Wednesday July 10:  Indianapolis, Indiana to Richmond, Indiana
Distance:  74 miles
Total time:  5 hours 58 minutes
Riding time:  5 hours 15 minutes

Today was a workman-like 74 mile ride.  It was overcast, extremely humid, and we rode almost all day on old Route 40, the National Road, a divided four-lane highway with little shoulder.  Most of the day we took the lane and rode on the roadway, but there was little traffic and it didn't feel particularly dangerous.  74 miles is now considered a short and easy day, and we were finished by 1:00.

It took us half an hour to get out of downtown Indianapolis, where we began.  The rush hour traffic wasn't too bad and Indianapolis is actually a much prettier city than I had imagined.  I assumed it would be all rust belt and decay, but maybe that's Gary.  This is what it looked like at 7:00 a.m. this morning.

Once we got out of town it was more cornfields, but punctuated every few miles by old towns along Route 40.  Construction of the National Road began in 1806 during the Jefferson Administration.  Like the canals which came soon after, the road was meant to open up the west to settlement and commerce.  Many of the towns look like they were once very prosperous, with impressive brick buildings that date from that time.  This is downtown Knightsville.

If you're a movie buff, Knightsville is the town from the movie "Hoosiers", in which the high school basketball team, coached by Gene Hackman, wins the Indiana State Championship.  That's Gene and the team in the mural above.

While some riders peeled off to visit the gym where they filmed the movie, some of us stopped at Ye Olde Bakery.  It was a great find.  When we walked in all the patrons greeted us, and one family got up and sat with another so that we could have a table.  The proprietor is from an Amish family and he uses grandma's recipes for, among many other things, his cinnamon buns.

The owner/baker was rightly proud of his baked goods and tried hard to push more on us.  As you can see he was disappointed when I ordered just coffee and the bun.  It didn't seem like a real breakfast for guys who were biking across the country.

Here he is with Michael and your humble servant.

The National Road parallels the train tracks - the very tracks that Lincoln's funeral train followed from Washington, DC to Springfield, Illinois in 1865.  That's Mark dwarfed by the mural that commemorates the train.

As we head east, we see a lot of changes.  No more 75 mile distances between rest stops.  More houses and businesses by the side of the road, and generally, though not always, more people and more traffic.  This affects us in one very fundamental way.  Out west we never had to worry about where to stop and do our business - remember, the average age on this trip is about 60, we drink tremendous amounts of fluids, and nature calls frequently and loudly.  We just stopped by the side of the road.  Now we have to be a little more strategic and a little more conscious of our surroundings.

In the latest development in our good-natured rivalry with the Brits, I presented them with tee-shirts at our meeting this evening.  On the front, a tasteful picture of a penny farthing high-wheeler bicycle.  Classy, no?

But on the back, my made-up name for their local cycling club in the UK.  "Wanker" is a not-at-all nice word.  In the UK you might yell it at a bad driver, the same way some Americans might yell "A**hole".

Here are the lads, "delighted" with their gifts.

So following the Missouri Hills (have I mentioned them previously??) we've had a pretty easy time of it.  68 miles, a rest day, and 74 miles today.  All of that ends tomorrow.  First, back to back centuries - 100+ mile rides - then more long days, all with hills.  Over the next five days we average 97 miles per day.  But we also hit two more important milestones tomorrow:  We enter Ohio, our ninth state; and we pass the 1,000 miles to go mark.  In other words, after tomorrow's ride, we'll have ridden 2900 miles and will have fewer than 1,000 to go.