Day 42

Near woods
As before, the rain had stopped in the morning. It was a nice, cool ride. When I got to the first town, I brilliantly decided to get a half gallon of chocolate milk. Lots of calories, protein, energy. I continued into the freeway. It had nice big shoulders, although there were a lot of cars, so it was noisy. I noticed a biker behind me, and slowed down a bit. A lady with a well used bike and gear pulled up beside me and said hello. She said she had been all around the world, and her bike proved it. Pictures of flags covered the frame. She had been cycling for SEVEN YEARS. It was hard to hear, so we didn't talk for long. She was much faster than I. I tried to keep up for a bit but soon gave up. I thought about what it would be like to do this for seven years. I don't think I could ever get used to that. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying my trip. I just don't think I could do this for a living. If I got paid well to be a guide? Maybe. But I would feel too unproductive if I spent years doing what I am doing now. I enjoy modern day comforts too much to abandon them permanently. A cop passed by. I love it when this happens, because if I don't get pulled over, then it must be legal to ride here, and I can relax a bit. Oddly, I haven't seen a single Dodge Viper for this whole trip. Then I noticed that I could still see the other biker up ahead. I guess technically the cop would pull in front of her if he wanted to stop both of us. The cop pulled over. Damn. The cop ended up being very nice though. It wasn't against the law to bike on the freeway, but 1: he got a bunch of calls from people freaking out saying there were two bikers on the side of the road, 2: there was a road that followed the freeway, and 3: there was a 17 mile construction zone up ahead. I decided to take the next exit, which ended up taking over an hour to get to. The wind had really picked up by this point. Also, I was feeling very bloated. I soon realized this was a reaction to the chocolate milk. I found an outhouse soon enough. It was bad, let's just leave it at that. I found out that going north from here was actually faster, so that's what I did. I had to stop a few more times, so I didn't get a whole lot of peddling time in today. My stomach constantly felt like aliens were about to pop out of it. Realizing I was running low on water as it slowly started getting dark, I passed through a small town that thankfully had a gas station. I ended up having more water than I thought, but I filled up anyways. I continued by climbing up a big hill and looking for a place to camp. I found a road and decided it would work to get me far enough away from the road to not be seen. I soon realized that the plants here seemed too uniform. Even though there were weeds, I was pretty sure this was someone's crop/property. I went back around the fence and settled for camping in plain sight on the side of the road. It was dark enough that I wouldn't be very visible. I'm now laying here writing this. A few coyotes howled earlier, bit they sounded like they... (This is where I fell asleep.) were far away.