eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

July 19 – Day 20

Carbondale, IL

It was time for a rest day again and coordinated it to be in one of the biggest towns we’d been to since Lexington, which was Carbondale, IL. Carbondale is the home of the Salukis, which is the University of Southern Illinois. Of course we had to go to the local bike shop to pick up some more parts, which hopefully will come to an end now that I think we have every possible bike tool and spare part possible to build another complete bike. We visited Carbondale Cycles where the mechanic there worked his magic on Lee’s bike and had it purring like a cat. After the bike maintenance, Booby’s subs, and giant Dairy Queen Blizzards we were enjoying the day off and not biking in the scorching heat again. Thankfully we heard that the heat and humidity were supposed to break the following day so our rest day sounded like we had perfectly coordinated our schedules with Mother Nature.

We got a tour of the Southern Illinois campus, met Christian, who is a writer for their campus newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, and now she will be writing a story for their paper to be published July 24th. If anybody knows why the Southern Illinois area has Egyptian ties, please let us know. Christian did not know the exact roots of it, but the whole area is tied to Egypt somehow and now I am reallycurious.

Once we had some of the work done for the day, we went off and saw a movie for the first time of the trip, Transformers. After watching the movie, I am convinced that my bike is actually now a hiding robot and will come to life on one of these big hills and charge me up to the top. That could have just been the heat getting to me but I am going to hold my fingers crossed…

See the The Daily Egyptian Article here. 

-Brent

Here's the video of us on the Winston-Salem WXII news on July 4th.