60 miles in 7.5 hours – Max Speed 18.5mph
I woke up late this morning confident that I was not making a mistake in doing so since I only had 55 miles to do, and knowing that there was no way that it would take more than six hours no matter how hilly it was or how hard the wind blew.
I left the hotel at around 11 and went and rode through downtown Lincoln on the 34. It was a pretty cool town, but the 34 is a horrible street for biking, and I ended up having to bail to the sidewalk after a little while.
Looking into Lincoln
People sitting in a park in Lincoln
Go Huskers?
I needed to go to the bank, and Bank of America had an ATM in a mall in Eastern Lincoln that I was making my way towards. A piece of advice for any bike tourers – try to put your money in a bank that doesn’t charge you to use other people’s ATM’s. No matter how allegedly big your bank is (and B of A is supposedly the biggest) you will hit 500 mile stretches of the country where there simply aren’t any ATM’s within 25 miles of you. Those $5 charges end up adding up after a while.
Anyway, I got my money out and headed south to meet up with route 2, which was to be my home for the next couple hundred miles. Because of my late start the wind was picking up already, and once I got on the 2 it was really blowing.
I stopped at a Walmart with a McDonald’s in the food court (some would probably consider that the most evil of marriages… if only there was an Exxon outside) for lunch and to buy some supplies and then headed towards Nebraska City. It was slow slow slow going, but I got there after really a day where there wasn’t too much to look at at around 7.
At least I am back on some historic roads.
Maybe my favorite picture of the trip. That little guy was climbing straight up a flagpole outside of the McDonald's I ate at, and there were a bunch more higher up. His shell has got to weigh at least ten times more than he does.
I talked to the lady who ran an RV park there, and she gave me a spot for $10, which was a significant discount to what it would have cost full price. I set up, went and grabbed dinner back in town, and got to bed fairly early.
The profile of a bike tourer. Part I: Face always sunburnt and disheveled.
Part II: Don't put your fingers in campfires kids. (Just kidding, that is just my awful sunburn peeling. It really looked gross for a few days, as you can see).
Part III: Legs always cut up and bleeding. Always.
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