Day 16

Here's something to add to the old resume: capable of conversing while complete stranger enters bedroom and defecates in corner.

I actually spent a lovely night in the men's room. I used a 3 foot bench and a shower stall to hang myself on like a suspension bridge. My legs were elevated and pressed against the wall and this could be why I felt so great.

After a couple of conversations with cowboys about the rain and cycling and whether the horses got spooked, I packed up and hit the mess hall. Martha runs the place, makes tremendous biscuits and coffee, and did a great job decorating. They've got IQ tests on the table and I scored 110. I talked with the cowboys, listened to good, classic country, and talked across the room to a woman who was itching to ride the River to River trail, but couldn't tell if it was going to be too muddy. I complemented Martha on her restroom and then moseyed on out.

I moseyed into Scoth. I was glad to see him as I was convinced he'd drowned. Obviously he hadn't, but he was really tired. We rode to Goreville together, I got him an introduction to a cute vegetarian waitress --

G: He's a great guy, but he's a vegetarian. Isn't that weird?
A: Why would that be weird. I'm a vegetarian.
G: You'll love him. I'll go find him

-- and then I biked out. I biked to my heart's content, met up with an elder gentleman from Cali on his way East, and then made it to the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

I will allow you your opinions on anything, but you are wrong if say you don't like Wal-Mart. You're not comparing it to the right thing. Think of how much choice and value it offers the country resident whose other alternatives are General Dollar or the canned foods at the gas station. I bought 25 Cliff Bars, organic rice-a-roni, Gatorade powder, too much junk, and a two foot long turkey sandwich for 4 bucks. Think of the time and carbon saved in being able to buy a Hannah Montana lunchbox, worms, your medicine, and watermelons at the same place.

I weighed twice as much heading out to Chester. I couldn't sit upright because the foot long would poke me in the adam's apple. I got lost in the Mississippi levee and saw nothing but one aeroplane for miles

A note on terror. Hitchcock was onto something in North by Northwest. Terror isn't shadows and darkened alleys. You can hide in those. Terror is blinding sunlight in a field so big you can't orient yourself. Now add the whirring sound of a vicious river.

The old Miss is brown and smells brown. It moves at a million miles an hour and would drag you under and eat you without thinking twice. Sometimes it floods.

Not today, which is why I am in friendly Chester -- Home of Popeye. More on that to come tomorrow I'm sure.

Day 15

Charming update. I am sleeping on the floor of the men's room.

Day 15

I know where they've hid the children. VBS -- Vacation Bible School.

Whether you believe the words 'Vacation' and 'School' should be part of the same compound or not, I have discovered why things seem oddly Pied Pipery.

I'm not going to linger on religion, so here's one last bit of strict reportage taken from the whiteboard in the classroom I slept in:

VBS -- Vacation Bible School July 12th-18
[3 feet over]
Characteristics You Want
Kindness
Trustworthy
Loving
Confident
Faithful
Honest
Giving person

Moving on, no wait, one more thing: You should see the size of their coffee machine. They buy coffee in crates, boil one thousand cups in a minute, and everyone must have a cup in hand.

Now, moving on. Lunch left me a little full and swollen. I ended up ordering a stack of 3 pancakes, screwing the florspar museum, drinking 6-or-so cups of sweat tea and getting into jittery conversations with the unfortunate people in my radius.

The fact that people talk to me is a testament to Mid-Western niceness. Here's a description of my appearance at the halfway mark. My face has Frenched up around the middle and I have the kind of suntan that looks more dirt than bronze. I am hopelessly unshaven. My hair is lightly-salted, blown dry, and made by the same person who does Pacino's wigs. My body ate my chest for lunch one day, but to compensate for this I've developed very wide shoulders and a tight face. My little upper body sits on ox legs that don't really work. Topping things off, I smell like Chinatown after an August trash collector's strike.

And still they say hello.

I rolled myself to the ferry and even managed to take a nap while I waited. I crossed the mighty Ohio and have ended up in Illinois.

Illinois, that pointy state of ad men with broad shoulders who come in on little cat feet. "Imagineer ad men, a new way to sell travelers on a barely complete gravel road and they will come." I took that 'scenic byway' from Cave In Rock to Elizabethtown and nearly collapsed from shaking. I went to the nearest liquor store and bought myself a gallon jug of water.

Elizabethtown is not the charming backroad Orlando Bloom charmed in the charmless, eponymous film. I saw a man in that store who extinguished a lit cigarette in his eyelid. I went out, sat on the curb, pounded my gallon jug, felt my stomach give way, and then laid prostrate on the dirty cement for a good hour's nap. I blended right in.

I called around to the nearest B&B to see if I could sleep off my waterover. I decided otherwise.

I would regret this decision with every inch of my shaking body when, after climbing 750 feet to my first plateau I got caught in the mother of all storms. I tried to out race it, but it caught up to me fast. I ran into the woods, found the lowest point, and then sat in the lightning position -- like you're sitting on a Chinese toilet with a tremendous headache. I tried to sit it out, but my small gully became a large river.

In a very Rambo move, I sprinted across the road, down a hill, and straight to someone's front door. I was scared. I kept my helmet on in the hopes of looking like less of a serial killer. Cue man and wife staring at wet man, lightening flashing, in bike gear. After the initial fear, we chatted, yada yada, I biked another 9 miles to a horse riding campground in Edenville, got dry, dried clothes, crap, I've got to go the storm has started again. I am safe, spent a long time getting my gear dry, and it might be getting wet all over again.