[bike] trekking on

The end of Ragbrai sure was sad. So many friends, so many bikers, all gone within a few hours on Saturday. We still have lots of miles to go before reaching the East Coast, and alas, we must keep trekking on. After Ragbrai, we continued our trip with 3 extra members: Tim, Anders, and Kaia. Tim was going to bike with us to Chicago, where he lived. Anders and Kaia, well, we met them at one of our juggling shows and they decided we were so cool they wanted to keep biking with us to the East.

 

We all had to get used to biking on the road with the weight of our loaded bags again, and without being surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic bikers, and slow cars. I guess we realized we were approaching the East when all the cars were zooming past us at scary speeds these few days. On Sunday, we crossed the Mississippi River, finally leaving Iowa and entered into the Land of Lincoln: Illinois. Illinois hasn't been very impressive: the roads are covered in potholes and busy cars rushing to go somewhere.

 

We stayed at Lanark, IL Sunday night, and biked to Franklin Grove the next day. At Franklin Grove, we met a lady at the grocery store, who offered us to stay at the historical village just outside of town, where her husband was restoring houses from the 1800. There, the workers were very nice to us. One of them gave us $50 for groceries, and the other came back later at night to give us fresh juicy watermelon. Of course, we ended up spitting watermelon seeds at each other all night. Also, there was a campfire pit, so we lit up a campfire and sang wonderful songs before going to sleep.

 

Tuesday was nothing too special: the road was a lot less hilly than Monday, YAY. We got to Aurora, the suburb of Chicago where Tim lives. His parents let us get into the pool at no charge, and fed us an amazing dinner: brats and grilled chicken. Their corn dip was especially good. We decided to take a day's rest and go into Chicago on Wednesday to visit people.

 

When I got into Chicago, I was amazed at how I needed to adapt myself to the city again. Somehow biking for such a long time through a lot of middle-of-nowhere places really puts you out of tune with city life. The people, the buildings, and the traffic seemed funnily unfamiliar. We ended up not being able to meet up with people, but I have been yearning for Chinese food all this trip. Finally, I satisfied my cravings when we went to Chinatown. How I miss Chinatown in New York!! Chinese food, Chinese people, Chinese words on the awnings. Ahh, I like to be reminded of home sometimes.

 

Ba-ma-pii (until later in Ojibwe),

MinWah