s nice to once again get a chance to speak with them. Their optimism and positive aura is plain to see and it also piles on to the warmth in my heart.

Breakfast snuffs that out.

To be gouged by a bear. That’s a thought I’ve had. Perhaps even by a raccoon. But to be gouged by a breakfast? That sneaks up on me and catches me with my spandex down.

Eleven dollars for complete and utter pump bilge. The bacon tastes as though it’s been fried in the bitter oil of one thousand failed relationships. I push the plate away before even finishing, which I’m aware is a dangerous thing to do. To not eat enough before a seventy mile day. But what choice? I worry it will make me sicker to eat it.

As I wheel away from the Rough River Dam Lodge, I notice it’s 9:30am. This is getting to be a habit and one I need to break. I have 75 miles to cover and the day has already slid me into its warming tray.

On the third ring, a woman answers the phone at the Sebree First Baptist Church. I let them know I’m coming, that I have every intention of using the cyclist hostel I’ve heard so much about. She puts Pastor Bob on the phone.

“Where are you?”

“Rough River”

“Oh, so you’ll be a while yet then. That’s 75 miles.”

To hear this, I shrink a little in physical stature. I know there is a long ride ahead of me, but I find that if I don’t think about it too much, just focus on the minute I’m in, I’m quite capable of just enduring and getting through. But to hear the distance come at me through the phone trips a little number 7 and a little number 5 in the theatre of my mind and they drift together, connect and flash.

Ugh. Time to push on.

Like most days, this day starts out ok. A few up and downs, but nothing too knee crunching. Up down. Up down. On a long up, I spy a tourer coming towards me but for once I am the one who doesn’t want to stop. He is flying, so he doesn’t either.

Fine by me. I reach the top and see a woman pushing her bike up the hill. I stop and say hi. She is British and confirms she’s with the other bloke. We don’t talk long. I can feel the pull on her from the man in front. She is being left behind. I don’t envy having to keep up with someone.

The only thing I have to keep up with is Precious. And Zimmerman (and he can be quite pushy when he wants to be).

On I go. As I reach the bottom of a long and peaceful descent I am half scared to heaven by a wild turkey suddenly flying out of the tall grass and doing his best ‘I wanna hit Fabio in the face but you’ll do’ attempt.

It’s a close call as he doesn’t get much height, but he’s barely out of my path by the time I whistle by. Typical, I think. That’s just the kind of accident I would have. No, she wasn’t taken out by crashing her bike or lack of fitness or by the heat. She was taken out by a wild turkey.

I think about that for a mile. Have a laugh. Need to pay more attention.

The climbs are getting tougher, my enthusiasm wanes. The temperature rises and starts to roll in waves. Shade is getting harder to come by.

A couple of hills roll by in quick succession and I’m huffing and puffing. Sweat runs along my eyebrows and gathers by the corner of my eye. I wait for the sting as it runs in.

Hot. Hotter. Hottest.

I kill another hill and as I level out I spy a house with a large above ground pool. Suddenly I am watching that scene in The Three Amigos where they’re plodding through the desert. Lucky’s canteen is empty. Ned gets a mouthful of sand. And there’s Chevvy pouring a waterfall onto his face and throwing the half-full canteen to the sandy ground. The look on Ned and Lucky’s face.

That’s the look I have as I eye that pool.

If I could stop my legs turning over. If I were a braver and wired more sneakily. I could stop, creep over, jump in that pool fully clothed, and be out before anyone even noticed.

But I keep going.

Things get difficult. And it’s the sun’s fault. And the road’s. Rollers, steep and spiteful, but probably totally tackleable if it weren’t so damn hot.

A ritual begins. Throw Precious into top gear and hammer hammer hammer down the hill and an effort to get as far up the next one as possible. I do this once. Reach the top. Another waves hi. I do this again.

“You can do it. You can do it.” I chant as I fly down the hill. As I stand on the cranks to reach the top, each stroke contains a word. You. Can. Do. It.

A third set.

You. Can. Do. You can’t do it. I clip out quickly. Stand perched over the bike. So close to the damn top on this one but I just ran out of juice. Hot. My face is flushed red. My skin radiates its own atmosphere.

