A much better day today but nothing too exciting.
The roads have been very flat with zero difficult climbs. The flora has become very lush and green. I have seen no arrid, dry land recently. I also can't remember the last time I was more than 5 minutes ride from a house or building of some type. I'm missing the desolate stretches of Nevada and Kansas. It was certainly alot easier to find somewhere to go to for a leak.
I covered 57 miles in 4 hours 55 minutes, arriving at Kalamazoo just before 1pm. This gave me lots of time to re charge.
The weather was extremely humid (again) but at least a little overcast too, which helped my cause.
I was riding all day with a rainstorm looming behind me. I managed to keep it at bay until I was about 10 miles from my destination. From that point it (The rain) slowly and steadily got heavier and by the time I arrived I was pretty soaked.
It was actually a blessing in disguise because it was quite cooling and refreshing. It meant I could increase my pace of riding.
When it's this humid you just have to adopt a slow steady pace to avoid overheating. I think overheating has been my main problem on this trip since the end of June and into July.
My body has been operating on the edge of meltdown. I hope I become more accustomed to it by the time I start climbing the Appalachian mountains.
It turns out that I'm becoming quite a master bike mechanic. I was riding and my pedal was clicking with every revolution. It was really starting to wind me up. So I stopped the bike, unscrewed the pedal and stared at it. Then I span it in my hand and stared a bit more. Finally I gave it a shake and swung it in a circle.
Voila. After re attaching it, it was good as new. Clicking had disappeared.
I'm going to add bike mechanic to my skillset.
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