A Century of Progress

My two cycling buddies and I accomplished a major bicycling milestone on Sunday. The same crew that went to the Midwest Mountain Biking Festival took to the road for our first Century Ride. 100 miles of human power on two wheels in one day. It all began with a train ride on Amtrak from Homewood, Il to Champlain. Il. We picked up our third rider, carbed up and hit the road Sunday morning from Paxton, Il. The time was 6:30 am, just after a brief sunrise that immediately rose into a dark overcast sky. The scene was very quiet with nothing but the sound of rubber grabbing at the asphalt of Rt 9 while the three of us fully woke up on our bicycles. There was a nice tailwind that kindly pushed us to Hoopeston. We turned North at Hoopeston onto Rt 1, Dixie Hwy. Now with a constant crosswind a misty rain began to fall, 'look on the bright side its not hot'. The mist would come and go for the most of the morning, early risers would wave from their porches as we rode by. It all made for a nice start. We stopped every 20 miles or so to fill water bottles chow down some energy bars and of course field questions like "How far you goin'?" and "Where did ya start?" Conversations began to pop in and out, a lot of shop talk about our bikes and poking fun at rural Illinois. Corn on the right, soy on the left. Then a new theme began to appear. Full size trucks, SUV's and muscle cars along the side of the road all of them with "For Sale" written on them. A little surreal watching someone's way of life changing along a hundred mile stretch. The sun came out the wind never let up and little by little roads got closer together and traffic increased potholes became more frequent then one by one our bicycle computers turned 99-100, "I'm there, how far you got?", "Quarter mile", "7 tenths, 8-9, one hundred miles" We all hit the century mark 10 miles from the end point. At just under 7 hours we finished our trek and celebrated with gyros from our favorite fast food joint along with the women that humored us and said we were crazy. The three of us all read the same magazine article about century rides and the author's parting remarks said that it was a nice way to spend a day he was right.


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