7/9

Today was much less exciting. The views consisted of endless rolling hills and a cow here and there. The highlight of the day was Cady wiping out about half a foot away from a dead deer. Out of 75 miles of road, fate had him nearly fall into a smelly deer corpse.

In other news, I'm grateful to be in Gillette, WY because it has a Hardees'. The Monster Thickburger was the best thing I've eaten since the last Monster Thickburger I had during the school year.

Some random observations:

• My writing seems to be getting worse – I may be becoming a meathead!

• I'm more than half way done with this adventure.

• The soreness in your legs never ends. As long as there are hills, your legs will be forever sore.

• It's really creepy riding a bicycle by cows. Every single one will stop what it's doing and turn its head towards you the whole entire time you're in sight.

• It's really fun starting cow stampedes with bike horns and yelling.

7/8

So much can change in just eighty miles. We started the day entering the Black Hills and riding through really dense fog – maximum visibility must have been around 50 feet. After an exhausting 10 mile climb, we came out of the clouds into clear sky and an incredible view of the Hills. The last two miles to Mount Rushmore had some painfully steep hills, but it was well worth it; I was seeing the faces in person for the first time. When we got there, there were some people in climbing gear on top of the faces and they started to climb down the side of Lincoln's face. We soon realized that they didn't work for the park; they unfurled – well, attempted to – a huge banner that read, “AMERICA HONORS LEADERS, NOT POLITICIANS. STOP GLOBAL WARMING. GREENPEACE.” Apparently this ended up on national news, which was pretty exciting since I was witnessing it firsthand.

After leaving Mount Rushmore, we had a few more grueling South Dakotan hills before entering Wyoming. The view from the state border was really cool; you can definitely see over twenty miles away. There was a strong storm going far off and you could see the rain coming down even though it was dry where we were. It looked like we were heading straight for the storm, but when we got under the clouds, there was no rain. We had an incredible tail wind bring us into town; we cruised in at around 34 mph on flat road with minimal effort. There was a really ominous looking cloud looming over the town, New Castle, WY: it was the darkest cloud I've ever seen and it had the shape of something like an alien mothership. Justin noticed that some of the clouds at the bottom were beginning to spin and that's when things began to get exciting and scary. Once we got into town, there were some ridiculous winds blowing in every direction and the tornado siren began to go off. Unfortunately (fortunately in most people's opinion), the storm decided to head away from town and everything became still. The riders in the groups behind us had to find cover in a barn because the winds had become so strong that they weren't able to go forward. I'm really jealous because they got to see the funnel cloud begin to descend. Everyone made it safely to the stayover and we were provided a huge amount of lasagna. Overall, it was a great day.

This July 4th was definitely the best July 4th celebration I've ever had. On the way to the tiny town of Murdo, SD, population 670, many of us bought fireworks from a stand to shoot off later that night. Most of us come from places where fireworks are illegal, so it was exciting to be able to shoot them off ourselves for the first time. Saebin, being a fireworks connosieur, bought the biggest package the stand sold. The box weighed more than most of our bikes, so it must have been over twenty pounds. With just one fuse, it fired off a variety of fireworks for about a minute straight. Before the sun went down, we felt like firing off our smaller fireworks for fun, so we found a spot away from all the houses next to a farmer's field. While we were firing them off, Cady fired off a larger rocket which didn't fly quite high enough and exploded about 3 feet above the field. In the next few seconds, most of us froze up like deer in headlights because the field burst into flames and started spreading really fast. Most of us had never been in a situation like this before so we stood around for a few minutes not knowing what to do until Clinton hopped the barbed wire fence to try to stamp out the fire and gashed his thigh in the process. Some of us followed him over and we must have looked pretty ridiculous trying to stamp out a fire that was spreading too fast with flip flops on. Luckily Jesse came to his senses and called the fire department and they arrived soon enough to save the field. Nervous and embarassed, we stood around and waited for the fire fighters to come over and take down our names and arrest us. To our surprise, they were laughing and in great spirits and told us not to worry at all and drove off. Just another reason South Dakota is the nicest state in the nation.

