Time: 5h28m13s
Distance: 142.23km
Avg Spd: 26.0km/hr
Climbing: 592m
Today was another difficult day. 142km of relatively flat and quiet roads. But it rained. It started when I poured my cereal, stopped for thirty minutes an hour into the ride (just long enough for us to dry off), then started again and lasted until we arrived at camp. Around dinner it started up again, and lying in my tent at 8:30pm, it's raining again.
Rain makes everything wet. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it's true, and especially noticed when camping. Upon arriving in camp, all I want to do is shower. Thankfully, we had hot showers today, but after I showered, I realized I had no place to hang my towel to dry. No place to dry my shorts. No way to dry my shoes. Or my gloves. Or my cold weather booties. No place to store my bike out away from the water. Talk about frustrating!
So we make do... my towel was hung in my tent. My jacket found a hook in the gear truck (actually on the outdoor shower head), my shoes sat by the camp fire for an hour but are now in the vestibule of my tent. My socks and gloves are hanging from my basket in the gear trailer. (And the gear trailer smells like an extremely well used locker room). Nothing is really dry, but we're expecting rain again tomorrow, so it'll be ugly for the few minutes when I first gear up, but once the wet clothes warm up, it'll be fine. I do have dry socks, and fresh shorts and a good base layer to wear again tomorrow, so warmth will come once I get ten minutes into the ride. With a little luck we'll be back in the sunshine tomorrow or Thursday, and everything will dry out in no time.
Aside from the rain, our ride was still tough. My legs are sore. We didn't ride too fast (26km/hr average), but I was still struggling up every hill, and could barely hang on for the last hour into camp.
The route today was actually pretty great. We barely had any traffic as we stuck to the back roads between acres and acres of corn.
Mike had to fix a slow leak at the first SAG stop, and we were all frozen by the time we got back on the road. Mark also had a double snake-bite flat when his front tire got stuck in a crack in the road, resulting in a bang that startled us all. Timing for both flats was as good as it could have been, as both times we were able to grab a floor pump from a SAG van instead of working up a sweat with our mini-pumps.
Cool sightings included a covered bridge, that some cyclists stopped to take brief refuge under.
We're camped out tonight at Shabbona Lake State Park. It's a huge park in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed from our approach. There's a massive lake with amazing fishing (or so we were told). The little shop on the lake had pictures of the big fish caught there - the biggest was a 47" Muski weighing 39lbs!
Peloton was great tonight - we met around a roaring campfire!
Well, I'm being anti-social tonight by hiding out in my tent. But it's so cozy in here... I think I'll bust out the book and read 'til my eyes can't stay open any more, listening to the rain drops lull me to sleep.
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