Day 21 Springfield Rest Day (24 miles)

Well I can't say I'll be rushing back to Springfield Illinois. It was like I feared, great if you want to see something Lincoln related, or buy some fancy art work, but not if you're out of shower gel.

Went for a shortish ride this morning. Had no real enthusiasm for it, but I've now finally made up the miles I lost on day 2, so in my mind I'm now set to complete the whole thing. Others thought I was mad for cycling on the day off. The weather was sunny with fluffy white clouds, just like the start of The Simpsons, which is something of a coincidence. I happened upon Lincolns tomb, which is shown in the photo. Don't know who the guy in the orange t-shirt is, it's not me and I didn't see him in the view finder.

In the afternoon walked 10 blocks (about a mile and a half) in search of washing powder and shower gel. Had to buy the biggest tubs of both. Now looking for smaller bottles to decant them into. Still not as bad as the guy who walked 27 blocks to go to a tattoo parlour, only to find when he got there it was shut. Or the guy who found a pharmacy about 10 blocks away on google, only to get there and find it no longer existed. It would be fair to say nobody made a great use of their day off. Still I have all my washing done and two new tyres on the bike.

A new guy joins us tomorrow, so our happy band will be up to 8. It's only 83 miles, our shortest day. Also the winds are meant to be behind us. I really need it, I'm not riding well at the moment, legs are very tired, hopefully I'll ride back into a bit of form over the next few days. Other than that (touching wood) things are going very well, my only complaint is sunburnt lips and ears, so things can't be too bad. One thing I've been surprised by is how little I've thought about actually finishing this thing. I could see it would be easy to get obsessed by there only being 12 days to go (to survive) etc, but so far it's been a case of one day at a time. Soon we're going to have to start coming to terms with the fact that this isn't going to last much longer.