We missed a post for Day 48. It was very much a rest day spent watching a couple of older Formula 1 races and just not doing much. It was too hot to leave the motel so we didn't.
Today started hot again as I left our motel at 9 am. I headed east across the north end of Chicago until I hit the shoreline bicycle path. Along the way, I saw signs displaying temperatures as high as 104F (40C) but as I approached Lake Michigan, I could feel the temperatures drop. It felt really good!
There were lots of cyclists on the Lakeshore path and lots of people on the beaches. I rode the path for about 20 km before it kind of disappeared (or I lost it, I'm not quite sure) and ended up in a mostly industrial area that had a street level marked bicycle path. That was a good idea in theory but in practice, it was being used as a secondary parking lane or a really skinny driving lane.
Along this section I found a little hole-in-the-wall hotdog shop so I stopped to check it out. I had a polish sausage that turned out to be not all that good or at least it was different that I was expecting.
I followed the lake shore as close as I could as it slowly curved to the east. Eventually, I end up in a huge refinery area and had to turn south. I had north winds at my back for a while so that was nice. As I got away from the lake, I could feel the temperatures rise again.
I eventually headed east on a road called Ridge Road though the southern edges of Gary, Indiana and other lake shore cities. It started out fine but became quite depressing. All of the retails shops were bordered up and the land was quickly being reclaimed by nature. Dead signal lights were replaced by stop signs and eventually the road itself was closed for quite a number of blocks for no reason that I could see. I've seen abandoned urban areas before but not suburban areas like this. As I continued on Ridge Road, life began to re-emerge and by the time I reached Portage, it was business as usual again.
I was done by about 3:30 and after a bit of recuperation, we visited Rochelle's cousin Rasheeda, her husband Troy & Family.
The temperature has dropped quite a bit this evening and is now an absolutely frigid 23C (74F). Tomorrow, it will be a high of 28C (82F). A couple of weeks ago, I would have been concerned about riding in that temperature, now it seems likes such a cool temperature. We are heading to Elkhart, Indiana, approximately 125 km east and slightly north from here. I am looking forward to riding in nice temperatures and getting out of the city and back onto the rural backroads.
Last night was a rough night for me. My cold is solidly lodged in my chest and I keep myself up most of the night coughing. Instead of spending another couple of hot nights at the KOA in Union, IL, we decided to get a motel room near O'Hare Airport so that I would be able to get a couple of better nights sleep. And it was only a couple of bucks more expensive than staying at the KOA. Unfortunately, no pool.
I dropped Rochelle off at the Airport just after noon and I went to the motel, checked in and sat down at the computer and started working. I soon got an email message from Rochelle. She had been sitting on the runway for quite a while. There was a ground stop at O'Hare due to thunderstorms. That threw her complex set of connections off and then through some very bad customer service on United's part, she was unable to complete her journey to Ottawa so she returned to O'Hare and I just came back from picking her up.
Today the temperature reached 40C (103F) and that is expected for tomorrow as well but Saturday it should start getting cooler. We will stay here tomorrow and will continue the ride again on Saturday.
I got quite a late start today. Lack of caffeine yesterday meant that I got quite a bit better sleep last night but I just had a hard time getting up and going. I planned my route and emailed it to my phone and headed out.
It wasn't until I had gotten about 8 km out that I realized that my phone was not getting cell service and my email message never made it. Also maps were not working well because of lack of cell service. So I was riding from memory. Unfortunately the route was not as simple as it is on some days and I ended up not taking the optimum route. Eventually I got to an area with proper cell service and figured out the rest of my route.
The day was really hot. The hottest day yet as far as I can tell. I saw two different signs that reported 104F (40C). I beat Rochelle to our meeting point of Harvard, IL and took refuge in the local Walmart. When she caught up to me, we decided to head over to yet another Subway but VanGo would not start again. We fiddled with it some but no luck so we walked over. When we got back, it did just barely get started.
By this point I had had a lot of sun and extreme heat and I was not sure I was up to another hour and a half riding in it. I just had this feeling like I had pushed myself enough. So we drove the last 25 km to the campground. It has a really nice pool that was just perfect for cooling off after such a hot day.
They were supposed to have a movie shown here tonight but it was too hot. Instead, they had an "ice cream social". We broke our diets and had some ice cream.
After we arrived, a couple in a 1985 Westfailia arrived and parked just about next to us. They seem to be quite rare in the US but these people were from Toronto. We spent a couple of hours this evening talking with them.
As it turns out, no images today. The one photo that I did take today seems to have gotten corrupted on the phone. Maybe, it was too hot for the phone. I have been amazed at how hot it gets mounted on my bicycle handlebar, baking in the sun.
Oh, and we've left Wisconsin behind and entered Illinois.
Tomorrow afternoon, Rochelle heads to Ottawa from O'Hare Airport.
