yesterday was an epic ride. we decided since it would likely rain on the 3rd, and since we had a killer tail wind pushing us along at 22 miles an hour, we would try to ride further than we'd planned. we did 95 miles in 95 degree weather with a lot of humidity to make us extra soaked. abby had 4 ice burritos and saw 4 cemetarys en route to joliet. our route 66 path is very confusing and many times we try to follow frontage roads along the 55 to cut out unneccesary detours in the cornfields where the roads are literally melting to our tires. unfortunatley this often backfires when the frontage roads unexpectedly end such as they did yesterday. we had to toss our bikes over two fences and scaled the rusty barbed wire two times. right after which we were passed by an unsuspecting highway patrolman who would likely have ticketed us for running across the 55 (unmotorized transit prohibited). to save even more time we hopped on the 53 to take a direct path from braidwood to jolilet and this ended us being a really sketchy road with no shoulder and lots of huge dump trucks (one of which nearly fishtailed into us). after riding 15 miles on this we decided it was too hot and unsafe to ride further, and finally called it quits at 1 o clock in the shade of a flashing construction sign arrow.
now it is 9:30am, we're sitting in our hotel room debating wether or not to ride in the rain that starts and stops every 30 minutes. it was thunder and lightning when we woke up at 5:00am and that died down around 6:30. we suppose we'll wait out the storm until we get kicked out at checkout time or until we see the sun peek out from behind the clouds.
