Bumming around central Illinois

(Susan here)

The last couple days we’ve been spending in the vicinity of Champaign-Urbana, where my mom’s family is from. Both sides of her family have farmed around here for generations. The friends we visited in Urbana live by my maternal grandfather’s family’s old farmland, which is now developed. There’s a street named for the family, which we crossed on the way to our friends’:

We arrived at Su and Martin’s house yesterday late morning. I had called Su in advance to make sure she was out ready to get some sweet action shots:

We had a great time hanging with her and with her 20-month-old son, Liam, who initially was not quite sure about us but then took a liking to our foam roller, and, by extension, us. Here’s Liam showing off his mad foam rolling skillz:

He shared some of his biking gear with us, too:

This afternoon we set off for a quick ride to Monticello, to the abode of my aunt and uncle Nancy and Larry (on my dad’s side). The ride was pretty unbelievable. We took basically one road the entire distance–an exact marathon length of 26.2 miles–and much its length it was a tiny country lane that really shouldn’t have been paved but for some reason was, meaning it was basically a private, luxury bike path. We could actually ride side by side for miles and have conversation! And neither any thunderstorms nor wind materialized. We averaged almost 15 mph, I think. In Monticello, we took a tour of the lovely homes in the area and of the Allerton Gardens, and met my aunt and uncle’s 4 cats and several of their friends.

Tomorrow we’re heading north to Dwight, primarily riding along rte. 47, and will stay with a Warm Showers host. It’s about an 80 mile ride, but we’ll have a tailwind and everything is flat as a pancake so it should be a piece of cake. If conditions continue to be good, we’ll be back in my hometown the day after.