July 27: Hebron, Indiana to Joliet, Illinois
I didn’t ride yesterday because we drove back to Sturgis, Michigan. I was invited to talk with people about The Dream Tour prior to a Know Your Healthy Steps program yesterday evening. The program was sponsored by the Sturgis Hospital and Bayer HealthCare.
It was a great event too. It was promoted widely and well-organized. There was a family there that had contacted me through my web site. The mother and son in this family both have type 1 diabetes and both of them are insulin pump users. The son is an amazing fellow — with the help of his mother, he’s been using an insulin pump since he was 18 months old. We had a lot of fun, like we always at these kinds of events.
Today, the ride to Joliet took us across the Indiana border to Illinois, the thirty-fifth state that I have bicycled through.
It was a cloudy and extremely humid morning. I could tell that if the clouds burned off, it was going to be a very uncomfortable ride. Fortunately, the cloud cover stuck around for the entire ride.
I relied on my handlebar-mounted GPS for navigation today, like I do whenever I’m unfamiliar with the local roads (which is nearly everyday on The Dream Tour). Occasionally, the GPS will suggest a road that is a bit busier than I feel comfortable with or, like today, it suggested a road that had been closed for the last month for construction. I took a side road, made the GPS calculate a new route, and I was on my way again. A couple turns later, I found myself on a gravel road. It looked like it joined a more developed (I.e., paved) road about a mile ahead so I took a chance and headed down the gravel road. Unfortunately, the “more developed” road wasn’t so developed that it was paved. At this point, I had to chuckle. Here I was within 40 miles of downtown Chicago and I’m negotiating gravel roads! About two miles and a good coating of dust later, I was back on paved roads.