I hear the familiar growl of a pickup approaching, the suck of its tires on the hot road. And here I am almost at the crest of this hill. The most annoying place to be.

Stepping to the side, I watch as it goes past, then begin the short walk to the top.

Just outside of Whitesville and on the way to Utica the shade is completely gone and I am defenseless to the onslaught of the day’s anger. Baked by it. It crushes my soul in its fist. My bad sunburn from the day previous is rejecting the multiple layers of sunscreen I have lathered on top of it today and it simply burns. I cannot escape it.

Doubt arrives on a waft of it and it’s that time of the day which I have christened the Doubt Hour. The hour where my brain questions my sanity and tries to get me to admit I’m not cut out for this.

But it passes.

Finally, the hills seems slightly less aggressive and I find myself at an intersection looking at yet another shuttered store. I see many of these. Every day. Wonder about their past. How long have they been closed? Were they ever thriving? There is some charm in the decay. But also sadness.

Rusty colored grubs dart across the road, furry and frantic. I wonder about their fate. Moth or caterpillar? Live or die? Do caterpillars feel the heat? After taking a photo of one in the gravel, a small winged friend lands on my glove while I take a drink. We ride off together and he hangs on for many miles, flattened by the wind whipping over my gloves. I stop, he stands up straight. I ride off, back to flat bodied surfing.

On a long climb he suddenly decides that’s enough freeloading for one day and is gone.

Corn. It’s everywhere. I’ve been riding through it all day. Sometimes green, sometimes brown. But always majestically tall. Riding comfortably now, I admire the wooden silo of a farm. The classic silver dome. So American. Just like their red barns.

In Utica, I pull into a gas station and buy my chocky milk, a gatorade and two waters. I sit in the eating area and drink the gatorade and milk in quick succession, curious of the layering that must be occuring in my stomach right now.

Outside in the shade, I refill my water bottles, then go back in and buy a Snickers. When I come out, a man calls me over to his car and asks me where I’m riding to. I tell him and he is suitably impressed. I spy a suitcase in his back seat and he explains he’s from California. A comedian driving to a show. I wish him luck, and he me, and then I’m off.

Better. I feel much better. I wind on through corridors of tall corn that I can’t see over. It’s still up and down, but not as bad as before. Up a hill I go and the dry corn beside me is caught suddenly by a breeze. I smile as it claps its stalks and husks together. It is applauding my effort and I appreciate the sound. Clap clap clap clap. Stillness. Clap clap clap clap.

I stop and look back it it. Another breeze and this time I hear the comforting flap of my flag on the trailer. The doubt has finally passed along with the intense heat. I will make it easily.

Getting close now. I’m on a long stretch of straight road with a wide shoulder littered with rocks and rubber. I grind. I mash. I’m so excited about nearly being there I’m in a wince-grin mood.

And then suddenly I’m embraced by Sebree. I turn left. Then right. Then swing into Church street and see my goal. The First Baptist Church.

A boy named Blake walks up to me in the parking lot and asks if I’m one of those TransAmerica cyclists. Then Pastor Bob is right there beside me and walking me down to the back of the building. We enter the cool, cool air and I leave Precious in the foyer. It’s youth group night. A big room, couches, pool table. The excitable chatter of small-town teens.

Pastor Bob shows me the shower, the bike book, the world map, and offers me water. Gives me a Kentucky State pin. I am trying to be coherent in my conversation, but I’ve noticed (and this happens every day), I can barely string a sentence together. Whenever someone asks where I’ve ridden from that day, it takes me an age to remember. I think it’s a common trait of TransAm cyclists.

We drag a mattress to the room I’ll be sleeping in and Bob tells me supper is at seven. That another cyclist called after me and hasn’t arrived, but that I should wait until he gets here so we can come up to the house together.

Two hours pass. While sitting on the mattress on the floor looking at maps, Voilet, Bob’s wife, appears at the door. She introduces me to John, an eastbounder who looks like he’s been put through the wringer today judging by the dampness of every part of him. After his shower, we walk up to the house together. The long shadows of the evening are pushing the heat out of the frame.

