June 10 Springfield to Champaign, IL: 95 miles

This day started out perfect! I looked at the weather channel at 5:30 AM and it told me that we would have a high of 84 and SSW winds at 10 to 20 MPH. This is very good news indeed on a day that we are supposed to ride in a NNE direction!

It was a bit cool at 7 AM, so I started out with my jacket on, as did several other people. You know, I never knew the value of arm warmers and leg warmers before this trip--they take up less room than a jacket! Anyway, by 10 miles I was ready to peel off the jacket, but waited until mile 15 when I saw the sag van at the side of the road.

I was dogging it most of the day, pedaling with my right leg only, trying to take it easy on my injured leg... Linda 2 and I stopped in at a restaurant at the 33 mile mark and had a snack and coffee. I had chocolate cake! After that we headed for the only sag of the day at 46 miles. I was last to arrive at the sag at 10:45. First time in a while that I was last to come in, but trying to save my injured leg...

At the sag they told us that there was a detour ahead of us. Unfortunately the detour took us 12 miles one way and then 6 miles to get back to Hwy 10--the 6 miles put us in a crosswind for the first time today... after the 6 miles, I pulled out my pocket watch (used to be a wristwatch, but if you're following this blog you know what happened...). It was 12:25 and I still had 30 miles to go!

At that point I decided to go for broke, and put my head down and pedaled on! I made the 30 miles in record time, arriving at the hotel a little after 2:00, this after yet another detour causing us to have another mile in the crosswind. Bill was waiting for me here, which was very cool. It was supposed to be an 87 mile day, but ended up 95 due to the detours and a mistake I made on the road!

The photos are of a small creek that very much overflowed its banks. Notice the stick in the second picture--it is a utility pole! All the rivers and creeks were very much flooded, and there was evidence that they had been over the road. Fields and farms were turned into lakes; it was pretty awful (smelled pretty bad too!). I expect we'll see more of the flooding when we get to Indiana in a couple of days!