Day 34 -- Quincy, IL to Springfield, IL

Miles: 110.60
Total Miles: 2547.32
Time: 6:52
Average Speed: 16.1 mph
Max Speed: 33.6 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 13
Elevation Gain: 2424 ft
Weather: Head and side winds around 95 degrees

Today was corn all over again. This corn was a little bit higher, so I had more area to pee in... but I didn't. I made it the furthest distance without having to pee today... 41 miles. Wade was so proud of me. We didn't have many pictures before we got into Springfield, but with Abe Lincoln being from here, we had a lot to do. The hardest part was convincing ourselves that we wanted to stay out in the heat after 100 miles and look at Lincoln things. We woke up at 5:45, ate breakfast at 6:15, then loaded at 7:00 and began our century. There was 41 miles of rolling terrain all the way to the first sag stop, and that's about it. We were going really fast because Fran was really pushing the pace until we passed almost everybody. When we got up to the 2 staff members that were riding today, we backed off just a little bit and rode with them the rest of the way to the sag stop. At the sag there was some awesome grapes, necturines, and bananas, so we stayed awhile and ate a lot.

After the sag stop, the wind picked up. At first it was a side wind, then it turned more and more into a head wind as we went on. The hills stopped after the sag, but the wind made up for them. We also had some great views of corn. Anyway, we eventually came up to the Illinois River, which had a steep climb over a really cool bridge. Wade took quite a few pictures of the bridge including about 10 while he was riding over the bridge because there was no shoulder to pull off on. It had a nice blue tint and it was very enjoyable to ride through. After the bridge it was just more ridng against and beside the wind until the second sag stop. At that sag there were clementines, which was a first for any sag stop... We had 6 each. Once again, we stayed awhile, then we continued on our way.

It was just more corn, beans, and wind all the way into Springfield. At one point Fran had to tell us to slow down because he was tired. Us, being our smart ass selves, made fun of him for going so fast this morning then being tired this afternoon. He agreed and said he won't go hard in the morning ever again... at least until tomorrow. Anyway, we arrived in Springfield and about 2 miles into town, our century was complete. We reached 100 miles, but we still had 10 miles to ride in town. We first went to the capital building and took quite a few pictures around it. After that we went to the old capital building where Lincoln held office and we explored around there. It was very interesting and in fact, we met Abe Lincoln himself. Some guy was in the building impersonating Abraham Lincoln and he did a really good job at it. Once we were done with that, we rode about 2 miles to Abe Lincoln's grave site. It was really big and extravagant, but the cool part was that Lincoln was burried in the regular town cemetery instead of downtown where it would be an even bigger tourist attraction. We got some pictures in there, then we rode 2 miles to Lincoln's old home, took some pictures, then made our way to the hotel.

We officially finished our second century in a row, and tomorrow we go for the third one in 3 days. The mileage is about 96 miles tomorrow, but since church is 2 miles away, we should be able to make it to a century. 3 centuries in 3 days... WOW, I never thought I would be doing that in my life. I'm not going to say that I'm sore though... Wade would call me a wuss.