Big Ride Day 34

Photos from Day 34

I slept great under the pavilion and woke up to my alarm and one of the other riders yelling "if you don't turn that alarm off, I'm going the shove it up your a**" I took out my earplugs and realized that it was raining out. That worked out well since I didn't have a wet tent to take down. We got out and to breakfast really early, but it poured rain all the way. We sat in breakfast hoping it would pass by but it just continued to rain and rain and rain. We finally ventured out. Actually, Doug overslept so it was just Mary and I for the first part of the ride. We made out way through farms and small towns. Mary got a flat tire (that always happens in the rain). After a while, it stopped raining so much and Doug caught up with us. We rode through relatively flat suburban farmland and I was still just really tired (like yesterday) and couldn't quite get started. By the time we rolled into checkpoint, it had stopped raining and was actually getting hot. The checkpoint was at Tom (the route guy's) brother's house. His whole family turned out and baked for us. It was pretty great. His dad even volunteered to drive me down to a sporting goods store to look for tent poles. That was such a nice gesture. After departing checkpoint, we actually rode through the Fermi Labs campus, home of the world's largest particle accelerator. We got to take a tour of the facilities and see a movie about the accelerator. It was pretty cool

We arrived at camp at a University around 4:00 and it started raining again almost immediately. They were going to allow us to sleep inside and without a tent, that was my only option. However, it seemed like it was going to be really crowded and hard to get sleep so I got talked into sharing a hotel room with Doug and Stan for the night. We checked into the hotel and then made our way downtown in Connie's van along with Linda, Liz, Phyllis, Lisa, Laurie, and some others. We went to Gino's East in downtown Chicago for dinner because they are supposed to have the best deep-dish pizza in Chicago. About half of the big riders showed up and we were actually able to move ahead of the long line to get in and get seated right away. It was great! After an excellent dinner and some beer, we cruised the Miracle Mile in downtown Chicago. Chicago is really a very nice city and one of the best-looking downtowns I've seen. They had an art exhibit throughout the downtown called "Cows on Parade" with all these plastic cows scattered throughout the downtown area. Really bizarre. We stopped by Giradelli's ice cream shop for dessert before heading home for the night.

This page modified November 25, 2000