Gravel Grinding & Windy Wednesdays

J

Hello world,

First let me give you a quick summary of the last two days:

Tuesday:

We left our hotel hoping to get in 80 miles and sleep in Fletcher Indiana. It turns out we were actually 90 miles away from Fletcher.

We had high winds.
We hit gravel roads. (These slow you down considerably)
We hit gravel roads so bad, we had to walk our bikes.

There's never shame in hike-a-bike...especially when the gravel is so loose you're back tire is sliding out.

Basically, it was dinner time, the sun was starting to get lower in the sky and we still had 20 miles to go to our campground.

Thankfully, there is this wonderful website called warmshowers.com where bicyclists offer to house other bicyclists for free. God provided a house 10 miles away from us. The kind hosts fed us a wonderful dinner, gave us clean beds to sleep in, and sent us off with a wonderful breakfast this morning! We were truly blessed to be connected with Frances and Kevin.

Wednesday:

When I woke up this morning, every part of my body hurt…except my legs. (I can’t seem to figure that out). I was exhausted from the winds of the previous two days and I was not looking forward to 70 more miles today. But, as we got going my body settled in apathetically and things didn’t seem to hurt so much.

The mood lifted a little. It was a sunny, calm morning with beautiful cirrus clouds. There were trees amidst the cornfields, and for a short while I didn’t mind this whole bike touring thing.

Then the winds came. Slowly but surely throughout the morning the winds got stronger and stronger. Then the terrain got more challenging. We encountered rolling hills. Not the beautiful picturesque type, I mean the type that take you up 40 feet, and then down 40 ft. repeat, repeat, repeat. In the midst of the hills I discovered my front derailleur wasn’t shifting down, so I couldn’t get to my most powerful gears for climbing hills…nice right? Luckily I married a man who loves to fix things. He got to work right away. But after tinkering, screwing, loosening, and pedaling, he finally found the pebble that caused the problem, and we were on our way.

We were on our way, and we were on a bike path! It was awesome! Downhill, back to the wind, it was great.

Then reality set back in. We faced 15 miles of hard headwinds. I mean HARD. By the time we got to Lagro, our “lunch” destination, it was after 3 in the afternoon. We were supposed to be 20 more miles down the road to get picked up by some family at 5. We weren’t sure how this was going to happen.

A road under construction followed by a closed bridge meant we had to talk our third option: a winding, gravel road. 

Enter: Shannon.

Shannon is a friend of mine from college at Taylor! She lives in Wabash, and she was willing to come hang out, and then she gave us a ride! She helped us load up our bikes and our gear in her car and bring us to our meeting spot where we got picked up by my aunt and uncle. Thank you so much Shannon! Your time means so much to us!

Two very thankful bikers being grateful for a friend.

Due to our current physical conditions, we will be taking a rest day tomorrow here in Fort Wayne! Yay!! We plan on lots of sleep and couch time.

Thank you for all of your support and prayers! We love hearing from all of you! It’s been a hard couple of days of conditioning and bodily adjustments, but we feel confident that after a day of rest, aloe, and ice we will be back at it and heading towards Ohio!

Until next time…

Today’s Stats:

Left: Royal Center IN 6:45a.m.
Sleeping in: my family’s house in Fort Wayne, IN
Total mileage: 51 mi. (yesterday’s was 81)
Avg speed: 7.5 mph (yesterday’s was 8.4)
High Speed: 24.6 mph
Wind Speeds: 20 mph
Weather conditions: windy
Elevation Gain: 449ft. Yesterday:298 ft.