Bicycle Touring : The Road Home

9/5 - DeKalb, Illinois (77 miles)
9/6 - Tawanda (84 miles)
9/7 - Mechanicsburg (88 miles)
9/8 - GREENVILLE!!! (78 miles)

Wow, we were ready to get home!! Some keen observers out there might wonder where Wisconsin went. Well, the week of showers, hotels, and friends did something to our spirit. Don't get us wrong... we loved most of our trip and love traveling on our bikes, but we were ready for it to be OVER. 4+ months of traveling and 5400 miles was enough fun and we were dreaming of mattresses, sheets, soreless saddles, shopping once a week for food, and DIFFERENT CLOTHES! So, we caught a ride with Rachel's friend Linda who was driving to Wisconsin (and, since it was on the way.... :)















One final hurrah for the people we have met on the road. The last four days couldn't have yielded better comrades and company. Fellow Illinoinans got really excited when they would discover our trip's history. One man went back to his car 4 times, each time bringing us a different present. The last being a 20$ bill and the words "Dinner is on me tonight"! The crazy thing was that we didn't get a chance to spend it that night because we met more folks who insisted on taking care of us. We have been in a lot of different living rooms on this trip. In fact, that truly has become one of the unplanned, unexpected jewels of the trip... seeing how other people live their lives, right in their homes. Normally, there is a degree of being a "hitchhiker", tip-toeing both physically and idealogically, making sure there is no friction whatsoever. However, on this occassion, Roxanne and Randy truly felt like family, unlike any others we have met on the trip. Maybe it was sharing a common geographic location (Scott lived in Belleville, IL for 9 years and Rachel has been there her whole life), maybe it was the fact their kids were grown up and they thought of us as their traveling children... or many other reasons.















We left the Starr's w/ a 10$ lunch gift and bags full of peaches and apples. We were hoping to make it all the way to Greenville... some 160 miles!!! Funny how the map looks smaller when you are looking at familiar territory. We estimated it to be around 120 miles and thought it would be a glorious ending. Come 5 o'clock, lost on a tiny road north of Taylorville, IL, we finally acquiesced to reality. Fortunately, a farmer and his wife (Bill and Peggy) stopped to help us and offered a place to pitch our tent for the night. We had a grand finale country meal fit for kings (about 6 dishes all in all). Aside from learning that we aren't crazy about pickled beets, we learned a great deal about the cuzillian rows of corn and beans we'd just ridden through and grown up with. We were very thankful that our trip had not ended on this day as once again Illinois-blessed us. (Don't get too high on yourself though Illinoisans, your bicycling roads are absolutely TERRIBLE).