Sunday, May 20, 2009 - Warm, light breeze
- Start: Roanoke, IL
- ATW: Metamora, Germantown Hills
- End: Peoria, IL
- Day Miles:30.7 Ride Time:3:34 Total Trip Miles: 820
(Saturday) Our plans were to take Rt251 North to Rt17 to Rt78. However, on Rt251 a bridge was completely missing. We detoured onto Rt4. How can a trip that has no route, have a detour? Riding into the wind, we stopped for the day and were offered a change to sleep in the hayloft of a horse barn. This kept us out of the wind and in the warmth and we did not have to setup our tarp. (Sunday) The next morning we found 4 broken spokes, so instead of continuing north, we rode into Peoria, IL.
Editor’s note: – I was on the road in Columbus, Ohio and I got a call from Heather. She asked where the nearest bike shop was in Peoria. I got on my Blackberry, did some web searches, and gave her the telephone numbers of about six bike shops in the area. This was not as bad as when a different daughter called me and said, “Dad, I am lost, can you give me directions?”
We rode into Peoria to find a bike shop that would have replacement spokes. Once in Peoria, we were nabbed, at the top of Grandview Drive, by a couple. Once they heard about our broken spokes and that we were waiting for a bike shop to open the next day, they offered us the opportunity to sleep in a basement bedroom that they called “The Suite”. We happily agreed and rode over to their house to wait for them to get home. After a dinner of pizza & grapes and conversations late into the night, we finally got some sleep.