7/3

Today I was dumb and rode for the first time without all my belongings in ziplock bags - it was also one of the rainiest days today. As a result, my iPhone is now dead and I now know that my rain jacket isn't really waterproof. I'm hoping for the best and that it will turn on again after it dries out in the next few days.

Today was also the first time I rode on the interstate intentionally. The road we were on that runs parallel to I-90 ended up a really deep and muddy gravel road, so we made a detour on the interstate instead. It's pretty scary riding on the shoulder of the road while cars are zooming by at over 60 miles per hour, but it's so much faster than riding on country roads.

We had a rest day yesterday in Mitchell, South Dakota, which is a somewhat small town and everyone seems to know each other. We met some really friendly and generous locals there and raised a total of $115 in donations and one man even brought his grill over to where we were staying and grilled us anything we bought from the grocery store. Earlier in the day, we had already stuffed ourselves at a lunch buffet in Pizza Hut. The employees were even nice enough to keep the buffet going for us long after it was supposed to close. This has been a very food-centric trip.

To continue from last time, we rode from Champaign to Clifton, a really small town just North of Champaign. The skies were clear all day and with the sun bearing down on us for so long, we were all sweating like crazy by the time we reached our destination. There was a local pool right across the street from where we were staying and after letting them know about our charity ride, we were let in for free. It felt incredibly refreshing to jump into the pool after sweating and riding hard all day. Of course, we entered the pool through the high dive. To show off my high dive skills, I pulled a double front-flip to faceplant... which hurt for about 10 minutes after.

To our surprise, there was a public pool right by our stayover in Homewood the next day as well – and it was even better: it had a big waterpark-style slide that twisted and turned. During adult swim, we had the entire pool to ourselves, so we got a big game of swimming pool football going. This day was another day on the trip where we were overstuffed with food; the church provided us a large dinner of pasta and lasagna (as usual), and right after, Jesse's mom had a block party going at their place with a ton more food. It turns out Homewood is right by Chicago Heights and so my friend Patty came over and showed me R Kelly's enormous mansion, which also turns out to be right by Homewood.

The next day, we rode into Chicago's Millenium Park and took a bunch of pictures of the giant shiny bean. My next two nights in Chicago were great; I got to sleep in a bed at Justin's house, eat waaay too much meat that his mom bought and cooked for us, and cleaned and fixed up my bike. In nearly 1500 miles, my bike has taken quite a beating from the terrible road conditions we've had to ride through.

From Chicago, we rode on to Highland Park and stayed in Deerfield. We were again well fed with burgers and hotdogs by Matt Strick's family friends (relatives?).

The next day was what I consider one of the best days of the trip so far. After heading into Wisconsin, we had the greatest lunch break ever. We stopped by Kristin's friend's house on a lake and they had a barbecue going for us. While we waited for the food, we jumped into the lake and swam around, which was so refreshing because it was really hot out. We must have spent over two hours there and were pretty reluctant to get back on our bikes to ride another fourty miles. Just to reward us for completing the ride, our stayover was at Brad's lake house right by Lake Geneva, one of the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. And it was. We spent the rest of the day swimming in that lake and doing synchronized dives off the pier. Brad's parents had hot food waiting for us when we got back to the house. That day was like a day in heaven; I'll always remember it.

I knew the fun had to end eventually, and the next day was one of the hottest days ever. The heat index riding into Madison, WI was around 100 degrees and the sky was completely clear so the sun was roasting us the entire day. This was also the day I learned how much dehydration could affect my performance. I must have sweat out garbage cans full of liquid and was weak and light-headed for most of the ride. I had the hardest time keeping up with the people I was riding with. I definitely know better now.

Now that I've briefly gone over one of the best weeks ever, I won't be doing anymore catching up unless if I feel like writing a huge novel. If you want to know about the days in between when I don't write, you'll have to ask me!