At the dinner table, Violet apologizes for the supper of leftovers, but she really shouldn’t have. My eyes adore pretty much everything on the table. A chicken noodle casserole, corn, potatoes and more. And there, right at my left hand, watermelon. Red. Juicy. Cold. My face melts into mellowness. Happy. Content. My dream from earlier, realized.

Sweet iced tea. I’ve never liked it before but every chance I get I’m drinking it now. So good. John has an Arnold Palmer, which Violet explains is Bob’s favorite drink, and we begin stuffing out faces and getting second and third helpings. Telling Violet our little stories.

My heart fills. Ticks over and rejuvenates. New cells, new blood, new joy. I’ve spent most of my day talking to myself (or Precious), so I yabber on and try not to be rude or say offensive things and still be myself. I listen. I savor.

My skin is sleepy.

Pastor Bob comes in and we gorge on the most delicious icecream. After dinner, Violet asks if we mind if she says a prayer for us and we hold hands as she does. Our bikes get a shoutout, as do all cyclists out there on the road.

The general gist is to “Keep them safe.”

Yes please. And cool, if I’m allowed to tack on an addendum. This heat is really quite annoying.

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Four thirty is a great time of day. If it’s in the afternoon.

The light from my phone alarm beamed down on me from on high, piercing my woolly-headed dreams and slapping my consciousness on its baby-bare arse. I say on high because it was hanging there in the air. Suspended in the darkness. A result of me suddenly discovering that the mesh thing hanging from the roof of my tent was actually a shelf to put things on.

I love this tent.

Sighing, I slid out of my sleeping bag and trudged over through the darkness of the campground to wash my face. I looked a wreck. Hair askew. Eyes baggy. Freckles made more prominent from a few days full sun and ineffective sunscreen.

Back at my tent, I began the slow process of breaking down camp. I’d pitched the tent quite close to a well lit area, so didn’t need to wear my headlight. A nice way not to draw attention to myself, although I did shine it on smaller things to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Even after I’d folded and packed and stuffed and wrestled, it was still dark.

Dawn was clearing its throat on the horizon.

And now, time for the test.

Back in Charlottesville I had bought a new headlight to replace the one that had walked off to go find fame and fortune. Gone baby, gone. Unfortunately, the only one available to replace it had been for mounting on handlebars. A fine state of affairs if you don’t have an attention-seeking handlebar bag in the way.

But fine, I thought. I’ll make do. It takes more than an oversight by a light company to grind me down. So the previous night I got all MacGuver-y in my soul and rigged a setup so that it and the battery pack attached to my right pannier. The only problem I could see was that it might be shining too high and potentially be a bit of a blinder for oncoming traffic. Is it better to be seen and blind someone so that they might hit you, or not be seen so that someone might hit you anyway?

Think it’s better that I can see where I’m going.

Shame. It washes over me and soaks me to the underthings as I pull into that damn McDonalds again. It’s the only real option.

Holy crap, it’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s terribly bad. As I walk out, an employee says:

“Hey, you were here last night too!”

Yes, sir. Three meals in a row at your eatery. Color me shamey and roll me in the steamy juices of vinegary embarrassment. It’s enough to make me ride away at a speed above my pay grade at this time of the morning, and before long I’m out past the campground and to wheeling by a distillery. A tour I could have done yesterday afternoon if a) I was more organized and 2) I liked bourbon.

The sun is a no show. The light is creeping. I admire a low fog as the new day stretches and yawns its way over sleepy farmland. The purple hues come up, the fog takes on a glisten and on I go, spinning over dark roads and hidden potholes. I make a few awkward climbs.


Car light beams flick around corners and over me and I realize the jacket I’m wearing that was great ten minutes ago is now turning my human fur into a wet dog soak. I stop on a bridge and take it off. Steam is rising off the water. Birds are yelling at their kids. The humidity is rising. It’s already enough to turn the straightest hair curly.

The headlights are off now and trucks are cutting the still morning air with the anger of their engines.

The drama. Suddenly the sun is up. Orange and red stains the wispy clouds. It is finally morning proper and I have gone 10 miles.

An old local store comes into view and I pull in to stock up on water. The shop keep, an older lady with an apron, asks me if I’m alone. She begins telling me of a cyclist who stopped in yesterday, checking to see if he was on the right road.

