Day 69, Murphysboro to Goreville, IL

Miles – 36

Miles From Start/To Finish – 3,195/1,150

Ave Riding Speed – 3-33 mph

Hours Start to Finish – 4.5

Weather – Sunny and 81

Kim and I slept in until 6:30am this morning. We had planned on a shorter ride today due to how the accommodations worked out. We are heading for Goreville, about 35 miles southeast from Murphysboro and planned on a late morning hotel exit. We walked down to the hotel breakfast nook and grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down with our maps to relax and enjoy the brew.

Kim’s been struggling the last few days and worrying about things that haven’t happened, might or might not happen and looped back into thinking and worrying about tomorrow and somewhat absent in today and the now. It’s easy to do and I’ve been there. I probably haven’t been acknowledging her struggle lately as I was trying to stay in the “today zone”, lead by example and hoping she would find her way back in the fold. With this adventure we have to live for today as it’s all we have in front us, one pedal stroke at a time. Thinking much farther out than that is overwhelming. Like most relationships, we probably should have had this conversation earlier so everyone could move forward sooner.

After we had a light breakfast, cereal for Kim and scrambled eggs with gravy and bacon for me, we took our time getting ready for today’s ride. Kim called her brother, Chris, to catch up and he was good for some additional encouragement and focus on the now. We rolled our loaded bikes out our 2^nd floor hotel room, in and down the elevator and out the front door at 10:30am. The sun was shining and it was about 75 degrees

Our route today, at least on the map, shows a lot of zig zagging, south and east, and on many different roads every 2–5-mile intervals and the written directions are twice as long as normal.  The first 12-miles were through neighborhoods and through some farm fields. We were passing by a sign for Southern Illinois University and I noticed a car pulled over a block ahead of us and a man got out. As we approached him on our bikes, he said that he saw us riding and pulled over to see if we needed any directions or anything else. We introduced ourselves and met Mike. He said he lives a couple miles back on our route and knows that this section of the TransAm maps can be very confusing. He rides a lot and done many long trips with his two boys. Mike also said that our ride today will rival some of the riding in Missouri. He was a good guy and we appreciated him stopping to chat with us. We handed him our card and asked him to check us out.

We continued zig-zagging and at one point our mapped route was closed because the road was under construction. We didn’t have any cellphone service so we found ourselves using an old-fashioned navigation tool, the sun. After about 5-miles of alternative zig-zag roads we were back on our route. Mike was right about the climbs today. They were in-line with what he said they’d be.

We pulled into Goreville, population 1,100, and passed a small grocery store on the north side of the road. We both smiled at each other as we knew that’s where dinner was coming from tonight. I signaled to Kim that we were going to pull over and she looked up the directions to our destination tonight, the United Methodist Church. It was a few blocks further up. We pulled up and road around to the side of the church to the basement door. It was unlocked. Julie came to the door and said to come on in and bring our bikes with us. She showed us around their ministry for bikers. There’s a small kitchen, laundry, shower, couches and tv. It very comfortable. Soon we met Jeannie, whom Kim and been communicating with.

Kim and I unloaded our gear and rode back to the grocery store. We grabbed the fixings for spaghetti plus pickles, radishes and blueberries. After dinner we washed some laundry, showered and watched some of the latest season of The Komisky Method on Netflix.

We’ve got a longer haul tomorrow, 65-70 miles, and will shoot for an early start.

The picture is a look across Devils Kitchen Lake where we pulled over to get a close up look at a real lake again. It reminded us of home!