Wikipedia Affiliate Button

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

"University of Dame Notre...LEE!" - Day 22

Woke up late this morning a little before 8 am. Right at 8, a park ranger came by and collected $6 for camping one night. I found it humorous that on the receipt under "Vehicle License" he wrote "bikes." We quickly packed up, deciding to get breakfast at a convenience store. There we picked up an Indiana map. I was looking at the University of Notre Dame and noticed they had inverted the word order on the map. I pointed this out to Travis, causing him to exclaim loudly "LEE!" It turns out that we have a mutual friend who is studying there, so we set a lofty goal of making it to South Bend, 129 miles away according to Google's phone text service.

We set off zig zagging across Illinois along various county roads towards Highway 2 in Indiana. It took us 50 miles and into the afternoon to reach it, but it was almost entirely flat. Once in Indiana we lost our tailwind and Google indicated that it was still 104 miles to South Bend, although it doesn't reply with the shortest route. We were worried about making it, but the flat and the motivation to sleep inside kept us going.

On the highway a few miles outside of South Bend, something hit my front wheel and then flopped into the guardrail. I didn't get a good look at it, but judging from the noise I would guess it was a bird. We've seen and smelled all kinds of road kill but this was the first that we've made.

We rolled into downtown South Bend just after sunset, where Lee met us and guided us to Subway and his apartment. We stayed up late chatting but got to check internet and sleep indoors. We have finalized with Jocelyn our plans and Google says it's only 734 miles from here. We should be there in 7 days if we continue at this pace.

TimeTripOdometerAverageMax
10:15:36
156.3
2428
15.2
27.7