Day 33, Quincy, IL, 86 miles. East of the Mississippi.

It had to happen eventually. There was no denying it. We couldn’t avoid it. We couldn’t wait it out. We couldn’t out run it. It was raining. Really raining, not a drizzle, not a spritz, real rain. In spite of our rain jackets, rain pants, and silly little helmet covers, we got wet. Rain clothes are always a crap shoot: you can not wear them and get soaked by the rain, or you can wear them, get overheated, and get soaked in sweat. You can simulate the experience by wrapping your legs in saran wrap, putting a Glad Hefty leaf bag over your torso, running around the house until you work up a good sweat, and then jump into the shower with the nozzle set on cold and “pummel.” Then try to read the time on your watch. (That simulates trying to follow your odometer so that you don’t miss a turn.) Sound like fun? Stay there for 15 minutes. I got used to the after a few hours (at which point it curiously stopped). I never got used to the hills. They were unrelenting.

But still, I made some interesting observations on small towns. There are a lot of towns with populations of 147, 123, 12 (no joke). The prominent feature of one of these towns (population 153) was a Freemason Temple, An Oddfellows Lodge, and a Moose Whatever. How can a town of 153 support three fraternal organizations? Then there are the Shriners. I’ve always admired the work Shriners do in their burn hospitals. But remember those big “Firework Sale” tents a few posts back? One of them was sponsored by the Shriners. What’s the deal with that? Have they fallen below their burn victim quota? Our Irishman, Richard, is from Tripararee (sp), saw from the map that there was a Tripararee about eight miles off route, and road out for some hometown pictures. When Richard got to Tripararee , it really wasn’t there, except on the map, and except as confirmed by his GPS. He knocked on a door and learned that all but two homes had been vacated, and that the town was now called “Midland,” since it was the major employer (that is, the huge agri-industrial giant, Archer Daniels Midland). ADM aside, what will happen to American agriculture as these small towns dry up? “One Kansas farmer feeds 147 Americans” according to the sign by the road. What happens when that farmer, and ten or a hundred like him all leave the farm? They certainly don’t have enough votes to make a difference…. Brazil will probably be the world’s new bread basket. Fields bigger than our Midwest with a climate that supports three harvests a year. How will we compete with that? America is no longer a manufacturing company, no longer has an Agricultural economy, and as anyone who has ever tried to make human contact to get help with a computer problem knows, we’re failed miserably as a service economy.

That’s the kind of commentary you get when I’ve ridden 86 miles in the rain up and down hills with a head wind.

Crossing the Mississippi after all the flooding was a challenge. Cyclists crossing that great river pump a fair amount of money into the local economy, but the bridges were either wiped out or dangerously full of trucks and campers. So we followed the special cyclist crossing signs (picture). The new cyclist crossing takes advantage of the fact that three things happen when a river overflows: it spreads out over a large area, becomes very shallow, and slows down. So we climbed the debris-strewn bank, hooked our bikes to the “save line” (the thinking being that if a rider slipped, the bike would be saved. The rider could probably swim to shore), and then waded across the Mississippi. It worked well since we were wet from the rain any way. There was some discussion about tetanus shots, and those who were so inclined stopped at the “Minute Clinic” in the CVS. I’m pretty sure that mine is up to date.

On the other side of the Mississippi lies Quincy, quite a handsome town with Maine Street (no, not Main) lined with mansions that in any other town would be a bed and breakfast, a funeral home, or lawyer’s offices. Stone, brick, with the porticoes that old carriages must have entered; ornate columns and masonry; one strewn with flowering plants up all three stories and then in the corners of the gutters. They were concentrated near the center of town, where the money and power were. As I rode to the outskirts of town, the homes became more modest.

The fact is that ABB shuttled us across the Mississippi in vans. But that isn’t a very good story, is it?