May 29th, 2019 / (98km/64mi, 930hm)
As planned, I get up early from my alarm and check the weather outside: it looks good. Good enough at least to decide not to stay here and rather get moving further East towards Lexington. Every stop I have finished before Tim arrives, is a good stop and bad weather can’t put me to a halt. And the weather is totally unpredictable over the next days. One day is super sunny and hot, the next one overcast and thunderstorms building up within hours.
So I leave early and arrive shortly after at the ferry that takes me over the Ohio River. The Ohio River is also the border between Illinois and Kentucky. Hence I made it thru Illinois in 2 days and now enter Kentucky. I can still remember how I was riding in Nevada and was thinking about how it will be when I get into Kentucky. Now here I am. And it is heavily overcast with dark grey clouds that threaten to pour down any minute. I hence try to speed up and make it to the next town (Marion, KY) where a postman waves at me when I pass and tells me that they expect a thunderstorm to kick in within the next half our. “Better stay here and wait till it’s over”, he advises me, and you can bet that this was my plan already, too. I barely make it into the McDonald’s restaurant on Main Street with my bike covered under the roof when it suddenly start raining like crazy and thunder strikes all around. The wind gets nasty and shakes the trees outside and the sky has turned almost black. I’m glad I made it and spend the next hour sipping a French Vanilla Latte, watching the wet mess outside. After one and a half hours the storm stops as suddenly as it had started and the sky clears up quickly. Safe to continue my ride.
The rest of the day I roll up and down the typical roads and sometimes even am courageous enough to allow Google Maps to direct me into some side rows that lead thru fields winding left and right over one hill after the other. The rain of the morning provides not much, but at least a little bit of cooler air for some time. And the air smells so fresh!
When I get closer to Madisonville, the sky ahead again looks terribly dark and I am getting concerned I run into the next thunderstorm as I approach today’s destination. Fortunately, by the time I get there, the sky has again cleared up and instead the usual afternoon heat has kicked in again. I’m glad I made it to my motel again without getting soaked by rain or grilled by a lighting strike in the open. No tornado blew me away and now flood swept me south into the Gulf of Mexico. What more could you hope for? A shower, of course. Which is what I now go for.
This evening I also get rid of everything unnecessary that I am dragging around with me on this trip; things I haven’t used since I started, like tent, sleeping back, some clothing and other nitty-gritty stuff goes into a box and is handed over to UPS for home delivery. I did it! Yay!
It looks like it’s going to rain again this evening. I may stay a day here tomorrow. I have time left before I need to get to Lexington to meet my son Tim on June 4th. It’s 3 more stops in between before and I have 6 days to get there. Easy. Tim will be flying into Lexington from Germany and joimn me for the remaining 1000 miles to NYC. I’m looking forward to end my solo trip soon and be in good company with Tim. We’ve never been spending several weeks together just him and me and it’ll be for sure an experience and fun to do so!