Today’s Date: July 11, 2024

Today’s Start Point: Chester, Illinois

Today’s End Point: Marion, Illinois

Today’s Miles: 66.74 Miles

Cumulative Miles: 3,166.53 Miles

Today was definitely a day of two parts, fun and fast cycling in the morning and sobering bike mechanical issues in the afternoon.

When I awoke, I planned on getting an even earlier start since I planned to go off route (and considering my awesome navigation skills) to the town of Crainville, Illinois to get a new cassette installed on my bike. After a great 24 hours with Jimmy and Scott, I was back at it alone. I had my usual microwaved Jimmy Dean Breakfast sandwich and left at 5:30 am.

The route would take me south to Murphysboro, Illinois and then I would go off-route east through Carbondale, Illinois to Crainville. I had two options to get to Murphysboro, either ride inland along a hilly route or ride the levee roads along the Mississippi River, which involved less hills but more traffic. The route along the Mississippi River involved a seven mile stretch along busy Highway 3. Since I was a still a little shellshocked from the hills of Missouri, I decided on the Mississippi River route.

When leaving Chester, Illinois, I had to take River Road, which was a low lying roadway unsurprisingly enough along the river. When I arrived at the turnoff for the road, signs had been posted stating that the road was flooded. As usual, I decided to ignore the signs, after all, I am on a bike.

When I got to the flooded section, it appeared to be about 200 yards long and about mid-calf in height. I decided to pedal through it, which worked for about ten yards until I noticed I could not tell where the road began and ended. After nearly dumping the bike when I went off road in the water, I walked my bike the rest of the way, which created a nice squishy sound when I finally started pedaling on the other side.

Once through the muck, the route turned onto the aforementioned seven mile stretch of Highway 3. Yesterday, Scott Latimer warned me that the road was filled with semi-trucks speeding along. I thought to myself, little does Scott know of the things I have ridden through. Well, Scott was right. The road had no shoulder and was narrow and a semi was passing me every 30 seconds. After a while you get a feel for how angry the drivers are on the road and these drivers anger was at a Spinal Tap 11. Even if I wanted to pull off to let one pass there was no place to do so. I pedaled as fast as these tired legs could go until I could turnoff on the levee roads. This was definitely the scariest section of road I have ridden so far.

The roads I turned off on were atop the levees along the Mississippi River. On the east side of the levee was farmland and on the west side rising water. I am not sure where the water level typically is at, but it seemed to be rising to the top of the levee.

With the humidity levels came a thick fog over the road. Luckily I saw few cars along this passage and the roads were flat as promised. Eventually the fog lifted as I approached Murphysboro and so did the road, as again I rose and fell as I went over a hillier terrain.

I covered the 40 miles to Murphysboro before 8:00 am, giving me plenty of time to go off-route to Crainville. I asked my trusted pal Google to find me a route and off I went.

The road was relatively flat with a few climbs, with a long stretch through the college town of Carbondale ((home of Southern Illinois University). Remarkably I was able to follow the Google instructions and arrived at the bike shop at 10:00 am. The bike shop, however, did not open until 11:00 am.

No problem, wouldn’t you know it but there was a DQ next door. When I went up to the door there was a sign posted that as of Sunday, after 59 years in business, the restaurant closed. Oh the humanity. Ok, there was a McDonalds next door to the DQ.

When the shop opened, I wheeled in my bike and Gabriel, the store mechanic, went to work. I would like to remind everyone that since I started this trip I replaced the back wheel (due to TSA mishandling on the flight), replaced two spokes on said back wheel due to weight issues on the back rack, both tires going from slicker tubeless tires to more hardy tires with tubes, and two chains due to wear and tear. The collective work was done by four different bike shops along the way.

After a few minutes, Gabriel informed me that the chain that the shop had installed in Kansas was the wrong chain. I had planned on replacing the chain in addition to the cassette so it was no big issue, although I was perturbed that the shop in Kansas made such a mistake.

After a few more minutes, Gabriel gave me even more unsettling news-that the hub in the wheel I purchased in Portland, Oregon was a hub for a mountain bike, not a road/gravel bike. Due to this error, the smallest sprocket on my cassette had been rubbing on the bike frame, causing an incredible amount of drag, up to 40 or 50 watts. For the non-cycling reader, I would usually be rolling along generating on average 200 to 250 watts. 40 to 50 watts of that power generation is just trying to overcome the cassette rub. I wish I would have known this before Brad and I went up and over the 11,000 foot Hoosier Pass.

Unless I wanted to wait a few days for new parts, the only quick solution was to get a new wheel with the correct hub. The shop is going to ship me the old wheel back to me so that I can deal with the shop in Portland.

I want to thank Gabriel for being the first mechanic of all of the mechanics that have worked on my bike to notice the issue. If anyone is in southern Illinois and needs some work done, I highly recommend the Bike Surgeon in Crainville.

After Gabriel went over the whole bike to make sure that EVERYTHING was working properly, I finally left the shop at 1:30 pm and made my way west to my final destination-Marion, Illinois. By the time I left, it was like a furnace outside but luckily it was only eight miles to Marion.

Marion is a bigger city than I imagined, and similar to Farmington, Missouri, has a section filled with chain restaurants and hotels. After a long, eventful and expensive day, I checked in and relaxed. Tomorrow will be another partially off-route day that will take me to the Ohio River.