Day 11

We woke up right as the rain was stopping from the night before (perfect timing) and got on the road after packing up camp and having some coffee at the campsite office where we charged our almost dead phones for a bit. 

We also used the solar charger for the first time while actually riding our bikes -- we tied it to the top of Alec's back panniers so that we could charge on the go! And we were able to keep power for the rest of the day, and not get lost because we use our phones for maps. 

We made GREAT time in the morning. For the first 35 miles or so we averaged 13 mph, which is MUCH faster than we've been able to go. 

We stopped at a gas station to pump our tires up with the air compressor for car tires. And I found a new reason to love my great touring bike--my touring tires retain air so much better than Alec's racing tires do. My front tire was still at it's full psi and my back was only 10 psi low, whereas Alec's front was about 35 low and his back was worse. We continued on and ignored signs for road work ahead... nobody was working (we found out) because it was Memorial Day so we just cruised right on through, after bypassing a couple fences and steering clear of some ditches... We felt pretty cool going through where cars couldn't, yay bikes!

We stopped to get a few groceries at a place we passed and got some egg rolls and a fortune cookie from the Chinese place next door. This was our fortune...:

Thank you fortune cookie, that we are.. 

A really nice man, who I believe introduced himself as Ralph Adams (if I remember right!) outside the grocery store watched our bikes for us, and asked us a lot about our trip, and shared some stories of his own about snow storms in the middle of the summer in Colorado. He was great and donated $10 to Citta. That's actually our first donation from a person we met in passing, thanks Ralph!

After that the wind seriously picked up, right in our faces... Everybody told us the winds always blow west-east, and boy did we feel it. We slowed way down in the afternoon, but still had a great time! Kyle, who's house we were headed toward, came out on his bike to meet us and ride in with us. It was great! He actually drive 4 hours to and from Chicago, where he's interning, and back in the same day just so he could ride with us and see us, so great. He met us with about 20 miles to go. On the way back it randomly rained for like 10 seconds, and we GOT ICE CREAM FROM AN ICE CREAM TRUCK!!!! I've never done that before I don't think. It was so exciting. 

In all of my excitement I apparently dropped my wallet in the middle of the road... This amazingly nice woman, Ruth, who lives in Indianapolis found it and went through some serious loops to find a way to get it back for me! In a process that involved calls to the credit card company and to her daughter (who lives in Austin, what?!) who found us in a phone book, Ruth got in touch with my mom, and then me, and Kyle's sister, Christy, drove me to pick my wallet up. Thank you so much Ruth! I'm lucky that such a wonderful person found it.

Before that whole process happened, we arrived at Kyle's (we raced at the end to try to get 12mph average for the day which was fun, but tiring, and we barely got it!) and had amazing showers, great company, and a wonderful meal. Salad, bread, and more spaghetti than we could have dreamed of. It was fantastic.. It was great meeting Kyle who I've heard a lot about from Alec as well!

Thank you so much for having us Leavitt family!!

Daily stats:

Mileage: 69.66

Average speed: 12 mph (13 in the morning tho!)

Elevation gain: 1101 ft

Favorite sign from the day:

Daily haiku:

Fastest morning yet,

Crazy headwinds we hate them,

We love Kyle a lot. 

-AW