June 2, 2003 Our journey took us north today as we moved from Cairo to Chester, IL. We had no mechanicals and the Team is fine. We are tired, and ready for a rest day, but we just keep Rollin' Along (More on that later!) The first half of the ride today was done in fair weather, but after a few hours it started to cloud over. We made an out and back to Cape Giradeau in Missouri to FedEx the computer back to Santa Rosa to be fixed. This caused us to have to cross the mighty Mississippi over an old bridge with no room for bikes. In fact, on the way over, a big rig protected us from the traffic by hanging back about 100 yards and keeping with our pace. We could have hugged the guy. We found the FedEx place, shipped the comuter, and started our return trip over the same bridge. As we got into downtown Giradeau, it started to rain, so we stopped and put on our rain gear. As we neared the bridge, it was really pouring. But, we just charged ahead, and followed our policy of "being a car" when in doubt. The motorists were good to us again, and we were soon back on route. We rode the next four hours in the rain, and the only outstanding observations would concern the big rigs passing us at 65-70 mph in the rain, and nearly drowning us. They were pretty good about staying away from us, but the water wasn't. However, all was well, and we ended up in Chester before long. I should mention that we came upon another cyclist about an hour out of Chester, She was part of a group of 10 who were camping the night in Chester. They had come from Virginia, and were apparently following an Adverture Cyclist Route. They were headed for Oregon as well. We saw a couple more of them as we were leaving the next morning. LaValle and I mentioned to each other that we were certainly happy that we weren't camping - there is just no way the gear would dry out. Even with the rain, we had no mechanical problems today. The team is in good shape except that LaValle has some kind of tweak to her right calf. She is icing and taking aspirin, and that seems to be helping. Sore butts are still a problem, but we are dealing with it. There wasn't much in the way of scenery today, as the rain made everything very dull. However, we could see that the territory would be very beautiful in nice weather. When we got into Chester, we started seeing a bunch of stuff about "Popeye the Sailor Man". As it turns out, the creator of Popeye and Olive Oyl was born in Chester. He died in Southern California, but the town claims itself as the hometown of Popeye. There is a statue of him at the bridge leaving town - pretty impressive. Ron