“Was he German?” I ask, thinking it might be Sebastian.

“No. I know accents. Like I know you got one.”

She didn’t know where I was from, but figured it was somewhere not from here. When she found out I was Australian but lived in NY, she proceeded to tell me that I’d lost my accent. That normally she couldn’t understand Australians at all. Must only have met those cliche Australians with the sledgehammer to the ears accents.

So I can enunciate? Big deal. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the taste of Vegemite.

Watered up, I push off. It’s humid but still cool for the morning. The sun is not intimidating. The air my friend.

Horse ranches, white fences. Nostrils filled with the fine aroma of manure.

It’s mid-morning and I’m making good time. I make an effort to drink water regularly, particularly since it doesn’t take long for the bottles to get hot sitting on top of Mr. Zimmerman. Better to drink it while it’s still cool than try force it down at tea drinking temps.

Before lunch, I wheel through Buffalo and turn right instead of left. It’s Abe hour. Lincoln time. Time to see where a president was baked.

Lincoln’s birthplace has bigger signs than Lincoln’s Homestead. Means it’s more important. Or a bigger tourist trap. A few cars litter the parking lot and I pull Precious into a space in the shade.

Down the steps and off to see a structure I could glimpse through the trees. Impressive. Giant. A columned monument skirted by strong trees. Spoiled only by the bright orange mesh fence and ladder hugging it. Closed for renovation or something, so I didn’t even bother climbing the many steps to the top. Snapped a shot, then noticed a little sign for a spring off to the left.

I peer over the stairs as a family trudges their way out. Then down I scamper, down into the mossy smell of earth and roots and wet rock.

There’s a hole. With water dripping into it. Did the tweenage Abe dip his hand in here to take a slug of earth water? The sign says not to do that yourself, but I don’t imagine that sign was here when Abe was. Nor that giant stone monument up there. No, when Abe was here, he was just some punk avoiding chores and thinking about gnatty beards.

It’s a quick visit, but there’s really not that much to see. Before long, I’m out on the main road and getting back on the route.

Time. There isn’t enough time. I’d like to take the Manmoth Cave Loop, but with lip stuck out and soppy face, I continue on and ignore the turn. Time. There just isn’t enough time.

Before long, I’m passing a gas station, crossing the 65 and into the small town of Sonora. The dumb jokes you make to yourself just to pass the time. Be a snorer in Sonora. Ha ha, blah blah! Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.

I stop in the shade across from a church and gnaw on some jerky. I should probably stop for lunch somewhere, I think, stuffing the leathery bits in. Next town. Next town.

Outside Sonora, on the flats and open land, see my first Amish coming towards me. A black carriage, a man holding the reigns. I try not to stare. A few miles down the road, I look across the heads of some crops and see the blue and white of Amish clothes flapping on a washing line.

Stopping to sip some water, I check my phone. Somehow, I have made 70 miles before 1.30pm. I have no idea how this is even possible, but I am stoked like a wintery fire with the thrill of it. Later, I realize that I’d passed through some time zone and my phone had flipped me back an hour. Technically, it had been 2:30pm. But never mind.

Riding up a slight incline and cresting the rise, I see two touring cyclists coming towards me. I slow to chat across the road. The first cyclist stops. The second pulls up behind him. They are both young. Down the road, four more are approaching. Talk can sometimes be small and this is one of those times. It’s funny how some people stop and you immediately fall into a rapport and laugh about stuff right off the bat. Not sure if it was the awkwardness of yelling across the road as cars cut the conversation in two or the heat of the day, but I could tell we weren’t going to have a long conversation.

The second group of four pulled up. One girl told me about the shop at the next intersection. Not a town exactly, but there’s a cyclist hostel there and a store where they give cyclists a free popsicle. That sounded right up my ice loving alley.

Before they wheeled off, I eyed their gear. Admired their faces. They packed pretty light and were riddled with the freshness of youth. A moment came and went – I felt old and overloaded. And then I remembered I’d already done 70 miles.

At the intersection a bit further down the road, I saw a lonely store standing in the gravel on a bend. Gas pumps, furniture out the front and and an ice box.

I’ll get a coke. And a chocolate milk.

