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.