This heat wave just keeps going on! The hottest day supposed to be Thursday but that's going to be a rest day for me so I'll likely end up spending it by a pool!
I had ice water to drink all day today. It was amazing. I did find that I had put too much ice in my pack and it wasn't melting as fast as I needed it too. I guess the pack insulates better than I thought! Luckily I had 2 large water bottles for pouring over my head that I used more as a way to melt the ice in the pack. I did find that with the ice water, I didn't need to poor water on myself as much. Tomorrow I will make the pack a bit "wetter". It is amazing just how much water I've been going though. I'd guess about 10 litres on the bike and on breaks during the day.
For the second day in a row, a motorist stopped and asked if I needed a lift somewhere. They were worried about me riding in the heat. They are then shocked to know that I am riding across the continent. I've seen almost no one else on a bicycle anywhere. Or, on foot for that matter other than when they make the mad dash from an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned building, etc.
We stopped again today about half way at a Subway. Their salads are just about the perfect amount of food for a day like today and we can hang out for an extended period of time doing stuff on the internet while I get a chance to cool down and drink lots of fluids. That broke the day up into two 3-hour sessions in the sun with a good recovery in between.
My speedometer got so hot in the sun the LCD started to go black!
Today, we are staying at a campground right on Whitewater Lake. The last 10 km or so was pretty hilly and I was getting worn out. I arrived at the campground and only then read additional details that Rochelle had emailed me about where she was in the campground. 1.5 km into the campground up a series of steep hills! Not the kind of surprise you are looking for after a day like today. Once I got to the campsite, Rochelle and I went back down to the lake to cool off. The lake itself was actually quite warm but was cool enough to help deal with the heat and allow me to recover while just floating in the water.
The last couple of nights I had very limited sleep. Less than 5 hours each. I wrote it off as heat related but it dawned on me today that on both of those days I had stopped at a connivance store to buy and quickly drink a giant diet coke. That is a massive amount of caffeine for someone like me who rarely gets much caffeine any more. Today, I avoided getting a massive dose of caffeine so I expect to be asleep fairly soon!
Tomorrow, we will likely stay at a KOA northwest of Chicago so that Rochelle can fly out of O'Hare the following day. I'll just hang out by the pool for 2 days! Actually I've got a lot of work that I want to get accomplished during that time!
I did not sleep well last night. It was very hot and we did not have good airflow in VanGo. It only has 2 tiny screened windows and even with the addition of a fan that Rochelle picked up, it was still tough to sleep. When I got up, I had only 5 hours sleep. Not great when you are in the middle of a cold. The cold has become a chest cold. That means a lot of coughing for me. Anyone who has heard my coughing will know that I'm likely annoying half the campground.
Once I left New Lisbon, I was immediately in hot, lonely farmland with no cell service. We had decided to meet at a town about half way as the whole day was a bit hard to check on the iPad, the only tool that we had at hand last night because New Lisbon is a bad area Verizon. We figured that in this half way town that we could get our Verizon connection again and we could use the computers to plan out the rest of the day.
As I rode to our mid-day destination, I started to see lots of campgrounds, each new one a little nicer and more kid friendly than the last. One had a really nice spray area for kids. I would have gone though it myself it hadn't been fenced off.
Then I came over a hill and saw water parks, rollercoasters and all manner of tourist traps. This was Wisconsin Dells, obviously a major tourist attraction in the area. We were expecting to see another sleepy town and hoping to find an air-conditioned place that we could find some lunch and figure out the rest of our day in comfort. Instead we found a busy town overrun by tourist in beachwear but we did find a place for lunch.
After lunch we went to a grocery story and picked up a 20 pound bag of ice. About 4 pounds of that went directly into the water bladder that I carry on my back. By carefully adding ice, water and more ice, I maximized the amount of cold in it. I now had wonderfully cold ice water on tap for the rest of my ride!
We made a plan to meet another 45 km down the road to make sure that I had enough water/ice for the following 20 km to get us to tonight's campground. About half way though this afternoon's riding, I got an email message from Rochelle saying that she was at Walmart but after coming out, VanGo would not start. I continued riding, assuming the the time consuming but once successful "tapping on the solenoid" procedure would fix it. Well that didn't work so Rochelle was going back into Walmart to pick up some more stuff to try some different things. By that time, I had passed where Rochelle was by about 15 km so I turned around and headed to the Walmart.
We had some missed messages due to bad cell coverage and by the time I got to the Walmart she was gone! She had managed to fix it herself and had done some pretty impressive sleuthing and and eventually got it going. Unfortunately I did not get the message that she was leaving to catch me, and she did not know that I was almost back to the Walmart. By this point it was 6pm and I had covered 110 km, the expected distance to our campground so, I just put the bike on the back of VanGo and we drove the the campground. We arrive just in time to have a dip in the pool before they shut it down for the evening.