The guy behind the counter started asking me about my trip. Told me 6 cyclists had just been in here and I mentioned I had seen them.

“Would you like a free popsicle? We like to give them to the cyclists.”

Would I? You betcha.

I choose a green one and go outside to sit on a wooden stool and it in the shade. Squinting into the glare of a mid-afternoon sun, I savor the green taste and imagine the color my tongue is turning. The crunch between my teeth is most satisfying.

About an hour later on a long straightway, I see a cyclist in the distance. We wave in recognition and I pull over into the gravel. He walks his bike over.

Elijah. He’s a friendly bloke we fall into a very easy chat. When I tell him where I’m going for the night, he says he was riding with a couple who stopped there too and that I would see them. He wanted to make it to Sonora so had left them there at the campground. He also gave me the number of some friends in Carbondale to stay with. Later I find out that I have somehow lost it, even though I typed it into my phone.

I watch him ride away into the heat. Confident. Tanned. 1000 miles from the end of his journey.

Not far now. To put a nice seal on the day, the road throws in a few climbs just to make me work for it. One sneaks up on me with a vengeance. I’d just crossed Rough River and bam, straight up snarl and nasty incline. I walked it. Just when I thought I’d gotten through the whole day without walking the bike once, I got hit with this one. The top was a welcome relief, but I didn’t dawdle long. No shade up there.

I carry on. Not far. Not far.

But more climbs appear. Not hard or back breaking, but there’s something psychological about almost being there and suddenly having a lung-heaver thrown at you.

But what can I do? There is no stop, only go, and before long I am cycling across the top of a dam. There are boats in a marina. Another hill and across more water. I look for the entrance of the Rough River Dam State Park. Clomping into the lobby of the Lodge, I find out I’ve ridden past the campground entry.

“Come back for dinner,” the clerk says. “We have an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

The campground was deserted. Empty. Not even an attendant to pay at the front gate. I spied one lonely tent down on the flats, but chose a site closer to the washroom for my overnight. Laundry room! Score!

After I had set up camp, I noticed that I’d accidently chosen a powered site. Ugh. That would cost me in the morning. But at least I could charge some stuff.

Showered, laundered, packed up and charged, I rushed off to eat all I could eat.

Without Mr. Zimmerman attached, Precious was more like a bike and less like a boat. My front panniers held all my valuables – didn’t want to leave anything in the tent – and the weight was kind of off. With Precious tied to a lamppost, I sniffed my way towards dinner.

“Are you touring?”

The voice came from the right of the doorway. A guy sitting on a bench with a laptop on his knees and a woman beside him waved me over. This was the couple Elijah had mentioned – Jim and Kathy. Sitting there and sucking on the Lodge wifi. Something I planned to do later.

We had quite a good chat before the sound of my stomach interrupted my train of bullshit. As I went to excuse myself, I heard the following.

“We spoke to the campground guy as he was leaving. He told us that the morning guy usually walks around at 7.30am to collect money for sites. So, if you were gone…”

7.30am. I could probably manage that. Probably.

I went downstairs to the buffet and did my usual “all you can eat buffets are wasted on me” routine. I mean, they really are. My appetite hasn’t hit yet and I’m still not hungry. Nevertheless, I shovel in a stack of chicken and some pasta. Then I spy the soft serve dispenser. If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s the power to dispense icecream! One big bowl later and I’m stuffed. On not much food really. But I was happy for it.

Riding back in the dark with my lights on. I pulled up above the site in the driveway and saw a man walking a dog down below in the half-darkness. As I clipped my left foot out of the pedal to stop and spy on him without being detected, the weight of the right pannier pulls my wheel. Still clipped in on the right. You guessed it, down on my arse like some kind of tipped cow. Crash. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Third time this trip I have Noobcrashed while standing completely still.

Third time on this trip I have not put out my right hand to stop myself and hurt my wrist. My still existing bruise on my hip/buttocks takes the brunt. Again. That bruise will never heal.

Since this occurred on asphalt this time, I scuffed up my elbow. More embarrassing than anything. I found myself apologizing to Precious. Poor bugger. His shifter gets a little more beat up every day.

