Day 51 – Not What I Expected

By Mark Heggestad
This post is late due to lack of internet and cell phone coverage


Today we biked 89.2 miles from Chester, IL to Tunnel Hill, IL.  Our bike riding had its ups and downs – physically and figuratively.  The weather was once again perfect today.  But the rest of the day did not go as planned.  Things I did not see coming today:
  • Detours.  Early in our ride a bridge in Murphysboro was closed for construction.  We had to find a different route.  Much easier to do in a car than on a bike.
  • Got lost.  Often!  Again, getting lost in a car is one thing, getting lost on a bike is time consuming and can be physically exhausting – depending on how lost one is.  Our bike route maps provided way too little detail today.  And Google Maps (and any other map app) was as confused as us.
  • Busy Roads.  Today we experienced some of the busiest “no-shoulder” roads of the trip so far.  No shoulder, and semis and other large commercial vehicles went whizzing by non-stop.  Fortunately, it was for a limited amount of miles a couple times.  And the Illinois drivers are much more courteous than Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.
  • Hills.  There were a lot of hills, and many were steep.  Not as many hills as a couple days ago and not as steep as a couple days ago.  But we still climbed over 4,700 feet today and at least two of those hills were a 14% grade.

Don’t get me wrong.  Most days, the surprises are what make this so fun.  And two days ago the constant steep hills were a blast.  I think two things conspired to make today’s fun mentally more challenging than most.  One was the irritation of being lost a lot.  Wandering around on a bike trying to figure out where to go next can really play with the mind.  The second is just expectation.  When I was expecting the hills they were a blast.  When they took me by surprise they seemed to take more out of me.  Almost drain me sometimes.  We have elevation maps so there is no reason they should have taken me by surprise.  For some reason I got it in my head that the challenging hills were behind us for a while so I didn’t even bother to look at the elevation maps.  Only have my self to blame on that one!

Despite the mentally taxing day and the physically exhausting day, we also had some great positive surprises (as usual).  Some of our roads were as beautiful as I have seen so far.  Twice today, we had long roads (miles) that had tree-covered canopies.  They were beautiful. They were narrow, old, and a little beat up.  But there was zero traffic on them, so it felt more like an old bike path than a road.  That makes for some nice relaxing enjoyable bike riding.

All and all, another fine day, but I prefer not to repeat this one.  Even a “bad” day of biking across America beats a lot of good days doing something else!


A couple of the hills I was not expecting to climb today.



A couple of the tree covered roads I biked today.
I also was not expecting these, so it all evens out!




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