Day 119

So, as fun as it was, sleeping under that bridge turned out to suck. I thought I’d be able to sleep through the noises but I was wrong. The train and big trucks kept me up all night. At one point, in the pitch dark, I had the idea to make ear plugs. I didn’t know what I was going to make them from and I could barely think as I was delirious and half asleep. I felt around tent for anything that may work. Bandana. Boom. I found my shorts and grabbed my pocket knife. The last thing that I should be playing with in the dark half asleep under a bridge in the middle of nowhere. I cut two perfectly square 2×2 pieces (yeah right) and rolled them up and shoved them into my ears. I tied the rest of my bandana like Tupac with the knot in the front. I pulled it down over my ears to keep the bandana balls held in my ears. 

I’m not sure if it worked or not. I woke up at sunrise and was laughing at myself when it hit me that I had the bandana thing going on. I didn’t care about the lack of sleep. I forced myself to get up and moving. It’s too hot out here to bullshit in the mornings. I packed up and ate pop tarts and granola bars. I rolled Lieutenant Dan back out from under the bridge and figured out a way to get it over the guard rail. Knowing that i could go over guard rails would have been valuable months ago. There have been many times where a guard rail stood between me and utopia. I guess I never needed it bad enough. 

I was rolling by 7 am. My plan was to go about 22 miles to Sylvia and call Janis to see if I can stay at her B&B. I found a classic rock station on the radio and was karaokeing all morning. In the middle of an air guitar solo, a pickup truck pulls up. Husband wife and daughter.  The daughter was sitting in the middle. She looks just like my step-sister Caitlin. Don’t know what my step-sister looks like? Well that’s too bad because they could’ve been identical twins. 

They offered me a cold soft drink. Never in my life have I been so excited about a can of soda. They also gave me some money. Nice family. When people like this pull over for me it’s so uplifting. They all had huge smiles on their faces and were just as happy to meet me as I was to meet them. 

There was a lot of huge trucks with “wide load” signs passing by today. They were transporting pieces of those huge windmills. I never realized how big those things were until I could see pieces of them being driven down the road. I saw a couple of the propellers and it was amazing. 
A sheriff pulled over to see if I was ok. Nothing more, just wanted to know if I needed anything. He never even got out of his vehicle. Had a friendly smile on his face for the entire short conversation. Good to know that they know about me if I needed anything. I made sure to look up the phone number and write it down in my notebook. Just in case something happened and I didn’t have Internet or something. 

At about the 20 mile mark, I was about to die. Not really but I was fading fast. I needed to eat. I have plenty of high protein snacks but I could see a gas station way up ahead and I figured I’d rather have something from there. It was called “Oasis”. 
I had imagined it being full of travelers and cool A/C with great hot dogs, pizza, or other gas station hot food. As I got closer and closer, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It looked closed. That would’ve been devastating. I walked the 500 feet to the door and thankfully it was opened. There was no hot food. 

I grabbed a burrito from the freezer and zapped it in the microwave. Grabbed one of those big cans of green tea and sat down at a table next to a power outlet to charge my phone. I was going to call Janis and see about staying there as she was only about 3 miles from there. 

I looked at my map first and I was 10 miles from the next town, Stafford, and a motel. For some reason, I wanted to get there. I decided to just go for it. It would be 30 total miles for the day. I felt like I had it in me after the burrito. I bought a protein shake and refilled my water bottles before leaving. The owner told me that when he opened the place it used to be the oasis that I had imagined but he said no one came and he was losing money. He had given up on all the extra stuff long ago. Bummer. I still enjoyed it being there though!
There are mile markers on Highway 50 which is nice. I would walk to one, take a swig of water, and then tell myself to just get to the next one. Going one mile at a time was all I could do at this point. The heat of the day was wearing on me and I wished I hadn’t had committed to the extra miles. I had to keep telling myself to keep going and that I could do this. 

I stopped 6 miles later to sit in the shade and while I was cooling down I looked over and saw a cyclist that was obviously cycling across the country. I yelled but I was pretty hidden so he didn’t see me. I was 5 miles from the motel and I figured that he was most likely going to the same place. There isn’t anything past there for at least 50 miles and it was near the end of the day. 
I struggled through the last 5 miles. I saw a large cornfield with one of those huge sprinklers that rolls around and waters the crop. I was about to run across the street and stand under it. Right before I got there, the water stopped. Lame. 

Somehow I made it to the hotel and I gave a quick celebratory fist in the air to myself. Julie, the woman who ran the place, was awesome! As we were talking, the cyclist came out and I got to meet him. Things were looking great! All I wanted to do was shower and sleep though haha. 

I put my stroller in the room and before getting comfortable, I walked across the street with Dave (bicycle guy) to the gas station for dinner. We both grabbed a ridiculous amount of food and laughed about it. We walked back and passed a tornado shelter. Dave is from Philly and I am from Atlanta. Neither of us had seen one of these outside of the movie “Twister”. We took pictures of it and caught Julie taking pictures of us taking pictures of the tornado shelter haha. 

I ate all of my gas station dinner and didn’t last long enough to even find something on tv. I was out!