Day 197 – 23rd June 09
Posted by TravellingStrom on June 23, 2009
Tuesday – Worthington, Wisconsin
Hi everyone, I need to clear up some confusion, so I will do it here and now.
Sorry for the long introduction, but this will stay here for at least a week, so if you have read it once, scroll down for the days update, which starts with the non bold text 🙂
I am receiving a lot of offers of help, chat, food, rides, beer etc and not in that particular order either 🙂 I appreciate all of the offers and I apologise to those who I have missed or gone past without dropping in to say G’day. I always acknowledge and answer all messages, whether they are emails, comments here, PMs from forums or whatever. The only issue seems to be, I sometimes get them after I have been and gone in certain areas. So, to make things a lot easier I will outline a few facts on where I am, where I could be heading and an explanation on what you see here.
For a start I am always going to be behind in the blog, usually two days, maybe more if I do not have net access. So what it says as the date, place etc at the top of the page is out of date, ignore it, it is correct for the time I was there, but I am not there now 🙂 For example, I am writing this in South Bend, Sunday the 21st June, the first day of summer in the US.
There are two ways to know where I am and which way I am going. Look to the left and down a bit, there is a small map, it tells you my current general location. Whenever I get internet access I update this, it takes 30 seconds and is as actual as it can be. If I do not do a blog update, I will always update this map anyway.
The second way and most accurate is to look to the right, there is a link called
Here I Am
SPOT tracks of Where I Am
Click on that link, it will open a new page in your web browser, if I am actually physically riding at the moment, it will be updated every 30 minutes or so, the higher the number flag is the latest position locator. I always turn this off about 5 minutes from where I intend staying, but I am in that general area.
I hope the confusion does not stop the offers of meeting fellow riders from coming in, but now I may get the messages before I actually blow through town. After Rapid City, I will be slowing down a lot more, so I will have more chances anyway.
The morning started as abnormal, what I mean is I actually got myself 8 hours of sleep, amazing 🙂 On the road after a blog write and post and off back over the river where I thought I was seeing things!
After the initial scare, I realised it was a novel way of doing a transport 🙂
After negotiating the suburbs for a short while I was out and heading north along the scenic river drive. I am only about 500 miles from RC so I can afford a bit of a diversion.
I found a nice shady spot for a snack, crikey it was hot, and very humid as well, but a nice view of the river area.
I am following the river up north and as I said it was hot.
After getting fuel at the border town I grabbed a few photos and then rested in the only bit of shade around.
I have seen these things in quite a few states and am wondering what they are. They sort of look like bug catchers, but maybe they are used for bug counting rather than control, Jerry, you are a wealth of knowledge, any ideas?
On again, still going north, but with the states photos done, I now needed to make tracks west, so I needed to get on the slab, which is north of me. There is still some nice scenery around here though.
After hitting the slab for an hour or so, the weather ahead started to look a bit mean.
And allthough the road twisted and turned there was no escaping it, so I decided to don the gear while I was dry and there was a bridge to stop under. This was a wise move, because as soon as I had the gear on, down it came. The wind was the worst thing, it nearly blew me into the next lane a few times, all my gear acts like a big sail!
It only lasted about 10 minutes, but in that time the temp dropped from the near 40c down to 21c, quite a change! I could see light at the end of the tunnel, but I was under the clouds and dribbles for a fair while yet.
Mind you, when I eventually arrived in the sun, didn’t the temps start to rise rapidly, so I took another break at the next rest stop and de robed 🙂
I continued on westwards for the next few hours, but I was starting to get tired and I could see I was not going to be able to do Sioux City tonight, plus the road glare from the sun was getting bad, so I decided to stay at a town called Worthington, it just happened to be there and it had a number of cheap motels.
I grabbed some tucker, noodles again 🙂 Then I found the internet was a bit dodgy, so I could not do much at all, so I ended up writing up an entry anyway and had a bit of a read of a book. I needed to get some rest in before Rapid City, so this looked like an opportune time.
Day – 396 miles and 637 km
Trip – 20,846 miles and 33,548 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 
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