Day 18, O'Dark Thirty

In the military, that means really stupidly early, which is when we
were up this morning. We drank our tea and coffee in the dark, and
were out of camp at sunrise. The mist and colors from the sun made the
normally tiring cornfields peaceful and compelling. Which quickly
changed with the full light of day, but for the first 30 miles we
hardly noticed as time flew by while chatting about religion and
politics (you think I jest?) The corn lined the roads so high it was
like riding in a garden hedge maze with only the occasional car to
break up the view.

On the next 25 miles, we escaped multiple near deaths by semis, those
atrocious beings that are a cyclist's nightmare, especially when they
pass so close you actually feel your bones shaking. I suppose on the
bright side, we had a tailwind at that point, which got us off of the
shoulderless road sooner.

We were done EARLY and are in the cute college town of West Lafayette,
IN, home of Purdue University. We got to feel like real people for an
afternoon, by doing normal things like walking to an ice cream shop
and perusing a bookstore. This was a nice change from walking to, say,
the water spigot at the campground or perusing, say, your handlebar
bag to see if there's any more trail mix.