Ed Tholen in the city park pavilion, Ashkum, IL
| Day | 16 |
| Date | Sunday July 8, 2001 |
| Distance | 54 miles |
| Moving Average Speed | 14.6 mph |
| Left at | 9:30 AM |
| Arrived at | 2:40 PM |
| Overnight in | Ashkum City Park, Ashkum, IL |
| Latitude | 40 d 52 m 43 s N |
| Longitude | 87 d 57 m 4 s W |
| Cumulative Distance | 1281 miles |
Today started late: the B&B didn't serve breakfast until 8:30 AM and there was no way I was going to miss mine. My knee had been acting up quite a bit yesterday, there were some incidents so painful that I was forced to stop the bike, pant and cuss for a little while before proceeding. I even contemplated staying an extra day in Rensselaer to rest it, but remarkably enough it didn't feel so bad this morning so I figured to make it a short day instead.
Early in the day I crossed the border into Illinois on a county road so obscure that the state had not bothered to erect a "Welcome to Illinois" sign there. The only indication that I had crossed a political boundary was a subtle change in the quality of the road surface. Thus I was deprived of the opportunity to take a photograph of my bicycle leaning against a sign.
The riding was more midwestern routine: ride as many miles as you can before the wind kicks up in the early afternoon, then shift down and grind until evening. At least, that was my plan. Things went pretty much according to plan, and the knee was feeling pretty good, so I was even contemplating pushing on to the next town, Odell, beyond my original destination of Ashkum.
I should digress a moment on the subject of Gatorade. The near ubiquitous market penetration of this beverage makes for one of the great simple pleasures of long distance bicycle touring. It is cold and sweet, practically every small town convenience store stocks it, and generally a 32 oz bottle can be had for less than two bucks. It also provides a convenient excuse to ask the folks at the store to fill your bottles with water; after all you are now a customer, not just some schmoe off the street. It takes me less than ten minutes to drain one, although if I feel like lingering I can stretch it out to fifteen or twenty. Thus, the touring cyclist can sate his thirst and replenish his electrolytes in about the time it takes to rest the legs without stiffening them.
It was the lure of Gatorade that made me pause in Ashkum, although by this point my strengthening knee had caused me to push my goal for the day to Odell, 40 miles farther on. And it was definitely a place to gulp not sip; there was nothing but a convenience store parking lot to linger in. However, it was as I was gulping that I happened to look to the southwest and saw dark clouds on the horizon.
Now, my experience two days ago in the Salamonie State Forest had taught me a profound respect for midwestern thunderstorms. And there was something about those clouds that just didn't look peaceful to me. According to my map, the town of Ashkum allows cyclists to camp in the city park (city parks are actually a rather common way of bridging the long gaps between campgrounds in the middle of the country), but one should get "permission from the mayor" first. There was no telephone number listed for the mayor, so I figured to roll down and have a look at the park and see if it was the kind of place I would like to stay before trying to figure out how to reach him.
When I got there, there was a small group of maybe 20-25 people gathered under the pavillion in the park. It looked like quite a reasonable place to overnight, so I pulled out my map to look up the telephone number of the police department, figuring they would know how to reach the mayor. At this point, one of the men under the pavillion walks up to me and introduces himself as Ed Tholen. He tells me that quite a few cyclists have overnighted here, and I would be welcome to as well. I tell him that my map says that I should get permission from the mayor, and he tells me that the mayor was here just a minute ago, but had to leave to fight a fire. Apparently the mayor is also on the volunteer fire department. Fortunately, Ed tells me, the mayor's mother is here to act as his proxy. The mayor's family, the Heidemans are having one of their annual reunions in the park today. That said, he summons Ruth Heideman, and I very formally ask her permission to bivouac in the park, which she grants. I move my bike under the cover of the pavillion and start chewing the fat with Ed.
Ed Tholen in the city park pavilion, Ashkum, IL
Naturally, most folks are interested in getting some idea of the scale of the project: how far are you going? how far have you come? how long have you been on the road? when do you expect to finish? how far have you come today?
I felt a little need to make excuses for the puny 54 miles I had covered today. After all, I was quitting at 2:30 PM with plenty of daylight left to burn. But my knee was sore, you see, and I don't much like the look of those clouds on the horizon. "Well, you're welcome to stay," says Ed, "but I don't think it will rain today."
Not ten minutes after those words were uttered, a torrential rain started pounding the pavillion. Ed is forced to eat his words in front of his family, but does so as gracefully as one can. In the meantime, dessert is being served and I am invited to join in. The mayor, Paul Heideman, returns from the fire for his dessert. A man in his mid-thirties, he has been mayor of Ashkum for the last 16 years, elected to his first term as a write-in candidate at the age of 20. He's been a volunteer fireman even longer. Paul had run into another cyclist at the convenience store where I drank my Gatorade and offered him the use of the park facilities. But apparently that cyclist had decided to try to get to the next motel (east or west, I don't know, going west he would have faced another 35 miles, east 54). We all congratulated my prudence and admonished his foolhardiness. But we didn't know the half of it yet.
