To Eclipse and Back, Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Map

The road was still on and off traffic-wise. At some point, I was going to hit Champaign and get back on familiar roads for me. Around 12:30 I looked North and it was a wall of lightning. Great. I knew there was a chance of rain, but I thought I’d be home long before then. Now I’m south of it. I know from its position that Champaign was getting the full brunt of it and soon I’d hit that one-lane construction just south of the town. I had to get off the road and figure something out.

I pulled off the road at a small town called Tuscola. I parked at a well-lit outlet store. It had benches. I went and sat down and pulled out my phone. I called Tracy, just to let her know I was alive. She asked if I could find a hotel. “You don’t understand what this is like. The traffic is horrendous.” Besides, I was so close, relatively. I opened my weather app. HOLY CRAP!!! Just north of me was the edge of a weather system that stretched all the way to Kansas City. Crap!! I’m going to get wet. I hate riding in the rain. At least it is warm, I guess. OK. I can head west, take this road up to this road to this road, to this road…and then I’ll be on IL-47. Take that all the way home. OK. I can do this.
Off I went, so completely ticked off at all that this trip had turned out to be. I loved riding the bike but this was so annoying, still, it is something I can write abou….is that a bird? WHACK!!! A dove decided to spend the night on US-36 and when my lights hit it, it took to the air and didn’t make it past my windshield. Luckily, it didn’t fly up into my helmet. I did a sanity check, decided that I was okay and kept going. I thought I had seen a bird on the road earlier but I passed it off. Evidently, they hang out on roads at night. I wonder why? I turned north again at Atwood and noticed that the roads were wet, but it wasn’t raining any longer. The weather map did show a small corridor of rainless travel. Maybe if I can get this thing moving, I can still slip home in a dry state.

When I reached the town of Mohamet, I pulled over to check the weather again.  A big, big stretch of red, all the way to Elburn, lay in front of me. It was to the west too. Damn. I am going to get very wet. Well, might as well get this done. The place where I would hit the rain was fogged over on my way down. I figured that I would learn to resent this part of Illinois after this.

What can I say about driving in the rain? Nothing good. It is miserable. The sound of the rain hitting your helmet is unnerving. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that bad if you can keep your head dry, but your clothes get heavy. You get cold as the water and wind suck away your heat.  You can’t see very well and you become almost invisible to other traffic behind you. It became an absolute downpour. A few trucks passed me because two wheels on wet pavement isn’t something you want to do at speed. It became so bad due to no visibility and feeling like I weighed 400 pounds that I put on my blinkers and hoped a town was somewhere and that I could pull off the road.  That stopover was named Gibson City, where I had stopped and rested at the Bible Church on the way down. I pulled off the road into a parking lot that was 6-8 inches underwater. I got off the bike after parking at some sort of Mexican restaurant/bar (Pizza Hut on the map but it wasn’t). The time was around 1am. I pulled off the helmet and took inventory and was feeling miserable. After some time, I called Tracy (My new phone was still working!) to let her know that I was stuck. I had moved around to the north side of the building and decided I needed to save battery. I had set my gloves down on a window sill. I picked them up and noticed that the building was lousy with spider webs. I wasn’t nervous, but a little creeped out. As soon as the rain let up, just a little, I’d head to where I saw lights (Yeah, the rain made it hard to see even up the road.) I was hoping it was a gas station or something. Any place to get out of the rain fully.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.454339,-88.3747333,837m/data=!3m1!1e3

So I got back on the bike after about half an hour and moved the couple hundred meters to what turned out to be a Casey’s station. The bike was parked off to the side, still in the rain and I finally found a place out of the rain under the canopy. I was still soaked and a check on the phone showed rain at least until late morning. Great. Just Great.

After texting with Tracy and a few calls, I resigned to my fate of spending the rest of the night standing there. The only motel in town was under renovation and besides, it was late and there was still eclipse traffic making their way north. After about an hour, another biker came up and parked by the pumps. We struck up a conversation and compared notes. He didn’t have a phone so he kept looking at mine to see when we could resume our way north. All during this, Tracy was making calls to see if there was somewhere nicer where I could sit. She called the police department, the hospital, anywhere to try and ease my discomfort, and I do appreciate that. I’m sure I wasn’t rational. I had been up for 24 hours by that point. I was tired. I was soaked. At one point, I had set my phone in my shirt pocket and it had turned on. I was sending garbage texts to Tracy as the phone bumped against me. One of them autocorrected to something about a raccoon. Tracy thought I was losing my mind or lying in a ditch somewhere.

As the night went on, another biker came and parked. He had rain gear on and we wondered why he had stopped. “My visor flew off. Having your face pelted with rain isn’t pleasant.” So there we sat. Three bikers in the middle of Illinois in a small factory town, taking shelter in a gas station. One of my companions convinced the clerk to put some of his clothes in the dryer they had in the back. I bought some cheese and a meat stick to pay for my convalescence. I hadn’t realized how hungry I had become and it immediately had a profound reaction on me. That stuff was wonderful.

