Day 31: Over the Mississippi

Today was a big day for John and I - We passed over the Mississippi, from the west to the east. Last night I drove from Muscatine, IA up to Davenport, Iowa to visit a good friend of mine Nick Vasquez. It was good to see him, we ended up going out to see a band playing from Chicago called the Family Groove Project. I ended up staying a little later than I was planning. So this morning came as a rude awakening after 4 hours of sleep. The good thing was that Diane had monkey bread waiting for us in the morning to get us going. Today was an extremely hot day, when I would get off my bike the heels of my shoes, which are rubber, would melt and stick to the asphalt. John and I decided that it would be nice to escape the afternoon heat - which a bank had posted at 101 degrees. So we found a community pool in the town of Kewannee. We spent 3 hours there which was a nice break from the intense heat that had been wearing on us throughout the day. After Kewanee we pulled into Bradford Illinois, our stop for the night. There were two places to eat, a local fireman suggested one over the other to us. So as we were eating a quite conversational gentlemen in the restaurant lined us up. He asked us where we were staying, we mentioned that we would like to camp in the gazebo in the city park. He then got on the phone and a few minutes later a police officer walked in. The police officer said that he could not OK this without permission from the mayor. So then the cook at the restaurant comes into the situation. He gets on his phone and calls up his father in law who is the mayor of the town. "Yea it's OK for you to sleep there", wow who would have expected in a town of about 600. Tonight was an incredibly hot night. I was sweating just lying on top of my sleeping pad.

Miles biked Today: 113
Miles biked Total: 2,379