fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me.

When I "woke up" (though how can one wake up if they have never slept?) the next morning, it was still raining. And I had 106 miles between me and our destination for the day, Coal City, Illinois. I wanted nothing more than to be in a warm bed surrounded with blankets, eating soup, and napping all day long. It was at this point that I started scheming. How could I make this happen? The only way I saw was to get a hotel room for the day (though acquiring blankets and soup would take some additional work, this would at least provide a warm bed), but that meant I'd have to catch a cab 106 miles to meet up with the group for the next day's ride. This would cost a small fortune. Not seeing any other options, I managed to drag myself out of the puddle (yes, the one inside my tent) that I'd been lying in and shoved all of my wet belongings into my wet bags. I didn't even know what to do with my broken glasses.

Sometimes I'm a little bit fussy, but this morning I was really fussy. We were all huddled under this little overhang like sardines in a can to keep out of the rain while eating breakfast when Noel started to sing. Now I will probably look back on this trip and remember Noel's early morning serenades with fondness. However, I don't have the ability to look on it with anything but contempt in the moment, so I decided that sitting in the rain was preferable to being in a can with a singing sardine, so I went and sat out in the rain. I didn't talk to anyone all morning, because I know that if you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. And my talking would probably have been more like growling, so sitting by myself in the grass in the rain was probably a good place for me to be.

As we got our cue sheets and rode out into the wet world, I knocked on Rich's window and told him to go ahead and start preparing a pep talk -- it was going to be a pep-talk-required kind of day. I sulked through the first ten miles, but by the check point at mile 20, I seem to have snapped out of it. I rode with Geena and Caitlin for a bit, who always make me laugh, and talking with them and just telling someone about my ridiculous night made it better. When we got to the checkpoint in a gas station parking lot, Lynn told us that a bridge ahead was out, so we were going to have to take a detour around it. Rich was out working out the detour, so all the riders were hanging out in the gas station in the meantime. The time in the gas station was a glorious break from the wet, rainy morning (well at least for us -- I can't speak on behalf of the workers there who had twenty-some-odd soaking bikers descend upon their nice, (formerly) clean little store). It also proved to be an excellent time for a second (and OK, third) cup of coffee. I read a newspaper, caught up on world news (it was depressing as usual), joked with the other riders, and generally got into better spirits. Hooray, I was winning the battle against the tent already by not letting it ruin my day!

It did continue to rain for the rest of the day, but I rode with Kate Montana, and we turned the day into a game. We pretended like we were in the Tour de France (except that ours was the Tour de Squish since that was the noise our soaking shoes made with each turn of the pedals), and we got a certain amount of points for each rider that we passed. Points were awarded based on how far away the rider was (we'd set our sights on someone in the distance and race to catch them) and on how speed of a rider they were. We made our way through the day quite speedily in this manner.

We arrived at camp and headed straight for the lake in the campground, as the gear truck hadn't arrived yet, and promptly jumped in wearing all of our clothes. We had sandwiches in the campground for dinner along with locally grown corn on the cob (so sweet and delicious!) and boiled potatoes.

The rain had let up in the afternoon, so when we got to camp, I laid out all of my belongings, still soaked from the night before, to dry in the sun or I hung them up on a tree to hang dry. I spent an inordinate amount of time setting up my tent. I may roast alive going to bed (it was SO hot out and even more so with the rain fly on), but I'd be ready for anything Mother Nature could hurl at me that night!

And it's a good thing too because it did storm throughout the night yet again. Thankfully my rain fly was on (properly :o)), and I fared much better than the previous night. I didn't even crush or destroy any of my belongings -- things are looking up for me! :o)