Best state line and central time

July 13, 2013

Bloomington, IN to Sumner, IL

The day started out pretty hilly getting out of Bloomington, but once we were out it was pretty flat. Nothing much happened before lunch and the group I was riding with was relatively quiet. The sweepstakes challenge today was to come up with new lyrics to a song that had to do with bike and build. For this reason, we were all quiet for the ride because we were thinking about songs that we could change the words to to be about bike and build. Unfortunately we never came up with anything worthy of filming, but it sure made the miles pass faster since all that we were passing was soy and corn fields. 

After lunch it was really hot and still flat. Luckily, a group ahead of us had found a community pool that agreed to let us swim there for a bit. It was amazing! This was the first time I've been in a pool all trip and it was definitely needed. It was so much fun to hang out with everyone at the pool. Some local kids were fascinated by Matt's beard and asked him for his autograph. We also did some intense and impromptu synchronized swimming. I didn't want to leave the pool, but we still had a long way to go. Around mile 61 miles we crossed into Illinois! There was a huge group of us there so we took some great state line pictures. 

Crossing into Illinois also meant that we had hit our first time zone change! It was really strange to realize that we had an extra hour of the day. Not everyone's phones switched right away though so there was one point where some clocks said 3:00 while others still said 2:00. We were all so excited about the state line crossing and the time zone change to really care that our cue sheet was off by about 6 miles. Instead of doing 87 miles like it said, we did something closer to 93. Further, we were staying in a town two towns over from where our itinerary said we were staying. When we rolled into Sumner, barely any of the shops were open and there was nobody out in the town. Looking it up, there are only around 1000 people that live in the town. Despite that, they gave us an amazing meal for both dinner and breakfast!

Tonight I also realized something crazy while walking to the showers--we have biked about 285 miles in 3 days and I am still standing and smiling. Never in my life did I think I'd be able to do something like this let alone enjoy every second of it.