Paul Heideman, mayor of Ashkum, IL.
After dessert, as folks were packing up, the storm really starts to pick up. We all moved into the enclosed kitchen at the end of the pavillion to avoid the rain being blown under it. At this point the storm releases its full fury: the wind really kicks up, blowing down a 40-foot tree in the city park and a number of limbs from other trees as we watched from the kitchen. Tremendous quantities of rain were blown horizontal by the wind and visibility was reduced to nil. It was the sort of storm that kicks up twisters in this neck of the woods (which apparently it did, a little to the south of Ashkum), and I was awfully pleased to be watching it from inside the city park pavillion kitchen instead of riding through it. I have no idea what happened to the other cyclist; if he was westbound I might yet catch up to him. However it was clear that I had dodged a bullet, and a pretty big one at that.
Left to right: Ruth Heideman, Velma Tholen and Ed Tholen in the pavilion kitchen.
Tree toppled by the storm in the city park.
After the storm abated, the Heidemans and Tholens started to ply me with the leftovers from their reunion. It was as if the full bounty of the midwest was laid out before me on a plate: fried chicken, meatloaf, corn, cakes, pies cookies, coffee, so much food that even in my depleted state I had a hard time doing it justice.
| Day | 17 |
| Date | Monday July 9, 2001 |
| Distance | 100 miles |
| Moving Average Speed | 14.5 mph |
| Left at | 7:30 AM |
| Arrived at | 4:30 PM |
| Overnight in | Henry Harbor Inn in Henry, IL |
| Latitude | 41 d 6 m 38 s N |
| Longitude | 89 d 21 m 6 s W |
| Cumulative Distance | 1381 miles |
I managed to get an early start today, which helped a lot since the afternoon temperatures were brutally hot. The day quickly turned into a routine midwestern grind, and although the air was hot and humid, it was mercifully still and I was able to make pretty good time. The riding can sometimes get a little dull. When there are two crops then there are only four scenes to bike through: corn on the left with soybeans on the right, corn on the right with soybeans on the left, corn on both sides, and soybeans on both sides. I don't know who's eating all this stuff, but there sure must be a lot of them given all the acres of Illinois devoted to growing it.
Just east of Cornell, IL I ran into two eastbounders: a teacher from southeastern Idaho and his 13-year-old son riding from their home to a family reunion in Ohio. They got pummelled in the storm yesterday and had to take shelter in an abandoned farm house. I admire the boy for going on a trip like this instead of sitting at home playing video games (not that I haven't been known to play a few myself). I was not much older than he (15?) when my dad took me on my first long-distance tour: a much more modest trip from Florida to North Carolina.
Eastbounders Steve and Jake Hill en route from Montpelier, ID to Ohio.
The other small surprise was in Cornell where the store where I bought my Gatorade had a registry for all the cyclists passing through to sign in. There was a couple going from New Jersey to British Columbia about five days ahead of me whose names I had seen in the registry in the Monroeville park. I can't remember how much they preceded me by there, so I can't tell if I'm gaining on them or falling behind.
When doing long distance bicycle trips, one becomes a good deal more familiar with the road-builder's art than the average citizen. The word "tarmac" derives from tar-macadam, which pretty completely describes the process of building a road with this surface. Take any old county dirt road, pour tar on it, pour macadam on that, and then crush the latter into the former and you can claim a hard-surface road. (BTW, the "tarmac" at most major airports is actually made of concrete).
Adventure Cycling promises to route cyclists only on hard-surface roads. However, in their zeal to keep us away from traffic, the route across Illinois mostly travels on county roads with tarmac surfaces. Tarmac is just fine for bicycling in about 70 degrees, but on a hot, sultry afternoon reaching into the 90s such as the one just passed, the tar softens, sticks to the tires of the bicycle and then picks up loose macadam until the entire circumference of the tire is encrusted. Meanwhile, since the entire weight of the bicycle, load and cyclist are supported on two very small points (the tires are inflated to 100 PSI and don't distend much), the bicycle tends to sink into the tar a bit. The net effect is something like pushing a tank through molasses.
Late in the afternoon as the tarmac was softening and I was nearing the end of strength, I had pretty nearly made up my mind that as soon as I reached a state road with an asphalt surface I was going to take my chances with the traffic and stay on the hard surface, freelancing my own route to Muscatine if necessary (I have a very good Illinois state map for just such occassions). But the Adventure Cycling route picked up State Road 17 and then Tax School Road, both of which had asphalt surfaces and that brought me into Henry without any more tarmac.
I did get a bit of a treat on Tax School Road when a combine harvester pulled out just in front of me. For those of you unfamiliar with the more advanced techniques of midwestern cycling, a combine harvester is just about the perfect vehicle to draft: they cruise at about 18 mph and have an enormous cross-section to the wind. You might get a faceful of chaff, but hey, that's the price of a free ride. Anyway, I got about three miles of effortless cycling before he turned off again, and it was just the morale boost I needed to finish today's century.