Corn Belt Blues

Well its been a few days since we got to Illinois.  It has been windy windy windy.  As well we've come to the land of flat and corn.  Small towns became the norm.  We rolled into many a place with 200 people or less.  Needless to say all these places only had a grain tower and a bar.  So its been getting me down.  So how do you kick a case of the I want to quit so bad because of this stupid wind and never ending corn blues... skip it.  I, Casey, had a couple of days of seriously wanting to just go home sit on a couch and eat donuts all summer.  These thoughts would generally come at the end of a hundred mile day in corn country with never ending westerlies.  So Rae and I discussed it about 20 miles from Springfield, IL.  We decided to just rent a car, get to Leavenworth, KS and spend 4 days on our butts.  So we camped in a city campground outside of Sprinfield and slept through some good old fashioned midwest thunderstorms.  Waking in the morning we road to the airport and dissassembled and stuffed our tandem in a compact car.  We then spent 4-5 hours in car doing what felt like flying across the country side.  Being on a bike and not driving for 4 weeks made a car seem like a spaceship.

So we've now skipped Missouri and half of Illinois. I am bummed to miss riding over the Mississippi river but my spirits have already been buoyed.  We are spending some quality lazy time in kansas.  So where do we go from here?  Well we are now back on schedule (after a little cheating cheating pumpkin eating but its better than just giving up all together).  We will head out from here this thursday on our way to nebraska.  I know what your thinking at this point nebraska means more corn.  Well yes you are correct but since we are now on schedule we can stop riding 100 miles days.  We can instead ride 60 a day and still get to Oregon on time.  This will be manageable.  If we ride 70 a day or two then more rest days.  So the word is we are still going to be having fun and bike touring all summer we just needed a break half way through to get us across.