City Park Life

The Odell park had been kind to us that night, despite someone the evening before warning us that a group of cyclists had recently had their gear set alight by some unruly local youths. We met another westbounder outside the gas station the next morning, heading in to see his son in Iowa, riding a recumbent, and traded Indiana dog stories with him before setting off ahead. We reached Henry, Illinois, in the mid-afternoon heat, close to ninety-five degrees, and stopped at the visitor centre, where a pair of friendly older ladies had us sign the guestbook before ringing the sheriff to clear us for a free night camping in the city park by the river. We wandered up to the local Dairy Queen for an ice cream fix, and the sheriff, just stepping out as we arrived, clocked exactly who we were and shook our hands, promising a squad car would check on us through the night. It was a quiet little town on the whole, though we did watch what looked very much like a couple of teenagers buying drugs from an older man in a battered car, down by the park swings.

Post-ride ice cream has replaced beer recently, thanks to these old-school DQ’s.

Henry City Park.

I didn’t take a single photograph between Henry and Orion, Illinois, not because there was nothing worth seeing but because I was too busy enjoying the riding, and then it was simply over. We did meet two more westbounders that stretch, Jakob from Germany, who would be leaving the Northern Tier in a few days, and Flavia, heading all the way to Seattle on the same route, though neither of us knew yet how much of the trip we’d end up sharing with her. They had a Warmshowers host lined up in Cambridge that night, so we pushed on a little further to a golf resort for our own camp.

It was time for another state, Iowa this time, and the Mississippi to cross to get there. The road wound through impossibly small towns, each one somehow still supporting its own thriving little library, which felt like a good sign of something. It was another scorching day through farm country, and at one point a crop-duster looped low and steady back and forth over an isolated field, close enough to the ground each pass that it seemed to be daring itself. Crossing a state line always meant checking whether the alcohol laws had changed with it, so it was a small relief to see the familiar neon beer signs glowing in a store window. We found a motel on the edge of Muscatine in the hope of catching some Olympic coverage, and spent most of the afternoon in front of the television, watching events that were, unsurprisingly, tailored heavily towards American athletes. The one glimpse of home came from the kayakers, winning gold and silver. Good job.

Bradford, taken for Tooty.

The ride from Muscatine to Cascade was uneventful if hilly, eastern Iowa being the one part of this whole stretch that doesn’t lie flat, rolling and never especially steep but enough of a workout after a fortnight of easier miles. In the pretty little town of Cascade we tracked down the sheriff, who cleared us to camp by the ballpark and pointed us in the right direction, a nice spot and another free night. The town pool once again did double duty as our shower.

View from another city park by the town ballpark.

Leaving Cascade the next morning we found flags on every street corner, locals out setting up chairs in the town square for a Saturday gathering. We learned that some recent military casualties in Afghanistan had been Cascade locals, and the town was turning out that weekend to remember them. I tried steering us down what looked like an obvious shortcut, which led us onto a gravel road another cyclist warned was impassable, so we doubled back, four extra miles added to the day for the trouble.

Midway through the ride a signpost pointed us towards the Field of Dreams movie set. Neither of us could pass up a piece of our own childhood, so we turned down the farm road to find the field, the baseball diamond and the house all still standing, preserved exactly as the film left them. It was a light-hearted stop, other tourists taking their turn at the plate to get a photo of themselves swinging the bat, until the sky started turning an unpleasant black and we got moving again.

We passed through Dyersville with the clouds still holding, though the situation was looking steadily worse. It came down to a choice between pushing on to the next town, fourteen miles off, or trying to shelter where we were, and we decided to push. About five miles in, the first forks of lightning began sparking down in the distance, and we picked up the pace until we were both standing on the pedals, riding as hard as either of us had all trip, the bolts creeping closer with each strike, each one followed by a crack like a shotgun going off. We reached Petersburg just as the storm broke over the town and ducked straight into a bar called The Detour. It was barely two in the afternoon and the locals inside were already well on their way, but friendly enough to buy us dinner and a round of beers, and we spent a good few hours waiting out the weather with Engus, Wes, Beaver and the rest of their crowd, who kept circling back to make absolutely sure we really were from Great Britain. One of them told us, with a completely straight face, that we spoke pretty good English. I think he meant it. We left once the clouds had broken, heads fuzzy and bikes wobbling, but the fresh post-storm air sobered us up quickly enough to make it to the nice city park in Elkader, where we pitched camp and turned in early, despite a family reunion party nearby doing its best to keep the beer flowing our way.

Guys at The Detour bar.

Sporting my free Detour vest.