Thursday, August 24, 2006

Day 31 – Gibson City, IL to Lafayette, IN

. Thursday, August 24, 2006
















Weather
Temperature: 76°F
Conditions: Partly Sunny
Wind: NE 9 mph

Ride Info
Altimeter Trip: 750 ft
Altimeter Odometer: 65,990 ft
Maximum Speed: 34.5 mph
Average Speed: 18.2 mph
Distance Trip: 86.6 miles
Distance Odometer: 2,433.8 miles
Elapsed Time: 4 hr 21 min 54 sec


Chalk up another state in the “been there, done that” book. It was almost a straight shot from Gibson City, IL on into Lafayette, IN. All the miles I put in over the last several days combined with the aggressive pace must have caught up with me today as I averaged a rather pedestrian 18 mph. Besides a couple large cities, Illinois and Indiana didn’t have much to offer as far in the scenery department. One of the milestones was passing into the eastern time zone when we crossed the border from Illinois into Indiana.

Lafayette is the home of the Purdue University Boilermakers. After we set up camp at the church we were staying at, Paul (the guy whom I rode with on the very first day and is a thermodynamics professor at Purdue) took a bunch of us on a rolling tour of the campus. Being the middle of summer, the campus was fairly empty. Seeing such a large campus made me glad that I went to a small school like Clarkson University. We got to see the football stadium which was kind of neat. Headed back to the church and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning my bike. After dinner, a bunch of us were still hungry so we loaded up the Wandering Wheels van to head into town. It felt strange to see all the traffic and bright city lights for some reason. As we were driving, the WW drivers exclaimed, “Look! There’s a henway!” Stupid me then asked, “What’s a henway?” “Oh, only three or four pounds.” My brain must have more tired than normal because I had to have them explain the joke to me. Tomorrow would bring us back to Upland, IN – the home of Wandering Wheels – back to where it all started about one month ago.

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