Lunchtime was the key for me on these two hot days. Today, we had reasonably cool temps until 9:30am (started at 6:45)- and the road was really flat and smooth. With the tail wind, karina Mary and I were doing 18-20mph for a good long time.

We crossed the Mississippi river for the last time, and Illinois welcomed us with 5 miles of brutal grooved pavement....which will probably be lovely when they finish the road construction project...but was AWFUL to ride on today.

We juiced up at the first sag- quickly, and spent a longer time by the cute library, park, and shade at the second. After that it was a concerted push to Cambridge (20 more miles) where we asked some guys where to eat an air conditioned lunch. We got good advice and went to the 'county seat' restaurant.

After that, it was 11:45 with only 20 miles to go. We took off at a pretty fast clip- so our 'stop after 5 miles' plan seemed silly fifteen minutes later. We decided to stop at the first shade after 12:15 ... Off in the distance we saw a clump of trees, and chose that.

I joked that perhaps Nancy the sag driver would be waiting with cool water at that very spot. Mary and karina laughed and told me to stop with the fairy tales. This was a reasonable thing, based on the fact the the 8 riders who actually completed the ride on Sunday only got sags up to about 60 miles. :(

But guess what!!! As we got closer and closer to those trees, I spied the white Subaru- they didn't see it at first, but we started singing "do you see what I see?" - with our own lyrics, of course, and ended rhyming gold with water that is COLD.

Karina and I took our temperatures there. I was 99.6, karina was 98.4 or something. Her neck cooler seems to have worked! I wasn't concerned about 99.6....but was happy to cool down in the shade and plentiful water at the sag stop!

A zippy ride in with sherri in the group, and in at 1:15

All in all, an easy 78mile ride at about 98 degrees.

Whew!