Day 36: Aurora, IL – Rockford, IL (10.6.24)

Good morning to Germany and the rest of the world, Today is my 7th day on the road since my bike was repaired. With a little sensitivity, lots of short breaks and good care, it has held up quite well so far. I’m a bit worse for wear myself, because 580km of headwinds of the really nasty kind (at 40-60kmh) have left some marks. But we don’t want to complain, because something like that has to be expected. Nevertheless, I’ll take a rest day tomorrow, maybe the wind will change. Today was another slightly shorter stage – sometimes the (affordable) hotels are so inconvenient that I have to drive either 160km or, like today, just under 90km. From Aurora, of course, there was wind again, which was then joined by my beloved Pennsylvania hills, which the bike doesn’t like either. But we took it slow and both persevered well. The town of Burlington was very nice to look at, but the route before and after, which led past many pretty houses and small pine forests, was also very nice to drive. Only not the last 20km on the Cherry Valley Road, because it had terribly annoying cross grooves every 10m or so.