Day 39

Field
The sounds of cows mooing kept waking me up, but I was too tired to get up and moving. I did finally get on the road a bit after 9 though. I had a pretty straightforward route. I passed the time listening to Hyperion on audiobook and looking for anything interesting on the side of the road. Since I found a pair of $150 Oaklies sunglasses, I've been curious about what else I can find. I've seen a bunch of cellphones, always with no battery and the screen shattered. Today, I found one with the screen intact. I also found a rusted pocket knife that I hope to find some way to open. At one point, a car came up beside me. Heart pounding, I paused my iphone. The lady in the passenger seat pointed a hunting rifle at me and told me to give her my wallet. Just kidding, she handed me a nice cold water bottle. This is the third person to stop to give me something- there are some really awesome people out there. After a few hours, I had to use the bathroom. I was only a few miles from the next town, but I found a wildlife place. I really lucked out- they had a bathroom, a water fountain, and postcards! I didn't even have to try this time. Plus, I didn't pass by any other stores along the way, so I would have had to go a few extra miles into a town in order to get water. Unfortunately this also meant I had to eat only trail mix all day, but oh well. The beginning part of the day was spent on road that didn't have any shoulders, but there wasn't a lot of traffic, so it wasn't a big deal. Eventually I got great shoulders with a bumper strip. Unfortunately, this shoulder turned to crap. It was older than the main part of the road. Every 15 feet there was a crack- about half of which were deep enough to make sitting down a real pain in the butt. I decided to bike on the main part of the road, looking back often to make sure there weren't any cars coming. Finally I got good shoulders back. After sunset, I had decent light, and I was really hoping to get 82 miles (because that's how many miles I need to get every day in order to finish in 100 total days). I rounded a corner and all of a sudden there were tons of city lights in view. Crap. I can't really camp in cities. I biked back just a bit and found a small hill to hide behind. My tent can't be seen at all if you are heading to town, can only be seen if you are heading out of town if you crane your head, and is completely visible of you happen to be a train. I crawled inside my tent right before a train approached. As I waited for it to pass by, it sounded really loud all of a sudden and I figured it must have a bad wheel. Nope. It had on its brakes. It slowed to a stop. On this trip as a whole, I have made an important observation- everything seems like it is about me. If someone honks, it's at me. If someone stops ahead of me, they want to talk to me. If someone moves completely over into the other lane, they are trying to avoid hitting me. Of course, this isn't always the case. I waited for someone from the train to walk up and tell me that I couldn't camp here, but after a few minutes, I realized that wasn't going to happen. I can still hear what I believe is the back of the train. Every once in a while, it ramps up and I think it's finally going to leave, but it hasn't yet. It's been like 45 minutes. I really hope I don't have to listen to it all night. Ok, a few minutes later I'm pretty sure I heard the sound of air puffing out as the brakes were released. Yep, then I could hear metal groaning as the train started to move, the caboose went by. I'm seriously surprised that wasn't because of me- the positioning could not have been any more perfect. Hopefully there aren't too many more of those tonight.