Musical Chairs
The past two days have been sort of like playing musical chairs for me. The music being the lack of rain and the chairs being any sort of shelter.
Rural Indiana does not have very many chairs due to there pretty much only being agricultural fields. I’ve lost the game and gotten drenched twice so far. When it’s not raining, it’s extremely hot and humid – I’m still undecided as to which I prefer.
According to legend, this region was once was a dense forest teaming with a wide diversity of life. These days mostly corn, soybeans, grass and Caucasians run the show. In fact, the only black people I’ve seen since I left have been in the form of racially insensitive lawn jockeys in front of people’s houses mansions (which are next to the fields). You can tell a lot about people by the shit they display in their front lawn, and nothing says I’m a flaming racist who wants to relive the grand plantation Old South days like the lawn jockey.
People in these parts seem especially into lawn ornaments (I’ll try and document this phenomenon better).
I tried to use Google Maps’ new bicycle routing to get to Lar and my rendezvous point from Bloomington.
The route looked simple enough from the internet and sent me though the middle of nowhere.
Upon leaving the hilly terrain surrounding Bloomington I was caught in a storm and took shelter under a bridge. There I kicked it with some local fishermen. I tried to camp under this bridge but the ground was too slanty and I could still see the taunting glow of Bloomington on the horizon.
It eventually stopped raining so I rode on into the flat cornfields at about 2am.
Google’s route failed me and I got lost thanks mostly to central Indiana’s rural road naming system which consists of a grid of numbered streets from 0 to 1000 in all four cardinal directions. Despite a flat terrain none of these roads remain straight for very long and not all of them have signs. The whole thing constantly repeats itself due to the limited range of numbers (I’ve seen like 10 “500″ roads so far). I rode aimlessly until about 5am, being chased by dogs helped keep me awake. Eventually I camped behind a lump of dirt near a church using my tent’s rainfly as a sheet.
My second day out I abandoned my google route (I think it would have worked out if I had GPS) and rerouted myself mostly on highways. I rode something like 130 miles, got drenched and slept off on a section of old highway in a swampy, mosquito infested area.
Lar and I were supposed to meet in Plymouth, In, which is where I am now, but it looks like she’s not going to make it which means I have to ride out to her now. I’ll be back.
Which do you prefer: Corn or Soybeans?
Let me know in the comments!
-J
hope the trip’s going better. i’m replying before i catch up on the other posts. just got back from the west.
i like corn fields more, i think. soy’s pretty boring and it feels like you’re riding through an endless hallway with corn.
sincerely, greg
your new site design makes the fan on my laptop spin. it must be the animated graphics or something. pentium m 2GB ram running safari 3/ie8
yeah…those clouds are kinda complicated.
Perhaps it’s the little people they’re after!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjNn9_bfp6k
the lawn ornaments are there for you to decorate…a test of bravery i suppose….either that or they are one of the symptoms of brain parasites…
Odd system for road numbering, indeed.
They seem to go by county with Meridian Rd being the N-S center and Division Rd being the E-W center. The roads are numbered away from these division points in miles x100 ie; (N50 or W1500) N50 would be half a mile North of Meridian Rd. W1500 would be 15 miles West of Division Rd. Base roads can also be simply ‘Base Rd’.
More info on IN roads here:
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/5352812
Corn
I have yet to see a division or a meridian rd out yonder..
What? According to Goggle maps, the name should be printed right down the middle of the road!
On a serious note, are there plans for the Great Allegheny Passage/C&O towpath? Seems kinda outta the way, but…
Nope.
cornholio. its good for purging and whatnot.
I think I could drink HCFS straight. Soybean oil, not so much. Plus soybeans shrink your dong.
That explains a lot.