Peotone to Utica: Pavement Shmavment!

Uh, what a day. Long day, but with new and interesting experiences!

First I should explain what happend last night.  Just as I was writing my post about how people this close to Mordor (Chicago) and other urban areas get overly wary of strangers, I met Jim in the bar and after a bit of conversation he invited me to stay with him and his wife Mary at his place about 5 miles away!  We finished our beer, threw my bike in his truck, and away we went.  We had a good time, and I learned a lot about Jim's small bridge building business (for golf courses, etc).   I saw some of his work and it was pretty great.  In the morning he and Mary made me a great breakfast with his "world famous" omelettes and I was on the road by 7:30am!

That was the last quick thing that would happen. Today I did 88 miles with 6:35 on bike getting to camp around 7:30ish pm.  Egh.

The morning was the slowest part.  In order to find a bridge over the Des Plaines River I had to go several miles north to Minas Morgul (Joliet), the closest town ecompassed on the map by lava fueled by the evil sprawl that is Mordor.  I tried to play County Road Roulette there, but the percentage of gravel roads in Illinois is MUCH higher than in Indiana, so I had a rough time with that. All the paved roads I found were too busy and narrow, even by out west standards.  I kept having to stop to check maps, etc.

Finally I found a crushed limestone bike path that took me the lst 10 miles into Minas Morgul, then I had to navigate that hell with a map that didn't have most of the roads on it, and eventually I found the Illinois-Missouri Canal trail to get me out of there.

Minas Morgul was just a bad as I remembered Mordor sprawl towns to be.  Zero... ZERO bike infrastruture, busy roads, lousy pavement, and a maze-like layout.  Calm roads randomally shoot you on to busy ones and the intersections are all huge and full of hazards - riding in Minas Morgul was like being a deer running across a busy highway with all the cars being driven by hunters with machine guns while talking on their cell phones.  My back tire was even stabbed by a Ringwraith (or maybe it was a piece of glass) to give me my fourth flat of the trip.

Once on the trail though everything got great.  Even though it's crushed limestone I figured I'd stay on it for awhile. I was likely to end up on gravel anyway playing roulette because all the paved roads this near Mordor are too busy, and at least the trail wasn't washboarded.

Interesting sidenote: Did you know that the bike lobby is why we have paved roads?  The League of American Bicyclists (I think it was them) in New York State lobbied to get the first paved roads so they could ride on them with their bikes.  Car drivers didn't care about that stuff. The first paved roads were made for bikes; we had them first. Then cars came and took them over.  Keep that in mind.... paved roads were orginally for bikes, not cars.

Anyway, the canal trail goes about 66 miles west to La Salle (halfway across Illinois) so I figured I'd stay on it.  It was beautiful!  Riding it felt more like backpacking than bike touring.  It wasn't always in good shape, but it was always awesome. To make it even more awesome, at mile 72 today random construction guys working on the trail gave me several free beers.  Winning.

The slow morning route finding combined with the slower pace on the crushed limestone trail (same effort, 2mph slower on average) meant I didn't get in until 7:30. I had wanted to go farther, but I ran out of daylight since I'm on the east side of the central timezone.  I'm staying in Utica, a tiny town but kind of touristy.  The park was way too central so after asking around I found free isolated camping down by the Illinois River.

I had a nice dinner on the water, watched barges and heron, and the sounds of a music concert occasionally waft to me from somewhere south of here.  Sure, I have to have a tent, but it is great here.

Tonight I'll fall asleep to the crazy loud frogs, bugs, and small woodland creatures rummaging around outside my tent.  Fun!

ILYI

Hamlet to Peotone photos

Jim and Mary have a gigantic aloe plant

I've been seeing these for days. Lines feeding Mordor!

Jim and Mary, my hosts!

Indiana is island of trees in a sea of crops.

County Road Roulette wins again!

This is what I look at all day.

Indiana had these bikeways, but I have no idea where they go.

This dugout is where I almost slept

Hmmmmm

Hamlet, IN to Peotone, IL : Happy Birthday to me!

I'm sitting in a sports/dive bar in Peotone, Illinois, watching Chicago do badly in pre-season football and just finished my second food entre.  I didn't plan to stay in Peotone - 84.78 miles, 5:53 on bike, arriving at 5:25 - but Beecher, ten miles prior, was a big meany town.

The ride today was pretty great.  I got out at 7:45ish thanks to the time change back to central time being right at Hamlet. I had a side wind with a slight tailwind and my County Road Roulette sent me 40 miles before I hit a town and took my first break. Since it's my birthday I had a good breakfast meal at a diner and was back on the road by about 12:30.  I did another 10 miles to almost the border where I detoured to a truck stop and bought an Illinois map. There I shot another 20 miles-ish to my intended stop town of Beecher - pop bout 5k. 

5,000 people  5,000 people about 10 miles south of the beginning of the orange blob on my map that marks the lava sprawl urban area that encomasses  Mordor (Chicago) , East Chicago, Mirkwood (Gary), and all the crap surrounding it.  Not only is 5k too large of a town for me to easily sleep in, but being this close to Mordor compounds it. The park was in the center of town, right by the police station, so I figured I should ask if I could stay there.

The nice reception lady at the police station had all sorts of excuses why I can't - mostly because people would call and be worried.  She seemed unable to comphrehend that I would be discrete and that they could just tell the worried callers that I had permission.  After saying no she carried on one of those awkward 10 minute conversations where she  tries to convince us both that she's saying no because she has to, instead of admitting to herself that the real reason she's saying no is because she's afraid, unable to think outside the box for creative solutions, and a slave to the articial rules that she lives her life by. i just wanted to leave...

I know I sound jaded when I say that, but look. I'm a teacher. I force rules on the unrully all the time, and one way I must ALWAYS be challenging myself is whether or not the rule I'm enforcing is actually legimate.  Does my complaining student actually have a point? And if so, can I be human enough to concede that point - assuming they have challenged me in a socially appropriate way?  And even if they did challenge me in an innappriate way, can I seperate out those two issues and still make a change in my own behavior?

I don't expect anything from other authority figures that I don't expect from myself.

I didn't even bother asking at churches. Part of it is our proximaty to Mordor.  Large urban areas make people impersonal and afraid.  People who are afraid of other people aren't nice to strangers.  If you see this happening to yourself, it's time to move to someplace that allows you to be a good human.

So, I headed 10 more miles and over some gravel to Peotone - an even larger town!  But the authority lady mentioned that it had a fairgounds, which means I could try stealth camping.  I'm not even going to bother asking here. They'll just say no, so I'm going to hide and no-one will be hurt by my victimless crime.  And I should succeed too, because I found a stealth camper's dream! Baseball dugouts!  There are a few in the park, and one doesn't face any roads and has a dark sun guard.  I should be fine in there.

Since I can't go there until dark and it's my birthday I went to this bar in there dead downtown.  I secretely hope a bar patron will take me home, but I doubt it. (Edit: one did! See Below!)  The bartender is young and has that "I'm young and don't like cops" attitude and she's told me I'll get arrested if I get caught in the park  Right.... I know the fact that I have unearned privilege is bullpoop, but I am a tall, well-spoken, well groomed, adult white man. I'm not getting arrested for sleeping in park.  But we'll see.. let the adventure continue!

//edit: Actually, I met a fellow name Jim at the bar is who is giving me a ride to his land about 5 miles outside of town and letting me stay there.  Winning! No getting arrested for me!

ILYI

 

Indiana meet Illinois! Day 57, first day of week 9, one loop around lake Michigan, one birthday, and 3,668 miles. By mileage and time if I'd taken my original route to Vermont (straight across Michigan, Ontario, and New York) I'd be ending in Brattlebourough today. #biketour

Millersberg to Hamlet Photos

Indiana: Oceans of flat crop with islands of woods.

There are several pictures of this stuff coming up.  I'm coming is Giant Purpose Swamp Wheat (GPSW) because it's giant, purple, grows in a swamp, and looks like wheat.  Anyone know what GPSW really is?

GPSW is giant. Thanks County Road Roulette for finding this for me!

