So we're actually in Indiana right now but Ohio. It was flat. Like Ohio. And pancakes. Brittany made up a terrific song about pancakes and Ohio, because Ohio is flat and we had some pancakes and we were REALLY tired on that build day (maybe getting up after 6 am messed up my sleep schedule?) and for some reason that led to singing about pancakes. Ohio was flatter than Indiana, that's the point.
So July 3 was a build day in Dayton and that night we got VIP seating for dayton's fireworks. The next day was an action-packed July 4th! Got up at 5, had a four-car police escort out of Dayton that morning; it was awesome, one car in front, one in back, and two riding along either side of us to block intersections. Such a fun ride too, and there are a lotta lotta pics of it on my camera which I will update sometime. But really just use the routetracker on bnb's website. At the end of the escort, we stopped by the side of the road and all sang the national anthem, then started on the bike path, then a bunch of lonely roads and pretty flat cornfields, good for talking though! First lunch, then some really bad headwinds and it got REALLY hot, aka 95 degrees and sunny.
Oh by the way I forgot to say that this was our first CENTURY yeAaaaaaA 100 miles!! Oh except noam and I were riding together late in the day and we missed this turn (let's admit it, sam and ben probably saved us from a few other missed turns...) and ended up doing 8 extra miles. This is after a bunch of us did two extra miles around the Ohio/Indiana state line. Oo we took some great pictures there, check noam's blog for one or two later. And yea, the rest of the 112!!!! mile day was sorta hot and tiring, but also really exciting to be on the longest ride I will do for a while! Umm yea fourth of July I went to bed at 8:30...it was great...
Random thing, after any ride that's longer than sixty miles, I have a period afterwards of feeling really terrible and nauseous, even if I've been pretty good about hydrating durig the ride. It goes away in half an hour or so though. Also we're all getting bad chAfing on these hot days when you stay in sweaty chammys for a long time, and when you bike long enough to go 100 miles...and A lot of people have heat rash on their legs too, and sunburn, etc...yesterday I had aloe gel on my face, extra strength gold bond on a third of my legs, and aloe cooling lotion on the rest of my legs and most of my arms, and everyone has their own special methods of dealing with this.
so today was the same weather as yesterday, but we only had 87 miles today...not so bad at all. Really getting to like getting up and leaving early, I would be happy leaving the host at 5:30 am if we could get dinner earlier...hosts that have early dinner are the BEST. It's kinda hard to wait until 6 or 6:30 for dinner, I am falling asleep and starving by then.
Oh anyway so today was a lot more corn all the way until west Lafayette Indiana, rode with Adrienne and heard about cool adventures is Morocco and decided that a definite neat option post grad would be to get a Fulbright as an 'assistants anglaise' but probably go somwhere other than France. But her trip sounded great.
Indiana facts: the tall buildings inthe middle of nowhere are grain elevators that lift corn so it can be slid down into silos. The crops we see are mostly corn, with some soybeans and wheat. They had a lot of rain, that's why there are some cornfields with more mud than corn. Lotta beer cans by the side of the road. Roadkill of choice is no longer squirrels but raccoons, with some opossums, groundhogs, and cats. It gets a lot hillier and less bike-friendly near west Lafayette, but it is nice to see civilization. Cornnnnnnnn
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