Pontiac, IL (48 miles)

Today's ride seemed longer than both yesterday's 78, and Saturday's 88. Don't get me wrong though, the views were amazing: more sky than one can possibly take in. It surreal to feel the sphere of sky above the relatively flat fields of corn and soy. All of the fields become eachother as the gravel roads blurr into streaks below our tires. Today we took more back country roads (some weren't so well paved) which resulted in some confusion about the directions. Yesterday and Saturday, we were on one road for all but the last 5 miles or so.

Saturday, I felt great. We started out route 26 and stuck on it for 70 something miles. I had seen Patrick go out a few minutes ahead of me and decided to try to catch up to him for some good ol' conversation. While plugging along into the light wind at 22/23mph, my legs were a testament to the speed, but didn't falter. I seemed to have found my groove that day, where I could maintain a nice solid resistance around each circular pedal stroke. There's something almost hypnotizing, relaxing and exhilarating, to this rhythm of pedaling and green corn fields. The fields would rise and fall as the crops changed form soy to corn and occasionally to a road. Only some of you will know this feeling I'm trying to describe. And those will also know that on the rare occasion it all clicks together, you must let your body go and enjoy the ride.

Sunday, I had a great time in Chicago despite the best efforts of Amtrack. Frustration with the busses instead of trains aside, I enjoyed meeting up with Dave from CAB (who lives in Ohio) to tour around Chicago for the afternoon. We did an Architectural River Boat tour of the city's most prominent buildings, and I was thoroughly interested. Particularly, I was fascinated by the buildings that were built above existing traintrack, without disrupting the train schedule while being built. We then meandered around the Milennium park to interact with the giant reflective kidney bean (look up pictures of this stuff!) and the big towers of people's faces that spat water.

Monday, we started out our ride with 3 friendly cyclists from nearby colleges who were recently dedicating the majority of their time to training for a 1/2 ironman triathalon. It was great to be able to fly down the roads (with wind at our backs for the first time!!!) and hear their stories. Where as Mary thought she was going to do only about 30 miles that day, the three of them ended up doing about 96 because they rode out 46 miles with us! But it seemed so easy!

I'm off to shower soon as we should probably paint the van tonight since it's such a short day. (We went straight through to have lunch at our destination today.)

Wishing everyone an great 4th of July!