Chicago, Illinois
Distance Traveled:615 miles
I think it is safe to say my journey is truly under way now. How do I know this? Because the distance required to drive home is growing larger by the day taking me further and further from Alfred. So when questioning if I should drive the rediculous drive home or continue on into the unknown the answer seems pretty straight forward. While I'm sure that eventually the sanctity of my own apartment and friends and family will be the only thing I crave for now I'm pushing on happily.
In the last two days I managed to drive a whole 600 and some change miles. Now to you that might not seem like a lot, but my ass begs to differ. Thanks to the windshield gone is the stiffness in my wrists and the brutishly terrorizing gusts of wind threatening to knock me off my bike at highway speeds but what I did forget about and quickly remembered on my first two days of travel is the awful chafing and soreness on my backside that comes from sitting on a meager bike seat for 8 hours a day. If any one has any suggestions on how to fix that feel free to comment at the end, email, ext or call me any time of day l!
Anyway enough complaining! My first day of travel was truly epic driving in the perfect mid 70 degree weather winding my way through the Allegheny state park finding myself flirting time and again with its conjoined river. The sites were perfect, the weather was too, and the Garmin keeping me off the highways made for a fantastic ride! Evidently everyone else thought it was a good idea/place/time to ride too because I swear my hand got tired of waving to other riders (a little flick of the wrist in acknowledgement [Never a big goofy hello there!!!] also forcing me to ponder the idea of a signature biker wave. I ended up pushing on as far as I could due to a late start thanks to my brand new saddle bags zipper giving out (thank you twist ties [and thanks Magzy for helping me fix it and the idea!!). What can't zip ties fix??
Probably the most memorable time of the first day was getting stuck behind an older couple on one of those two wheels in the front trikes. He kept creeping along to my annoyance so at the first chance to pass him I pulled up along side at a stop light. Red... Yellow... Green! And we were off. He had obviously anticipated the move because swing out wide to the further lane he slowly moved his trike in position and then blew me off the road. Now to be honest I didn't give it full throttle because I was so surprised by the move, but to say I was a little intimidated by the trike's speed wouldn't be to far off either. Shortly after he let pass adding to my shame a polite little wave of the hand and smile. One that said "Ha!"
Nothing that exciting happened today though so I think i'll head out and see what Chicago has top offer. I got dumped on briefly after i had taken my rain gear off if course, and almost run off the road by an old lady all in Indiana making it to this point my least favorite state. And besides that there really appeared to be nothing out there but farm land! But on to Chicago now and being the city of jazz though I think I'm gonna love it!
As an update I ended up spraining my shifting toe right before I left and while its doing better its still crazy sore. Hopefully if I don't go too crazy tonight it will be better tomorrow because I want to see this city!!
*Also I started using my Google Nexus 7's swipe function to write these so if some of the words are totally off sorry but its sooooo cool!!
Pics: lunch break from the first day! And my sleeping quarters for the evening!
No comments:
Post a Comment
So what did you think?