Day 52 (7/23): Effingham, IL; 110 Miles

You know, getting up early is rough knowing you’re about to bike 110 miles. In consolation we got to start the day with a great breakfast sponsored once more by Chuck Howard, who’s been really taking care of us in St. Louis…cruised over to the “City Grocer’s” and pretty much had free range on anything in the store. About 10 miles into the ride most of us were regretting the decision to get the breakfast burrito.

Swept with Britton today…all in all it turned out to be a pretty smooth ride into Illinois. Had to rack the first 15 miles or so to get through East St. Louis (not the greatest area, apparently)…and crossed the mighty Mississippi in the vans. Pretty sweet milestone for the ride. As a result Jay and I missed our stateline photo-op…so we had to get a bit more creative.

Around mile 75ish we all stopped for lunch. Britton and I decided to do some modeling for the “Journey of Hope Sweeps” calendar 2007…and the team took some silly group pics as well. On our way out a local guy stopped and introduced himself as a Pi Kapp…which has happened several times on our trip.

Passed some more cornfields (which Jay and I decided to run through like in “Signs”) before finally pulling into our lodging at a church in Effingham. This place is pretty sweet: most of us set up shop in the back rec room where they have table tennis, tv, and the one game Jake has been waiting to play all trip: Guitar Hero. Only one shower though so we all took turns between playing games or napping. Jake expressed his Guitar Hero dominance with his rather absurd skills…Ezra came in a close second. One extra highlight was a fridge full of Yoo-Hoos you could take for a buck….mmmm.

Around 6ish members of the local Rotary club came to have dinner with us. Each week they have a meeting catered by a local grocery store…which provided an AWESOME dinner…highlight was the loaded mashed potatoes. Sat with Vicki for most of the evening and talked about the trip and the area…she kind of caught us off guard when she asked if we meet a lot of “chicks” on the road. I got to hop up and do the advocacy presentation: basically just talk about the Journey of Hope and what it’s all about.

After dinner we had the rest of the night off. Bunch of us watched the movie “Without Limits” which is the story of Steve Prefontaine (shout out to my man Cory Herold)…pretty inspiring story. Just enough time for a little more guitar hero and yoo hoo then we’ll hit the hay!