day 53

smack! i rolled over and headbutted the wall. nice. after such a good sleep i got a little goose egg on my forehead but it'll be fine in a day or so. lu and su who normally get up super early, slept in and we all packed up and got ready for the day. we finished off some cookies for them and parted ways to find breakfast. we couldn't find anything the way we were heading out of town so we hit up a hardy's basically a carl's jr. we enjoyed biscuits and gravy as we chatted with some local older folk. we then followed the mississippi river through a windy, odd route up along levees through random corn fields, and backroads. we finally got back on the highway and when we turned i looked in my mirror and could see evan then a huge black cloud behind us so we booked it. we only had like 11 miles from a bigger town where we were only 7 miles away from carbondale where we were ending our day. a couple miles out of town it started to dump on us but we just had to keep riding; it was actually really refreshing and made things cooler but still getting dumped on and having to trudge around in soggy clothes is a bit of a hassle sometimes. we stopped at a gas station to rest and wait out some of the rain and lu and su were there doing the same. i got a slurpee cause it was so refreshing! we chilled out front and chatted with a couple of guys about our trip. evan and i pressed on to carbondale heading off route then lu and su were heading further down the path. we plan on taking a rest day here and hitting up the bike shop to get our bikes checked out since we've put so many miles on them. it was a good ride on the highway that was just widened and has a great shoulder and it seemed more direct and quicker so that was good. once again we were trying to stay ahead of the looming black cloud. we pulled into town and ducked into a used bookstore to wait out the rain. it rained so hard for awhile but we sat underneath an awning. we cruised around town some more looking for food and went by the college and finally hit up an indian buffet called jewel of india, the place was vacant and only half the room had tables and chairs. we stayed and enjoyed some food hoping it doesn't seek revenge on us later...we quickly darted to the library to wait out some more rain and wait for our friend logan (who we met in emminence and took us out to dinner) to get back into town and we're gonna crash at his place for the next 2 nights. luckily there's a dairy queen next to the library so we got ourselves a blizzard and got a call from logan. we biked on over to logan's apartment and chatted with him. we sat around catching up and then we headed to the grocery store to pickup some snacks. we just hung out reading, interneting, and talking the rest of the night.