Hello Illinois

June 10
At 7am we left the comfort and plush appointment of Sebree First Baptist Church’s newly upgraded teen center in the basement of the recently completed wing of the church.  It was decorated in a vaguely 50’s diner style with black and white checkerboard flooring, chrome high top tables with matching chrome and red naugahide bar stools and lots of table top games like pool, foosball, etc.  We had to get out early because there was rain expected by lunchtime and we had 43 miles to cover to get to Marion and the next in a series of church hostels.  Can I just say now that these folks are generous beyond reasonable expectation?  They fed us dinner of ham, carrots, two kinds of fruit, sweet potato fries and iced tea.  I wanted to adopt them.

Ferry across the Ohio River.
We opted not to swim.

We were warned that, despite the fact that our route would go through the county seat and another smaller town, nothing would be open on Sunday.  It was true. So we stumbled into Marion just at lunch time, grabbed our standby meal of Vienna Sausages (stop frowning and buy stock now, this is powering me across the US), chips, bottled tea and oat granola bar and headed to the market.  Looking at the ACA map, you can see that towns considered close enough to be ‘on or near the route’ are noted with their name, tax boundary and population.  It is through this information that I realized that a town must be at least 3000 head before I can expect to find Agave nectar in the sweetener section.  Agave nectar is my sweetener of choice because it tastes good, is sweeter than sugar (so it takes less to do the job) and, most importantly, has a low glycemic index (no sugar crash).  I use it in coffee and hot tea, on oat cakes…until a recent long stretch of ‘towns’ whose populations never got over 1500 and was far more often in the low middle hundreds.  You know you are in the literal middle of nowhere when the best place to buy food is Dollar General.  I’m serious, here.  Needless to say, my sweetener needs were going unmet.

Anyway, back on subject….so with marketing finished, we decided to head out of town and get on into Illinois.  Partly because Kentucky and I were just done with each other and partly because the Marion Hostel would be full of ACA sag supported cyclists.  These dozen folks paid $8000 each to have their absolute necessities carried for them and their whimsical desired met by a pair of hard working, long driving ACA staff.  Actually, today the ACA driver was going alone because this group is having a bit of a bad spell.  They’ve already lost one rider to the ‘I quit’s’ and we recently learned that their oldest rider (71) was found dead in the road by a group of stragglers.  The second ACA staff had to stay back with the remains. With all that in mind, they just didn’t seem like good company.

Fortunately, lunch helped immeasurably to restore our worn out legs and with the exception of one good sized hill, the terrain was cooperative.  As promised, all offerings by the Amish were temporarily expired so we passed Yoder’s Variety store without even looking. About 2:30 we rolled onto the ferry for a half mile trip across the Ohio River and into Illinois. Hurray! And, it hasn’t rained yet.