Sweep/official journal

Hey guys, so this is my journal from Friday, when I had to also write the official bike and build journal for our trip (visible through the route-tracker). so here's my journal from that day:

Hey guys! So today was the ride from Pontiac, Illinois to Peru, Illinois – about 65 miles. I was sweep today, meaning that me and my sweep partner, Brett, leave the host location after everyone else and make sure that everyone on our ride is doing alright. We carry an extra tire in addition to all of the normal bike repair parts, and ride at the back to make sure that no one gets left behind. Because we can’t pass any riders, no matter what speed they are, we get to take a lot of breaks that we probably wouldn’t. Let’s admit it, rural Illinois is probably not the most exciting ride, so I will instead talk about all of our breaks.
Break 1: 100 yards out of host. Leaned our bikes together to make a camera tripod and took pictures in front of the Rt. 66 mural in Pontiac.
Break 2: 400 yards out of host. Bathroom break at the supermarket.
Break 3: Two miles out of host, Brett gets a call from another rider informing us that the road up ahead is really bad, and that we are taking a detour to a parallel road, and that the turns have been chalked for us – this adds about two miles to the ride.
Break 4: Five miles out. Brett hydrates some cornfields.
Break 5: Fifteen miles out. Brett buys a snack – snickers bar – and I eat some energy bar and we talk to a local at the gas station about BnB.
Break 6: Twenty-five miles out. My knee is really hurting so we stop to stretch, but we wanted to stop in the shade, so we stopped under some trees in front of a house, but the house had a dog chained to it, and the dog was very angry – stressful.
Break 7: Thirty miles out. We catch up to some other riders, so we have to stop at the gas station that they’re at. Another bathroom/snack break.
Break 8: Thirty-one miles out – still close to other riders so we nap by the side of the road for fifteen minutes in a wonderful shady area. It is THE BEST break.
Break 9: Forty miles out. LUNCH YAY we meet up with a bunch of other riders and the van and trailer at our lunch stop in an elementary school parking lot. Mini-nap.
Break 10: Forty-five miles out. A really little Cessna-looking plane is flying low over the fields and really close to us, so Brett tries to take pictures while riding, but he drops his camera and it pretty much explodes. We stop and he puts it back together and it miraculously turns on and we get a bunch of pictures!
Break 11: Sixty-three miles out. We run over some glass on the way onto US-6, Brett gets a flat. While changing it (and slipping a business card between his tire and his tube so that the tube does not go through the ripped tire) we notice that one of his spokes came off, so I screw it back in.
Break 12: Sixty-five miles out YAYAYAYAYAY WE GET INTO HOST! Actually today (due to the incredibly leisurely pace that sweep allows/requires) the ride was pretty easy and fun (except for bad morning headwind) so getting into host is nice, but not terrific or anything.

Yay showers were at the host site (this is the best. You can just walk there and shower and it’s awesome and there’s no need to walk in your gross incubating spandex through the humid sweaty air and get lost on the way to showers that are wayyy too long of a walk (like, ¾ of a mile counts as this when it’s right after a ride) away, and then get sweaty and lost again on the way back. So I LOVE on-site showers). And I learned a lot about Pontiac, Illinois when talking to locals in the host kitchen, and I iced my knees, and people napped/hung out, and we went to a local bike store but they did not give us a discount, but then Dairy Queen gave us free cones and Home Depot donated chalkboard paint, so that was cool.

Story of Pontiac: There were once upon a time a lot of glaciers. They made the Illinois river and also the Mississippi. These rivers have changed their course through time but still go along glacial paths. Some Native American tribe enacts a siege on another Native American tribe on top of some rock, and one of the tribes starves to death. Irish immigrants dug the canal in 1835, that (the Illinois-Michigan canal) and the Illinois river carried products of the town to the rest of the world. The town had a lot of coal in mines under it and used it (two tons of coal to one ton of Zinc) to smelt zinc, and also to make clocks, and some other stuff. Illinois creates Starved Rock State Park. A hosting couple moved to Pontiac after previously living at the intersection of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, where there is a continental divide that runs along the inter-Dakota border, and splits rainfall that then either goes into the Hudson Bay, or the Mississippi. Pontiac runs out of coal in the 1960s, but then transitions to using the Illinois river for a lot of electric power, making electricity in the city really cheap and encouraging companies such as a steel-coating mill and Caterpillar plants to come. Bike and Build comes to Pontiac! I lose ALL of my biking socks in the group laundry because they are all in a mesh bag that gets lost. Paige’s mom visits from St. Louis and brings us butter-cake (delicious). I go to sleep at 8 pm, yay!


ps, the end was false. I stressed about my socks for a while and sort of called my parents and went to bed at 8:30 and woke up the next morning in the best best best mood ever becuase Vidya found my sock bag and put it next to my pillow and i woke up with my socks, aka with all of my problems solved yay!