Day 16: Crawfordsville, IN to Champaign, IL

• Distance: 80.07 mi
• Elevation: 1,657 ft
• Dedication: Uncle Tim
• Ride group: Maggie, Jake, Collin, and Bethany
• Host: University of Illinois dorms

Today was a day that made me realize how lucky I am to be on this trip, biking every day with a great group of people supporting an amazing cause. The past few days have not been easy, but this experience has been so rewarding.

We started the day with our usual dedication circle at our host. This one was especially hard for me because I dedicated my day to Uncle Tim and shared the news of his passing with the team. Each day our mission coordinators share a story to remind the team of why we’re here. Today’s submission was from a 4K alum and his words rang especially true. Paraphrasing a little, he wrote:

“Don’t get so wrapped up in what’s going wrong that you miss what’s beautiful about today […] You will be confronted with so many moments [and] experiences that make you just want to cry. So cry. Feel what needs to be felt. Hurt. And then heal. Smile. Cherish the fact that you get to wake up in a different city every day, using your two feet to get there, seeing a different breathtaking sunrise and sunset, creating moments that will never be the same again.”

I was basically crying from the beginning to the end of the dedication circle, but these words really got the tears flowing. I was also deeply touched by how many of my teammates also dedicated their rides to Uncle Tim.

I was in an excellent ride group today (may or may not have pulled some strings for that) and from the start I was instantly in a better mood. We cruised through the first 50 miles. Maggie has been buying lottery tickets in each state so we stopped pretty early to get Indiana taken care of, and Collin won $5 dollars! It was a beautiful day, which made me appreciate the fact that we have really only had one bad weather day so far and have not had to rack for thunderstorms yet!

Jake was towing the “Best Dad Ever” balloon the team got him yesterday for Father’s Day (he’s the dad of the team) and it very sadly ripped from the string and took flight early into our ride. We watched it sail away over the fields :(

The route today was pretty rural but also heavily trafficked. We took lots of stops to take pictures with a retired plane (Top Gun on the brain) and some Indiana corn, which was well above “knee high by the 4th of July”:

And spent a LOT of time taking pictures with both the Illinois and Indiana state signs, since we didn’t pass one when we entered Indiana. This was a very elaborate ordeal; we had conflicting ideas about how the “I” should look in “IL” and Collin kicked Jake in the head trying out a more elaborate “N” pose for “IN” than what we settled on:

We had our second water stop at a nice park with a pavilion but team communication kind of disintegrated at that point. Two groups stopped for a very long time without telling the rest of the team so we were waiting there forever and then had a lot of confusion about when and where our lunch stop would be. I distressed on the swingset for a bit and played some games with others– Chase and Jake attempted to teach me and Maggie how to play euchre, a card game that I guess you are born knowing to play if you’re from Ohio (I didn’t really get it). My team ended up continuing without lunch because we had loaded up on snacks thinking we wouldn’t have a lunch stop for another 10-15 miles.

The last 20 miles were much harder than the first 60. It got a lot hotter during lunch and we ran into a 4-mile stretch of rough graded asphalt that had been freshly oiled. The bumpiness was brutal and the heat reflecting off of the ground made me feel sick. We were so relieved to get past that stretch and refill on water at our last water stop.

Our host brought some unusual amenities for 4K: beds, private bathrooms, and laundry! We stayed in a dorm at the University of Illinois and it was so, so fun to feel like college students again. I roomed with Maggie, who always makes me laugh. Most of the team also went out to Murphy’s Pub for food, drinks, and games. The most entertaining part was watching James hustle Santi in a game of pool, which everyone was in on except for, somehow, Santi. Maggie, Chase, Jake, and I ended the night talking in our dorm room and it was very easy to pretend we were back in undergrad together :) Champaign was actually a super cute and well-developed college town, and exceeded my expectations!

We have another 4:30 wake-up tomorrow to try and get some of the team through their first century rides– it may be a logistical nightmare but we’ll see tomorrow!

Until then,

Lauren