Humbled and angry, I stomped to my tent. I planned to catch up on the blog, but like most nights, I was suddenly overcome with the need to slumber.

Longest day so far. Ninety seven miles. How annoying. What, I can’t find 3 miles anywhere to make it to 100? The ride up to the lodge and back was actually a two-mile round trip. But that’s still only 99 miles. Same as 97 in that it’s not 100. Didn’t bother even counting them.

Slipping my phone into the newly discovered ceiling shelf, I lie there in the heat of the tent. My muscles ache, but in a good way. My belly is silent.

Sleep is but a blink away.

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Day 16, The Doddle Day

When I opened my eyes, I felt a little lost. Foreign. Not myself. It was still dark in the room. Shapes and unfamiliar noises. And me, snuggled in my sleeping bag on top of the bed. My throat was sore and scratchy from the air conditioning. Turns out that was the least of my problems.

Feet out of the bag. Swung to the side. Sat up.

I felt ill. Bad food ill. What did I eat last night? What, in this neighborhood of rundown shops and decrepit dream-killing buildings, did I find to eat? I spied the cup sitting on the table. Well, there was that late night DQ run for an Oreo Blizzard, but what kind of a heel of a human being would blame their queasiness on defenseless, heroic icecream?

No, this was a ‘meat product’ ill. A ‘sitting around too long in this glass case waiting for the right sucker to walk through the door’ kind of ill.

There’s not much I regret in life, but I made a point to add Godfather’s Pizza to my master list. I’d been so hungry last night, the entire slice of cheesy, meaty, doughy rubbish somehow made it from the pizza box to well inside my stomach as though inhaled through some kind of magic straw in a matter of seconds. Did I even chew?

I sat there a while, just letting myself feel bad. Had I been safely cocooned in the sanctuary of my Brooklyn apartment, I would’ve stayed in my jammies, wrapped myself in a favorite blanket and watched bad TV all day. Sipping on ginger ale or something.

But I know that’s not an option. The road is there. I cannot be here. The days don’t stop. The legs can’t end. The heart must thump the right buttons to fire up the jalopy every damn day or no miles are crushed. No spirits soar. Bikes have nothing to tweet about.

Sloth-like, I packed things. Punched clothes in stuff sacks. Wrapped things in plastic bags. Moved things from one pile to another. Said, “uh” every so often. Frowned.

It wasn’t long before dawn tripped over the day’s tripwire and I was out in the parking lot, sending a SPOT checkin message and dropping off the key. Not bad time. Earlier than normal.

About 100 yards down the road I suddenly realized I’d taken the Garmin magnet off my rear wheel last night and left it sitting on the sensor, meaning to attach it this morning.

Something happens at night. I fall asleep. Early. I’m just so tired, I half start things then decide to finish them in the morning. This was one of those things I’d forgotten to finish. Crap. I went back to the hotel, got the owner to give me back the key (nothing like seeing hotel proprietors in their pajamas), and went back to room 103.

There it was. Just sitting on the pavement right outside the door.

Sick. Stupid. Relieved. Back to drop off the key. Take two and we’re off again.

I trundled down the street and saw the sign for Old Fort Harrod. Being on a timeline is fine and good, but it shouldn’t stop you from looking at stuff, so I pulled in to the parking lot of the fort. Closed of course, at this time of the morning.

Didn’t stop me wandering around. Up the stairs to the fort gate. Peering through gaps in the wooden walls to see what was inside. Pioneer, oh pioneer stuff mostly, from what I could tell. Off to one side of the fort wall there were some revolutionary war graves and I read a few of their moss-covered inscriptions. On the way out of the area, I stopped to check out what I thought was a church but turned out to be a cabin inside of a church-like building.

Lincoln’s Marriage Temple. Where Abe’s parental units got hitched. Well, throw the rice and step on some crockery! This Abe fella must be just as famous as Daniel Boone in these parts.

A bit further up the road, I stopped to get water supplies for the day and scrounge up some breakfast to layer on top of the sickness. Kill it with something worse.

Peering into the glass cabinet, nothing held much promise. I picked out a silver foiled item with a bright orange label of ‘ham, egg, bacon’. Hot to touch. Should burn out the pain.