The good thing was that although I ran out of water, it was because not all of the ice had melted over the 4 hours in the hot sun and temperatures that hovered around 38C (100F). I think having that really cold water kept me much cooler over the afternoon. I will be doing more of this as this heat wave is not expected to abate until the end of the week.
To help with the heat tonight, Rochelle bought a bunch of fine mesh material and we made rough covers for the front door windows so that we could level them open but still keep the bugs out. The bugs today seem to be less mosquitoes and more little beetle like creatures.
Tomorrow's route is currently planned to reach Harvard, IL, 134 km away. With another really hot and humid day and some good headwinds, that might be a bit optimistic. I think that we will have to find somewhere to camp a bit short of that.
When we got up this morning we weren't too sure what kind of day it was going to be. Ride to New Lisbon or wait for more repairs on VanGo. We tried to start VanGo but it wouldn't start. We saw something online about sometimes the solenoid getting dried out and getting stuck and that sometime just tapping it will free it up, at least temporarily. A couple of light taps with with a wrench on the solenoid and VanGo started right away.
So we know that the solenoid is a problem but also that we can likely fix it by tapping on it. That's not the easiest thing to do as we have to take the bikes off the back of VanGo, and move all the stuff that normally is in the back during travel forward so we can remove the access panel to the engine. So let hope that it holds together until we can get it properly fixed. The parts are relatively cheap but not in stock in small town parts stores. We will likely coordinate this with our arrival in Chicago.
After sleeping in and figuring out this issue, I didn't end up getting out of the campground until about 11 am. It was already 31C (88F)! We planned to meet up in Sparta (The Biking Capital of America) at a Subway because they had air conditioning and their salads work for our diet. We spent quite a bit of time in that Subway avoiding going back out into the heat. I even used their ice machine to refill my water pack. It only dawned on me today that I can fill that pack full of ice! It was so nice having actual cold water to drink for a couple of hours after that. I think that we are going to be buying a lot more ice over the next week or so of this expected heat wave. I was really good today and drank at least 8 liters of water during my ride. I also carried 2 large water bottles just to dump over my head every 10 minutes or so. That really helped.
It sort of strange riding through Sparta, the self named biking capital of America, and not seeing another bicycle. I guess the heat was part of that. A guy on a motorcycle passed me and yelled "ITS TOO DAMMED HOT!" There were lots of motorcycles on the road today and yesterday. It was great weather for being on a motorcycle but I still can't get used to seeing people riding without helmets.
I finally made it to New Lisbon just before 6 pm and are staying in a very nice and inexpensive municipal campground. My sweetie surprised me with a present, my own "yellow jersey" from Sparta!
It turns out that New Lisbon is one of the few dead spots for our only good internet connection, a Verizon 4G MiFi. So we are left with my t-mobile phone and our iPad, both on very slow 2G Edge connections. So getting this blog post tonight has been a challenge and may end up arriving without images. Also, we are kind of getting distracted by mosquitoes!
Next stop Madison. We are still figure out the details of tomorrows ride. A bit hard with limited internet access.
After my 30 hour nap yesterday, I was in better shape to get out on the bicycle today. It felt like I just came down with a typical cold. It's the first one in several years and I have no idea where I caught it from. It will likely take a few more days to really get over the cold but I should be able to ride reasonably well.
The route today was quite pleasant. There was a bit of a tail wind at the beginning and no really annoying winds at any time. It was very hilly. This area is covered with small little valleys cut into the plains and leading down to the Mississippi. The highways were cutting "across the grain" of these valleys. It was also hot and humid again. I saw a sign in Rushford that said 91F (33C) at noon. I am sure that it got hotter than that.
Cell service was really bad in this area so for most of the trip I didn't have any communications with Rochelle. Rochelle caught up to me about 20 km short of La Crosse and just a few km before the Wisconsin border.
I broke another spoke earlier in the day. The rear wheel is done. When Rochelle caught up with me, we happened to be in front of a place that had open WiFi so we borrowed a little to look up bike shops in La Crosse and call them via Skype. Bikes Limited said that they had replacement wheels to match my bike so we put the bike on the back of VanGo and headed there before they closed. 
So I've got a new wheel and a new pair of gloves for $200. I've been looking for a new pair of gloves that had the right kind of padding in them for quite some time. As you can see, from the old ones, I really needed them.
I guess VanGo was feeling left out so he wouldn't start when we went to leave the bike shop. Looks like either a starter or solenoid problem. We had this happen once before on the trip but it "fixed" itself within a matter of minutes. Not so this time. We gave VanGo a push start with the help of a couple of friendly locals and got to our campsite. 
Since then it hasn't started. I'm hoping it will start again when all cools down. If not, we will be here until Monday and can get in to see a mechanic.
