Day 3

After yesterday's long ride, I took my time rolling out of bed. It was a nice, quiet night (well, there were still plenty of natural sounds, just no unnatural ones) and I slept fairly well. I still need some practice at this sleeping-outside thing, as I never seem to be able to fall into a good deep sleep. Although perhaps that's a good thing. I don't feel tired at all during the day, so I guess I'm doing fine. It helps that I've had some beautiful mornings to wake up to. Breakfast today was small and at the camp, just an apple and a slice of Swati's banana bread (which still tastes great!)

I finally hit the road at 9:30. For the first ten miles, I was riding southeast along Mississinewa Lake (a resevoir formed by the dammed Wabash River, which I never actually glimpsed), and I only saw one car in that stretch. I somehow ended up on gravel roads for a bit, which actually weren't too bad to ride on, and eventually found my way to IN 13, which I would take south for most of the day. County roads in Indiana are usually quite easy to follow, since they're named by their distances (ie: CR 350 N is 2.5 miles north of CR 100 N). The only trouble is when these roads cross county lines, or even worse, when they ARE county lines, in which case they seem to have three different names. Which ones are marked is pretty much a crapshoot.

I had now entered some more serious corn and soybean country, whereas there wasn't too much farming up north. Still, the farms aren't that large, and there is plenty of variety along the way. In contrast to Wisconsin, I've only seen two groups of cows the whole trip so far.

Lunch was at a little diner in Swayzee ("The Only Swayzee in the World!"). It was pretty much filled with locals in John Deere hats and so forth, but at times it was dead quiet. Kinda weird, although I guess they were people who work together all the time, so they didn't have much more to say. No one seemed at all interested in talking to me, despite the fact that I'd parked my bike right in front of the main window where everyone could see it.

Ten miles before reaching Elwood, there was a "Road Closed" sign. Just as I was about to stop and pull up the map, an old guy at the corner standing by a Geo Metro helped me out. Says his name is Rex Chism, and he wanted to talk to me anyway. Turns out he's selling "Tahitian Noni", some sort of patent medicine. According to him, the company selling this stuff is the fastest-growing company in the world. "Faster than Microsoft!" He gave me a little writeup on it, and a business card. Seems like the stuff will do just about everything for you, except make you go faster on a bike. Feel free to check it out, http://www.tahitiannoni.com/lifeboat, it'll alleviate your asthma, depression, AND cancer symptoms. And tell ol' Rex I said hello. Ah, it's good to know that even though I'm not checking my email, and am out in the middle of nowhere, the spammers can still find me! Anyway, he helped me out a lot with the directions, so that was cool.

Once I reached Elwood, I found a park and took an extended break. Refilled the water, and positioned the solar panel for maximum charging. Once I had been there for a while, I was laying on bench under a picnic shelter and I suddenly notice the conduit running across the ceiling, and down to a bunch of electrical outlets. D'oh! So I got the computer all charged up. I stopped at a Dairy Queen on the south end of town and got a Blizzard, and man, did that charge me up good for the next 10 miles or so.

As I was approaching Lapel, I saw a guy on the other side of the road getting the mail out of his mailbox which had a large Chicago Cubs flag hanging from it. I stopped, and yelled, "Hey, how're them Cubbies doin'?" Of course, I secretly hoped his response would be "oh man, they've lost the last three, and Kerry Wood was sent down to the double-A team because he's no good!" Instead, he said, "I dunno, I don't follow them." Strange! Yesterday near Peru there was a guy delivering Domino's pizza to a house across the street while I was stopped, and his radio was blaring the Cubs game. So hooray for WGN!

Stopped at the grocery store in Fortsville, the last town before the campsite to pick up some dinner. AND, I was able to find a liquor store, so I finally got to end the day with a beer. Who knew a 16-ounce can of Budweiser could be so good? The campground is "Mohawk Campground", and it's a curious place. Seems to be almost more of a trailer park than a campground, as most of the people are definitely long-termers. There are trailers that look like they've been sitting there for years, lawn ornaments, a truck up on blocks, a broken-down school bus, and some people even seem to have built structures on their sites. Anyway, I got a spot all alone well away from anyone else, and a lot of the trailers seem empty or abandoned, so I have no complaints so far. Besides the insects, all I can hear is the muted whine of I-70 a mile-and-a-half away.