Day 4 - country roads

So today was the day I finally curse the country roads taking me across the midwest.  After some great smooth riding on the shoulder,  a long 10 mile section was full of potholes and left me swerving to save my tires.  It felt like hitting speed bumps for about an hour and the sun was quickly setting.  I hate being so far east in central time zone.  Everyone knows that sunset is not when it turns dark,  real dark is when your playing baseball and you can't see the ball anymore,  coming through Williamsville,  this happened at 8:50pm tonight.  I've got to get it through my head that I'm not in Michigan anymore and start using the morning sunlight more.  I had a rough night when I had to improvise my route to get the last 15 miles to my couchsurfing host on the west side of Springfield.  Fatih and Aaron have been great and waited up 2 hours for me to finally roll up in the pitch black.  Its the first time I had to use my headlight, but at least I had some city riding with intersections and businesses to use as bearings.  Brian Dow helped navigate a bit and definitely saved time.  As always,  11 hours is about the time I bonk.  Sure enough right after I stopped for dinner, my head got so tired and getting lost only made it more frustrating.   I also took my first advil of the trip.  My legs have been recovering just fine,  but my shoulders and wrists are aching.   Hoping a sleep tonight will have me recovered for the 100 mile ride to St Louis on Friday.   I think Sunday may be a good day to take a break once I'm into Missouri and well on my may out to LA.  Today's odometer says 510 miles over the first 4 days,  hope I can keep it up when the heat and altitude start rising.

Alan