So we may be parked next to the Mississippi longer than we had hoped for.
We are aiming at reaching O'Hare Airport in Chicago on July 4 so Rochelle can fly to Ottawa the following day. Any additional days out of the riding schedule will likely mean we will have to drive to the airport rather than ride to it.
Geoff mentioned yesterday that he thought a cold might be coming on. Well, this morning, he was feeling quite tired and we decided to take a rest day. I'm glad we did! I'm not sure if it's a bug, the heat and humidity, all the cycling or just being close to the Mayo Clinic (yes, Rochester, Minnesota is home of the Mayo Clinic - your daily Minnesotan trivia ;-), but he's been sleeping all day. Clearly, he needed a full day of rest and I'm glad we took the time to do that.
As for me, I've been able to catch up on some work and emails. And, I did get a couple of laps in, as well :-) We'll see how Geoff's feeling tomorrow. As I've said many times throughout this trip, "This is not a race and we can take whatever time we need!" We'll be sure to keep you posted on our progress...
Last night was not a good night for sleeping. The temperature only got down to about 27C (80F) and it was still very humid. Combine that with lots of bugs and limited screened ventilation in VanGo and sleep just doesn't happen. It only felt reasonable at about 7am, after I had gotten up and was getting ready to go. It didn't get any cooler but the humidity dropped a lot.
The ride itself went very well. There was a bit of a tail wind and it was overcast most of the day with relatively low humidity. It did reach about 30C (86F) by the time I was done my ride at about 1pm but it felt pleasant compared to yesterday. I guess I'm already getting acclimatized.
I started the ride by driving through the little town of Cannon Falls. It looks like the carnival is coming to town this weekend!
I got back on highway 52 and started heading south southeast. The terrain was mostly rolling hills with some good down hill sections and some reasonable climbs. With the tail wind, I kept up a pretty good pace.
About 1 hour into the ride, I broke another spoke. I didn't have the tools or another spoke with me to fix it so I used a bit of duct tape from a glove repair job to tie it to another spoke and I continued on with a slightly wobbly rear wheel.
I beat Rochelle to the Rochester/Marion KOA, got a spot and started to take my rear wheel apart while waiting for Rochelle.
Once Rochelle was here, we had to take advantage of the pool. It was a nice, clean pool and it was just cold enough to counteract the midday heat.
The spoke was on the cassette side of the rear wheel so it's a fair bit of work to replace it as the cassette needs to be removed. It was a good opportunity to do some cleaning.
Right now, I am feeling like I have a cold coming on. It might be allergies or the lack of sleep last night or some effect from the heat yesterday. A good night's sleep is in order and I'll be doing that very soon.
Tomorrow, I ride to La Crosse, Wisconsin, 110 km via some backroads (highways 52, 30, 16, 61) that look more appealing than the interstate. It adds some distance but should be much less trafficked.
It was brutally hot today. There were heat advisories with a combination of 36C/97F and high humidity that would make it feel like 43C/109F. I carried extra water and stopped twice for cold drinks but still ran out water at about 85 km. That was just the point where Rochelle caught up to me and I topped off for the last 20 km. I ended up using a fair bit of water by just pouring it over my head.
At the last minute, I decided to try a different route. This one, Google Maps suggested when I told it to avoid highways. It was shorter and a little more interesting looking than one that I had created by hand.
This new route took me across the north side of Minneapolis and then down a really nice road on the west bank of the Mississippi River. I got a good view of what I think is called St. Anthony Falls. It then took me over the Mississippi and into St. Paul before turning south and out into more industrial and then rural areas. It eventually took me onto highway 52 heading south to Cannon Falls.
One thing that really stood out for me about Minneapolis was how good their cycling infrastructure is. There are good cycling paths throughout the city and they have a bicycle sharing system like a lot of European cities have.
I personally have a bit of a problem with these kind of "off the street" paths because they are designed for inexperienced cyclists and don't work well for faster road cyclist. This is great for the inexperienced cyclists but their existence (the path, not the cyclists) mean that the streets are not as well adapted for cyclists as they would be if cycling was more integrated into the overall traffic planning. They do promote cycling a lot so I cannot complain too much.
Rochelle saw some fireworks on sale at Costco. Is there some kind of holiday coming up soon here in the US? :)
Tomorrow, I will continue south southeast on highway 52 to Rochester, only 90 km away. It should be a bit cooler, a bit less humid and for the first time in two weeks, a light tail wind!
Someone walking by just said "I love your camper". It's amazing that with all of the behemoth motorhomes and fifth-wheels around us that people still find the compact nature of VanGo appealing. We get such comments on an almost daily basis.
Finally, tonight we are staying at the beautiful and cheap, Lake Byllesby Campground, near Cannon Falls. It was great to take a dip in the only slightly chilly water at the end of such a hot day.