Ok, about 5:30 or 6:00, I was getting anxious and I wanted to get home. I never thought I’d spend the night in a gas station and I didn’t enjoy it. The guy with the broken visor had left around 4:30 but the rain was still too hard for me to try at that time. It was still dark, but I looked on the app, and the rain seemed to be tapering off. The guy that arrived after me wanted me to leave with him. I told him I would but that I don’t go that fast in the rain. So, once again, I put on the wet helmet, gloves and sat on the wet bike. Off we went. I kept up with him to the north part of town where we stopped behind a semi that was also waiting for a train to enter the factory. Once the train left and the gates went up, my companion bolted around the semi, earning him a toot from the truck. I didn’t feel safe to do any nonsense like that so I stayed behind the truck, letting it get a good speed up ahead of me so I wasn’t in its backwash. I think I lost sight of the other guy after about 4 miles.  It was still raining and while it was warm standing still, on the bike at speed, I was beginning to shiver and feeling very uncomfortable. I could feel water pooling in my left boot. Eventually, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Even slowing down wasn’t helping. A few miles more and I saw that I was going to enter another town, named Forrest. I was a few blocks in when I pulled into another Casey’s and parked under the canopy this time. I got off the bike, got on the entrance skirting and took off my left boot. I swear I thought water would come out. Nope, but I was thoroughly wet and miserable.  So I stood there. The sun came started to come up and the rain slacked a bit more. I could feel the exhaustion start to sneak in around the corners of my mind. I needed to get home because I knew there wasn’t much between here and there.

When the light came up, I slipped on the wet boot. Who knows what people thought when the filled up for their morning commute and saw a guy standing there with one boot on and one boot off.  Anyway, I figured that with the lower rain volume, I could go 10 or 15 miles and stop somewhere to warm up. I’m going to be wet regardless. Might as well get used to that. So I got back on the road, crossed the train tracks, and headed north. About the top speed I could do was 45 before I became uncomfortable and shiver all the time. It was still raining, but more of a sprinkle at this point. I was still soaked. I didn’t make it too far before I had to stop again. This time in a Marathon station in Saunemin. Another half an hour watching traffic go by. I was waiting for the rain to stop this time. I could see the northern end of the rain ahead. It was just there, Probably by Dwight, my next stop. I wanted to get past the rain so bad. While only a few drops hit the puddles, I had had it. I pulled on the wet gloves and hit the road, going 65 this time. Of course, while the rain was lessened, an entire string of Semis heading south made sure I was still wet to the core. Even then, I could see the line of clouds. I could see the sky brighten just after that cloud front. I entered Dwight and felt a leap of joy building. It had taken me so long to get there, and I was feeling a sense of relief that I wasn’t expecting.

I was hungry. I stopped in the McDonalds. I also picked out some feathers from my front shield, left for my earlier bird-strike. I wasn’t so much hungry as I needed caffeine. I was so tired, but I had to get home and I was so tired. It was about 8am or so at that point, and I felt that I was so close to home when in reality, I still had an hour or two left to go. I pulled off my jacket waiting for my order.  God, I was miserable.

Ok, after about 45 minutes letting the caffeine from my soda enter into my cells, I decided that with one push, I could make it home. I couldn’t put the gloves back on. My hands were still pruned and I thought the gloves would just make the cold worse. Now, it was not a good feeling for me to ride without gloves. I’ve religiously wore them during my rides. You could probably tell how desperate I was just from the action of not wearing gloves. I’d been awake longer than ever, I think, since college. I don’t function well when tired.

After several more miles going north, I entered Morris. Very familiar territory. The only thing worthy of note at this point was that I was struggling to stay awake. I noticed it first heading into Dwight, that I’d stop functioning. I was still driving and riding, but my brain had shut down. That was why I needed the caffeine. It wasn’t enough. North of Morris, I passed into that phase again. I became aware and I was in the other lane. Holy crap, get back in your lane!!! I had come to just before a car came over the slight rise. I had to do inventory. I had probably come closer to dying than most any other time. I was not going to be a statistic. I couldn’t depend on my mind to keep me alert. I had to do something else. I decided that I needed to bite my finger every once in a while. That would keep me going. I did that and I slapped the bike about every 10 seconds. I did that until I felt awake and I did it all the way home. Also, in a more deserted stretch of road, I decided to sing. I'll never win any awards, but it kept me awake.

Last time I came home this wet, I was shivering uncontrollably and the house was empty. This time Tracy was home having dealt with her own issues with the family while I was gone. I stumbled upstairs to get the wet clothes off me and a quick shower. It is amazing the stuff that comes off your body after being in water for almost 12 hours. I hit the bed and woke up about 6 hours later. I didn’t want to do this again.

But it was worth it.