Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 14, 2003

TV Stars
Day 14
Kankakee, IL to Urbana, IL



There's nothing like a good hearty McDonalds breakfast to get you going in the morning. The church that fed us dinner last night bought the food for us. It is incredible what some people will do to help us out.



The scenery on today's ride was not that spectacular. We had a tailwind for much of the day. The good thing is that Illinois is flat as a pancake, and since there is not much to look at, you can think about what you want to do with the rest of your life, what you are going to do after the ride, or even what you did with that pair of socks that is now missing.



There was a bit of confusion with today’s directions because one of the roads, route 37, was not marked. We went about 8 miles past the turn before realizing our mistake. Instead of going back to look for the road, we asked a mailman how to get to Clifton, one of the towns that we were supposed to go through. He told us that Clifton was due west of us, and we could actually see it from where we were stopped. Once we got to Clifton, we stopped at a Phillips 66, an extremely useful resource, to find out how to get on the desired route.



We passed through several more small towns, and apparently, Emily and Courtney managed to get into a parade that took place in one of them.



We pulled up to Matt's house in the early afternoon. In all, there were two sets of TV reporters and one newspaper reporter who came to do stories on us. One of the reporters took footage of our bag brigade from every possible angle.



Matt had arranged for dinner at a local restaurant. He knew the owner, who was gracious enough to satisfy our voracious appetites with fondue and pizza.



After dinner, we took a stroll around the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana. Then, some people went out to go see Finding Nemo. They had been itching to see the movie for the past few days, and today they finally found a theater that was playing it. Others eagerly awaited the nightly news broadcast. We were impressed by the segments about us because they were both over a minute in length. Too bad we couldn’t hear what they said about us over Matt’s girlish squeals of excitement. To top it all off, we didn’t even get the clips on tape because Matt set up the VCR wrong. I did not see any reason to lose sleep over it, and I didn’t. I went to bed shortly thereafter.



Rajeev Mahajan