It was total spew. But not literally. The taste was just a little pre-digested, and you could get in there with a microscope and never find the cheese. Two bites in I rewrapped and stored it in my handlebar bag. It was super hot and I don’t want to start a habit of always eating in parking lots. I suppose its one redeeming feature was that it didn’t come in a biscuit. I’m not a fan of the biscuit breakfast sandwich that seems to be available everywhere in these parts.

Further on, once I’d turned onto a less trafficked road, I stood in the shade of a tree I could not identify and ate the rest of it. It did have some magical restorative powers. About an hour later, I actually noticed that I didn’t notice any latent sick feeling. Nice to not feel sick and ride.

Really nice.

I spent most of the day noodling my way through easy farmland cut by muddy creeks and streams. Played farmland bingo. Red barn. White fence. Classic silo. Giant old house. Corn. People driving massive pickups with growling engines and tar sucking wheels. BINGO! Crops varied from corn to tobacco and what looked like potatoes, but I’ve never been very good with crop identification. And I went to an agricultural high school. Oh, and grew up on a farm.

A few hills bit me in the quads, but nothing major. Just climbs I could struggle up and forget about instantly. One I haven’t forgotten involved a dog attack right at the top. Here’s little ol’ me, huffing and puffing and blowing my mileage house down when out of nowhere there’s a dog at my heel. I never even heard him bark and he was there, teeth out and eyeing my calf like it was a giant ham hock.

I didn’t panic. Stopped pretty much instantly to yell, but before I could a man in one of those giant pickups that scare me more than dogs yelled at Mr. Kujo for me. Evidently, a man in a giant pickup scares a dog more than a girl on a bike and the dog actually got off the road. Clipping in, I nicked off before any more trouble started, and waved to my dog bite savior as he got moving again.

Much as I don’t enjoy the dog ambushes, when I see a dead dog lying in the middle of the road a bit later I’m saddened. I spy the collar. That dog was probably loved. Now dead on the 555. Do the owners know? Have they looked around, spied his food-filled bowl and said “I wonder where Dog is?”

RIP, fido.

I see that I’m making good time so I pull up my juggernaut of a rig when I get up to Lincoln’s Home State Park. It is deserted. But I guess it is…um. I have no idea what day it is. A weekday.

Again, there is a golf course involved. I guess if you tie a golf course to an attraction you’re guaranteeing at least a little patronage. Since I see nobody, I just wander around and take some photos. Read a few notes about things.

Sitting on a rock wall, I eat a peach. My last peach. Very disappointed about that, as I’ve not seen many opportunities to buy fruit around.

I roll into Bardstown around 2pm. Hungry. Feeling pretty good. Camping is in my future, but as I navigate my way out to My Old Kentucky State Park I do something I NEVER do. I go to McDonalds.

There is no rhyme or reason as to why I hate McDonalds. I have just always made efforts not to eat there. I have never had a Big Mac. No fond childhood memories. My friends once had my birthday dinner there as a joke. HaHa. Very funny.

But the thought of air conditioning, a cold syrupy coke and a simple sandwich before going to put up my tent appealed to me greatly.

My gob found the the sweet bun of a quarter pounder with cheese to its liking. The hand found the coolness of the drink cup soothing. My eyes gazed out the window to Precious, confidently taking up a full, shady parking space and waving his flag proudly.

I must look a sight.

Time sucks away. Off again. My Old Kentucky campground is pretty gorgeous and the man tells me to pick out any spot in the free camp section. He actually points to one close to a powered and more expensive site.

“If you go here, you could charge your phone and such over there.”

He was speaking my language!

Finding a grassy spot in the shade, I put the tent up. Again, I seem to be the only camper here, so I am grateful to be near the washhouse and a lighted area. Some people pick secluded spots away from human contact. I do not. I like the sounds of people’s conversations, the glow of light through the fabric of my tent.

Anything that reassures me that I’m not alone.

This turned out to be the easiest day I’ve had so far, and I was kicking myself for not going the extra miles yesterday to make it here. And then I remembered how hot it had been. How drained I’d felt. I probably would’ve died.

Showered, shorted, and flip-flopped, I sat down at the picnic table and plugged my laptop in to steal the juice.

Yes, today was a good day.

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