Life On A B-I7

Route

• Odell to Iroquois

Metrics

• Miles: 64
• Average Speed: 9 mph
• Travel Time: 9 hours 15 minutes

Notes

• Illinois is called the Land of Lincoln because this is where Abraham Lincoln grew up. He was raised and worked in the town of New Salem where he was a shopkeeper and also taught himself Law.

Thought #25

• Success is not what you own or how rich you are. Success is who you are. In other words, what you represent and how you treat people.

You don’t undertake an adventure like this without assuming some risk. I suppose that’s true of all adventures. Yesterday as I was coming into Odell, just outside the city limits, a car was passing in the oncoming lane. The driver was going way too fast. It was a two lane road, and I could see that the three of us would be side-by-side at the point where the passing car was in my lane. Not my lane, exactly, but there was no shoulder on the road. I did the only reasonable thing you could do. I rode off the road over the shoulder and into the brush. This is precisely why you stay alert while you’re riding. You can’t control what you can’t see. But you have to be alert for what you can see.

As I’m writing this, I’m standing outside a BP having a coffee and charging my battery banks. (They are for my iPhone, not my bike. I just had to clarify that.) I haven’t been able to find electricity for two days and I won’t make it through today if I don’t get them charged up. (I depend on my iPhone for navigation.) There’s a car in front of me. The windows are tinted so I can’t see in. A fellow walks out of the BP and says “has he been watching you?" I say “I can’t see in because the windows are tinted. Is there a dog in there?” The fellow calls the dog over to the window and I walk over to the car. It’s a Pitbull, possibly the sweetest Pitbull I’ve ever met. We chat for a minute and I tell him, “have a good day.” As he’s getting in his car, he says “take what God gives you.” I say, “Amen to that brother…”

Side note: You have to take what you’re given, but you help yourself a lot by staying alert.

Let me take a moment to share another secret weapon with you. Get a Starbucks Frappuccino coffee drink, available at almost any convenience store. Add a packet of Starbucks instant coffee to it. That will get the pedals turning and help keep you alert.

I ended the day in the town of Iroquois, Illinois just short of the Indiana border. It was marked on my map as having camping available. When I got to the center of town, I saw a beautiful city park and across the street a very nice looking bar and restaurant. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in tomorrow’s post.

Sunrise on my bedroom. I slept in Right Field last night. (A literal field of dreams…)

Books, Coffee, Adventure, my kind of place. I bought a copy of NEXUS Magazine from September ‘25.

Itinerary / Maps