Day 4

The night at the live-in campground turned out perfectly fine, although the mosquitos were pretty bad. I've probably gotten infected with West Nile virus about 1000 times so far! Breakfast was again in the tent, and it felt ominously warm as the sun was coming up. Packed everything up and hit the road around 8:00. No real need for maps and directions today; yesterday was a study of Indiana State Route 13, and today I'd hit number 9.

For the third straight day, I found myself fighting a good headwind. The fact that the wind had been blowing from southerly directions for three straight days not only impeded my forward progress, it also meant that a lot of air which had once occupied the southern part of the country was now taking up residence in Indiana. A local said the forecast was predicting 95. At one point after sitting out in the sun, the thermometer on my bike read 118, though once I got moving it settled down to a comfortable 99 or 100. Oh yeah, and for you Arizonans out there, I'm quite sure the humidity was greater than 10%. It's hard to say how much the heat affects me; I'm guessing it's not too big of a deal, and the wind is the dominant pain-in-the-ass factor.

So anyway, I headed south on IN 9, crossing four of the "spokes" that radiate outward from Indianapolis (I-70, US-40, US-52, and I-74), which was somewhere to the west. Arrived in Shelbyville at 10:30, didn't see any of the Simpsons there, but I took a break in a park. I also spotted a couple of touring cyclists! I went over and talked to them (they were waiting for a bike shop to open), and I guess it was just a two-day trip from Ohio to Brown County, but it was surprising to see them. I'd only seen 3 other "cyclists" (all road-racers) since leaving Chicago.

Between Shelbyville and Hope, I took a break outside a cemetary. It was longer than I expected, I think because the heat was reaching its peak, and then just when I was walking back towards the bike, a gust of wind blew it over! While the two-legged kickstand has been invaluable many times, I guess it's not foolproof, and if the one kicking it happens to be a fool who doesn't really set it up on level ground, problems are bound to happen. A couple of the zip ties on the solar panel snapped, and also on the front headlight. All the electronics seemed fine (at least it fell in the grass), and after more time spent re-securing everything, I was on my way once again.

Lunch was at another diner, this one in the small town of Hope. Marginally more friendly than yesterday's lunch place, and the double-cheesburger I got was excellent. Hit the spot perfectly. I saw another table got some ice creams to finish off, so I had to follow suit. I noticed a weird thing at this place: every single person (and there were about 10) looked reasonably healthy when sitting at the tables. Then when they got up to leave, their enormous guts were revealed to the world. I guess that's just what I should expect to see though at diners where people regularly eat double-cheesburgers and ice cream for lunch.

Shortly after that, I reached my destination of Spirit of 76 Collectibles, the new store just opened by Jon Schaffer from Iced Earth. If you know Jon, he doesn't do anything half-assed, and this store is no exception. The miniatures displays are amazing, and the sheer volume of items he has is almost overwhelming. The stuff is way out of my price range, but it definitely seems like the place to go if you're into that sort of thing.

After hanging out at the shop for a couple hours, I went over to a Radio Shack to pick up some batteries for my bike computer (speedometer, odometer, etc.) It showed signs of getting low, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. With my method of direction-finding that involves writing down each turn, and the distance to the next turn, knowing how far you've gone since the last turn is pretty important, so I don't want to lose that ability. Of course, as I was rolling into Columbus I almost lost it anyway, as I knocked the computer out of its mount with my water bottle. Between trying to stop, and trying to turn around, and trying to watch out for cars, my brain couldn't handle the shock of it all, so it apparently figured the best thing to do would be to spit the mouthful of water right out onto my handlebar bag. That didn't really help retrieve the computer, but somehow I managed to recover, go back, pick it up before it got smashed by a truck, and verify that it still worked.

The 10 miles to Jon's place was wonderful. The temperature was down, the wind had disappeared, and at 16.5mph, I felt like I was flying. Jon and Wendi are great hosts, and the excellent dinner I got was also carbohydrate-free! (they're starting the Atkins diet). As I type this, I'm lying in a beautiful bed with about 400 pillows, and nary a mosquito to be found.