Thursday, June 16th, 2011 (Day 2)

Our first morning away from home. We woke up with sore thighs and asses. Breakfast was some granola bars we bought the night before and some gatorade. We packed up all of our things and took pictures with our host family. They were so nice, they offered us breakfast but we told them we were okay since we had our granola bars. We took way too long to get ready and left at about 9am. 
Today we had an awful amount of headwind the entire way, lowering our morale and slowing us down tremendously, especially considering our bodies were trying to recover from the day before. One motorcyclist commented later on facebook, "The headwind was giving me trouble on highway 6 today, I can only imagine what it must have been like for these guys."

We struggled to hold 13mph on flat ground. Luckily for me though, the sun was shining and I harvested plenty of solar power. Enough power to keep my speakers cranked up and my devices fully charged. Adam, however, wasn't so lucky. The rain the day before had dripped down onto his speakers and fried them, so he was without any music. I can only imagine the suffering...

Not only did he have no music, but after one of our climbs today on the way down (today was suprisingly hilly for half the day) Adam hit a bump hard and his bungee chord and duct tape repair came loose from the day before. Now his fairing was badly twisted. (See lower right photo - seat pointing up, fairing tilting to camera left)
We made it to Princeton, IL tonight. We couldn't find anywhere to sleep since we got to town late and didn't find anyone to give us accommodations. The only motel that we could find was closed (permanently.) So, we rode around the area until we found a small area behind someone's backyard that was well covered from every direction by trees and shrubs. We set up camp there.

I crawled into my tent, I could hear Adam outside making his repairs to his velo. I was exhausted. It was so humid outside! I was sweating like a pig inside my tent. 

Then we heard the guy's voice who's house we were camped behind. He opened the door on his fence and interrogated us. We explained we were traveling and just needed a place to camp and he understood. Surprisingly he didn't bother to ask what the hell we we're driving.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and drank a half liter of this weird lemonade stuff I just bought. Then I opened up some "canned ham," took a bite of it, and passed out for the night.

Miles covered today: 70
Miles covered total: 125
Overnight Town: Princeton, IL