This stuff by the road is actually over plant, I was lucky enough to be there when a Danger Mower was battling it.

Mmmm....

When playing County Road Roulette (see wordy post) sometimes you get Upwind Corn Fields, which block the sidey-headwind.  Winning!  Also, attn: South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  This is what corn is supposed to look like. Iowa, you can carry-on.

My home for the night in Hamlet.  I was able to ask for premission to stay here so I don't have to hide. They even gave me a bathroom key!

I think this was mint.  Acres of it.  It was great!

A crossroad at County Road Roulette.
 Hamlet

A wininng road at County Road Roulette - straight, blacktop, and flanked on both sides by mint fields!
 

"Hey Soul Sister!" (if you get the joke you are good at 5-year-old trivia)

This is some high-security corn.

I've been wanting to take a picture of the majestic wheeping willows that I've been seeing since South Dakota (and even some earlier) and I finally got around to it.  These are my second favorite tree.  First is Mullberry, of course.

Millersberg to Hamlet: What a place is this?

I am loving riding through Indiana.  It's beautiful up here.  Riding through this part of Indiana is like riding through lakes of super flat crops with islands of forest. The crops and forests are varied, and the routes are fun.

Today I did 68 miles in 5:08 on bike getting done around 4pm. A crazy headwind was forecast for the afternoon (20 mph) so I pushed hard through the relatively light 10mph headwinds for the first 45 miles only stopping long enough to stretch and drink and got them done by 12:30.  Then the winds didn't increase as forecast, so I fell asleep after "lunch" in the parking lot of a family dollar and got back on the road around 2pm.  I can sleep anywhere.

Today's route was all "County Road Roulette" which is a lot of fun.  There are very few places where you can play it without getting terribly lost. Indiana, Illinoise, and Ohio are the best places.  The roads are all mostly flat, dead straight, and laid out in NS grids.  When a road becomes too rough or ends you just jog a bit left or right until you find another road going the right direction.  Basically if the road is big enough to be on my map, I stay off it.  This way I essentially ride on giant bike paths all day, only occasionaly being chased by farm dogs.

This is very different from the west, where there are only a few roads and they don't go straight, so I'd better stay on mapped roads.  But traffic is lighter there, so it doesn't really matter.

Because here I find my route as I go along, I don't know where I'm staying until I'm about 20 miles from it.  I just ride mostly in the direction I want to go for 50 miles and then figure out what town I'm near and plan a stop.  You can't tour like this out west - there aren't enough towns and you could end up stranded or dead.  There routes need to be planned several days in advance.  Both ways of touring are fun.

Today I ended up in Hamlet, a pretty rocking town.  It only has 800 people so there isn't much here because there are so many other towns around.  Out west a town of 50 would have everything (grocery, bar, etc) and serve all the nearby ranchers. In the midwest a town of 800 has almost nothing because people just drive to nearby bigger towns.  Big towns kill small towns like Walmarts kill downtowns.

Anyway, Hamlet may not have much for local business or services, but it rocks in local culture.  It has a decent skate park, throws frequent festivals, and hosts several youth who all know how to ride unicycles.  No kidding.  Much of this is thanks to Jim, a local guy who builds tons of freak bikes, trikes, tall bikes, unicycles, etc.  They have lots of bike contests and some skilled bmx flatland riders.  I had fun hanging out with them and Jim this afternoon.

Tomorrow I head East into more headwinds, the central time zone, and should get into Illinoise.  I think I've gone far enough south to avoid the deadly Chicago sprawl. I'll never bike near Chicago again - I did in 2007 and it was the worst biking experience of my life.  Chicago itself isn't bad, but the 100's of miles of strip mall surburban hell that surround it might as well be lava.  I'll never go there again on a bike.

From henceforth in this blog, in fact, Chicago will be refered to as Mordor.  Tomorrow I will be venturing near Mordor's realm of influence - Gary, IN or "Mirkwood."  I may have to flee farther south out of my way if I start getting sprawl sprinkled on me. 

ILYI!

Is this where cornflower comes from? #biketour