Day 20: Quincy, Illinois to Springfield, Illinois

Distance: 100 miles
Average Speed: 17.8 mph
Terrain: Rolling for first half. Then flat. 3700 feet of climbing.
Weather: Light head. Soaking rain for middle 60 miles.

I woke up today to fog. We stopped for breakfast after 14 miles. When we came out, it was pouring rain so we decided to ride another 86. These things just don’t happen at home.

I was wrong about other folks wanting to push it going into the rest day. The only change from yesterday to today was that I didn’t want to push it either. I sat in with at least one other rider for the vast majority of the day. When I wasn’t doing that I was chasing back onto a group. It was one of those days where irritating little interruptions kept happening in the last 40 miles. First, I had to stop for a natural break and to shed my rain jacket. Nobody sat up; I had to chase. Then I dropped my water bottle. Nobody sat up; I had to chase (I wouldn’t have waited either. That’s my own dumbass fault). Then just into Springfield I punctured with like 3 miles through town to go until my rest day could begin. Now that is irritating.

There is a weird etiquette to when you sit up and wait for the other guy and when you just keep rolling around here. Essentially, it’s selfish. If you want help pulling, wait. If not, go. When I’m the one with the issue, though, nobody waits because everybody assumes that I’ll just chase on if I want to, and a lot of the time nobody wants to go at my pace anyway even after I chase on. That, and I spend more time than the others doing flyers.

No great wisdom today. The corn isn’t up at all here yet. It’s been way too wet to get the equipment into the fields. The farmers don’t sound worried really. Or at least not excessively. Farmers not bitching about the weather would be unnatural. It sounds like they’ll take the rain so long as the delays don’t get too bad.

I was thinking a bit about Lincoln today. I was heading into Springfield after all. It didn’t resolve itself into anything terribly structured. It just went something like, here’s a man who acted with absolute moral conviction. After 40 years of weak presidents since Jackson, he picked the absolute hardest course at the worst time and brooked no compromise to that course. The union must be maintained. Slavery must be abolished. He decided that one morning in the shower. It took five minutes. The only thing left was the how of it, and politics thrives in the how. When politics drifts into the what, that’s when we have failures. I don’t know, you think about this great, lonely figure acting absolutely morally and correctly and effectively even with bad information and then you think about this Texas rube living off of his daddy’s good name and struggling to even stay engaged with the issues because he’s so lazy and stupid. Whither the great women and men that will honor their endowment? Huh?

Hannah’s prom picture because I can: