Day 13. 629 Miles. Hello, Chicago (or… Return To Resilience)

Posted on October 28, 2026 by anthonycaferro

Let me get this hot tub out. My lil portable one I have in the rear left pannier. Fill er up on this water fountain. Time Machine time. We need to go back just a few weeks, I’m on the Amtrak app. I’m home. Actually, I’m probably at work so I’m probably on the desktop computer website. Tapping away, nonetheless – just with fingers not thumbs. I book a flex ticket from Alton Illinois to Chicago Illinois and I add on the $10 bicycle too. Alton is basically East St. Louis. Took me like 10 minutes to speed past it before all that hot yoga last week. This ticket’s been my bail out plan the whole time in case either Katy was a lot more than I could handle or I just took my time so much that it became a real vacation. There’s like 10 other Amtrak stations through the state and I’ve mostly followed the route of them, having seen the train pass me a few times. So yeah that brings us up to now, get out I gonna drain this thing.

Now is 4:30 AM me taking a massive crap in this vault toilet there’s no seat. It’s one of those stainless steel. Just sit on it and I do. Doo doo. No cars woke me. It’s that I’ve already slept eight hours.

Hello, circadian rhythm.

After that, it’s 60ish miles to downtown Chicago OR 13 miles between me and this Joliet Amtrak station AKA my last chance to board and take advantage of this ticket to ride. Chicago all the way means 30 more miles of rail trail in front of me +25 miles of god forsaken suburban cycling nightmares and then a big question mark of City vehicular traffic. I wanna ride. It’s more good than bad miles for sure. The weather is nice with no wind. I do wanna ride. I can ride.

Speaking of can. Trains can. Even little ones know they could. Amtrak, like the USPS and a long list of other entities, is basically a federale operation being starved out of funding that we generally spend on the military industrial complex. Or whatever the kids are calling it now. Thats what Truman called it. Train travel like mail delivery is a national operation provided for the betterment of citizens and visitors the the USA but we handcuff them into shoestring budgets and lack of flexible innovation. I do wanna shout out all the Amtrak employees who do a great job. Including those conducting the train. Including those that answer the phone. You can literally call or text an actual American living and working in this country 24/7 for customer service. The women that helped me flex my flex ticket has a wicked Long Island/New Jersey accent. Those are different accents but I can’t tell.

Still having all sorts of indecision on the last section of this rail trail this morning. I did this to myself. Going 7 miles an hour. Right down to the last mile before a turn off. It’s a turn on. It’s all because of that flexible rigidity. Or was it rigid flexibility? Either way me thinks it’s the ultimate outcome in a series of planned and successively integrated situation so that I could put off making choices until the very end to figure out what I had in me without overcommitting and being all fucked up somewhere. It’s my typical long ride one-day-routine of pushing goalposts after highlighting two — if not three — potential remote sleep options, now in application of the entire ride. When it works it not only doesn’t leave me all fucked up somewhere, it leaves me feeling joy.

Feeling resilient.

All these feels and I still gotta make this choice, pedaling with a third of a mile. I can see my turn and don’t know which way to go. I’ve got nothing to prove to the suburbs surrounding Chicago, if the canal trail went right downtown without traffic I’d probably choose otherwise… I ride right onto the train, strap my bike against the handrail, and take a seat riding backwards. Cue Graham Nash.

Posted in bicycle touring | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Day 12. 614 Miles. Sayonara, Sixty Six.

Posted on October 27, 2026 by anthonycaferro

Kinda sorta been had grown weary of camping near a highway. Literally tired of it. Despite the cold, Katy spoiled me so. These campsites aren’t bad. It’s nice to get a shower, but sometimes it sounds like a fucking runway of airplanes all night long. Like right now, right now. I’m up at 3 AM marveling at the full moon and still hearing semi trucks sound like 787s on the tarmac.

Earliest start yet. Just to depart from sonic pollution. Still chilly, still wearing my jacket. With just a couple days before Chicago I wanna finish this trip like I started it, away from cars. So it’s bye bye to Route 66 – cutting due north for some county farm roads up to the Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail and a slew primitive campsites and state parks.

First ten miles are much smaller roads with a decent shoulder and a solid volume of heavy truck traffic. I don’t mind them. The truck drivers are fucking awesome in my book. They are licensed, certified and sober and that’s more than I can say for most other daily drivers in America. Our licensing process is a joke: one time when you’re 17 or 18 and then you’re good forever no matter what?! Really? Which then takes out of the possibility of any kind of certification or ongoing education or skills refinement! And sobriety? Even seriousness would be a start. If only we could go back to the heyday of when it was just Clem getting a bit tuned up after work and knowing enough to drive half the speed limit on his way home — now everyone’s smoking fake weed or on a drug they’ve been prescribed by a doctor and on it while they’re driving when they shouldn’t be. Because we don’t take away peoples licenses or even enforce infractions, people don’t give up their shitty driving habits. Cops don’t wanna do that. It’s cooler to be the detective making the big bust. Driving in the United States has somehow become a right instead of a privilege. Associated with freedom and sold on tv with revolution, somehow. What a crock of shit. You’re in a cage. It’s not even the highways or the people that built the highways fault, though Robert Moses is a motherfucker. Its not really even the oil industry and automotive industry profit margins. I’m at least 51% sure it’s We The People, it’s drivers. It’s constant information and 24 hour seven day a week noise. Lack of attention and dedication to the duty involved in conducting such heavy machinery. Humans not understanding that an automobile is as deadly a weapon as a handgun. We need our motor vehicle control to look more like our gun control in this country, if we want it to be a livable and sustainable nation.

Guard rails have returned and I do the old water in water out at those; they make great Bike stands too. Good for any occasion and there haven’t been many of them on this ride.

After a dozen miles up those busy road turns to empty farmland roads. I have a solid headwind too. Eventually, some gravel. Slowed moving. Still. Absolutely great and relatively flat still. Plus: quiet as hell – no unnatural sounds whatsoever. Few vehicles. And most of em are trucks so we just wave. Even the windmills are quietly operating, good job guys. Usually, I’m seeing the corn grow on these rides. Or whatever crop being cropped. Being late October, it’s all just the cleared — or waiting to be cleared.

Eventually I come to why I came this way. The Illinois and Michigan Canal Trails. It’s nice. I get a good 20 miles of it.

It is a glorious trail with autumn colors popping at golden hour. Words wouldn’t work.

Speaking of popping… as the sun sets, I pop up the palace a state park campground right on the trail. No shower – butt there’s a vault style toilet and drinking water. The TP is soft. It’s quiet. Thats the ticket.

Posted in bicycle touring | Leave a comment

Day 11. 551 Miles. The Many-Faced Mother Road.

Posted on October 26, 2026 by anthonycaferro

This super 8 breakfast is rather meek. The coffee machine provides a pretty solid brew, though. Apples, bananas, common muffins, etc. Oh, look biscuits and sausage gravy. It’s actually warm food, score. I am easy like Sunday morning, Lionel.

Chugging along various versions of Route 66. The history of it here in this area helps pass the time. Kickapoo tribes first used this route. The Kickapoo are an Algonquian-speaking Indigenous people originwhose name translates to “he moves about” or “those who walk the earth”. Can I kick a poo? Yes you can. It becomes The Pontiac Trail. Then Illinois makes State Road 4. Then the US dons it Main Street of America. Then because of Steinbeck it’s The Mother Road. Eventually, the military industrial complex gets its grubby hands on it and destroys the ability to enjoy it outside of a motor vehicle going 60 mph.

All that said, it turns out a whole lotta separated bike path has been put in that neither I nor my navigating R2D2-of-a-bike-computer are aware of. 35 of my first 50 are all vehicular traffic free. Another score.

I see you Money Creek. Back to you in the future. First up, it’s Funk’s Grove Gazebo coming in after a brisk three miles. This is a funky gazebo as far as gazebos go. Still no water, still no electric. I can take my jacket off though. Sun is shining. It isn’t too shabby. The gazebo, not the sun. Normally it would make a great spot to remote sleep. Again, not the sun.

The area is known for its maple syrup. Which they spell sirrup. So now I’m on this separated bike path, next to an historic old route road, on the other side of me is a rail track, and then there is the whole interstate highway. Four different things and I’m not mad.

Shout out to Lenny and Larry. They’ve come a long way.

I cruise right through Bloomington and Normal on the Constitution Trail. The rail trail keeps me on it, there’s water and I have enough provisions. Not sure about the name though. Illini’s just tries to take stuff. Nowadays I’m much more of a just the bill of rights kinda guy tbh. I do like all the union halls though.

I see sections of 66 where guardrails have been just cut off right at the surface. These things kept the land pretty narrow. Worked fine back when you went out for a cruise at 20mph. Today they unknowingly reveal how shitty Americans’ driving has become.

I roll over section of paved concrete road that are 100 years old. Still in good shape, though a lot of the edges are crumbling down into a ditch alongside the road. A ditch I have to maneuver expertly to avoid crashing into whenever traffic pics up and I have to ride over the roughest and crumbliest of edges with little choice otherwise. I don’t like this. Worst section so far and a long ways form the glories of Katy. Valar Morghulis. If this is it, I pray to the spoke gawds for a quick death. And tbh why is death by dragon fire always portrayed to be all screaming and painful. Like maybe being burned alive tied to a stake would be like that, slowly feeling and seeing your body burn. But with a dragon, it’s all hot all flame all at once and I feel like it would be instant instantaneous incineration. Like “thanks little winged flying homie you just saved my people money on cremation.”

Money Creek. What?! No paddle needed. You’re so money and you don’t even know it baby. Pink Floyd and the O’Jays are mashing up in my head right it and sounds baller. I am fairly certain that my eyes have cartoon dollar signs in them.

I don’t think of much. I just pedal. Some miles are easy. Some are tough. Most times I push aside the pain. Knees. Hands. Hamstrings. Knocking these miles out and being outside breathing air is enough for today. Simplicity. There’s a $20 campground in Pontiac and it’s got showers. The overnight lows are up and the moon is full tonight.

Quick reboot still starring Jack Black and Mos Def aka Yasiin Bey and Be Kind Rewind to last night. Right after giving me my cash change back, Priya lets me know I’m getting the last ground room floor. And she goes out of her way to express that they usually reserve it for seniors. In the slowest and most deliberate manner. Like I should offer to move upstairs if someone with mobility issues shows up at 8pm. It almost doesn’t feel real. The shower and the bed did though.

This campground is a hybrid County Fairgrounds and 4H campground. The campsite, hostess Leslie hooks me up with the form and points to the dropbox. I find a nice patch of grass and even an outlet. I’ve stayed at these 4H spots for a while starting back in 2006 taking high school kids on a rolling summer camp from Seattle up to Vancouver to Victoria and back around the Puget Sound. This is more like an RV park with some tent, camping and shower facilities. I shower. I do a little research on 4H, figuring it’s only a matter of time until someone offers me, free pancakes and exchange for listening to them about Jesus. Or tea and Muhammad. Curry and Buddha. Scientologists and whatever they got. Whatever. I want none of it. Turns out, 4H is secular as fuck. Most importantly, the Hs stand for Head Heart Hands Health. Word. Enough for me. I’m team 4H.

Posted in bicycle touring | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment