Well, that didn’t work so well. We’re back home tonight, after one night in McLean County, Illinois. We were planning to spend most of the week there and in other parts of Illinois, but it’ll have to wait for another time. All I got was one 20+ mile bike ride today. (The bike with its odometer is still on the car. I don’t want to handle it again until I can see what I’m touching.)

I didn’t get to any new destinations. I started the day by visiting a couple of places I had ridden to back in Fall 2005. The above photo shows one of them.

The cows here are grazing at the edge of the Sangamon River, near Arrowsmith. Just as I got off my bike to take a photo, a calf that had been grazing with the others fell down the bank and landed on its back close to the water. You’d have to look pretty carefully at the photo to see it. I took several photos, but after a while the cows seemed to get agitated. They were aware of my presence, and started running around — something I figured they shouldn’t be doing on such a hot day. The temperature was in the low-mid 90s, and the humidity was high. There was a bull with them, too, who did not seem to be as agitated as the cows, but I moved on.

That was nothing, though, compared to the excitement back in 1730. The French had been trying for nearly 20 years to exterminate the Fox (Mesquaki) people, and along with native allies, had them surrounded here. Not in the foreground where the cattle are grazing, but further downstream, near the white farm buildings. The Mesquaki people were holed up in in trenches and excavations along the bank of this stream, and it looked like the end had come. The term “genocide” is often tossed about carelessly in descriptions of European-Native conflicts, but in this case it is an accurate one. The French were trying to eliminate the Fox people entirely. They almost succeeded here, but some people escaped during a lightning storm. And some of the Native allies of the French were reluctant to track them all down and kill them all. So some escaped, and 102 years later, descendants of the remnant who got away constituted a large portion of Black Hawk’s followers.

There’s a marker about it on the other side of the farm buildings. It should be stated, by the way, that this is not an undisputed location for what was the last big battle of the Fox wars. But archaeological evidence shows that some big conflict took place here, and that French soldiers were involved. If it was some other event that took place here, the historical record does not tell us what it possibly could have been.

I had been having trouble with my bike a few miles before I got to the site. It looked like one of the roads had some time earlier been given a new coat of chip-and-tar gravel. Some of the gravel was still on the road. But it seemed a lot of that gravel was getting caught up between tires and fenders, making a lot of noise. Even though I should have been able to avoid the loose gravel – most of it had already cleared from the car tire tracks — it seemed I couldn’t.

I got off at one point and saw that my tires had gravel stuck to them all around the circumference. I had never seen anything like this before. Was it my Schwalbe Marathon tires that behaved differently in hot weather than my Continental Top Touring tires used to? I had hopes that the tires would eventually clear themselves from this stuff, but even though I soon reached roads that didn’t seem to have a coating of fresh gravel this year, the problem got worse. It was causing extra friction that made riding harder.

The above photo is where I stopped after a long, gentle climb to a high point between two different creek drainages. It was a hot day — in the 90s — but I’ve gone on long rides in those temperatures before. I’ve found that I can manage OK if I drink plenty of water, pay careful attention to how I’m feeling, and pace myself extra carefully. So I stopped in the shade at the high point, and took a few photos.

When I tried to start again, I found that so much tar and gravel was now caught between fenders and wheels, that the wheels would barely turn. At that point I called Myra. I told her how her the hot weather was causing a problem and I didn’t know what to do about it. She was in Bloomington, shopping, and it would take her a while to get out here, so I said I’d walk the bike up to State Route 9 and wait. But walking the bike was even worse. It would pick up even more gravel and tar, such that the wheels wouldn’t turn at all.

It was mostly downhill to SR-9, so I got on the bike and pedalled to force enough of the gunk off of the wheels so I could ride. Big chunks came off, and I left a visible trail on the road, but I could move.

I took this photo when I got to SR-9. I am not sure that it was the brakes that got me to a stop. While I waited I tried cleaning some of it off, but I didn’t get far. Big chunks dripped off, but any time I moved the bike I picked up more. Finally, I got to wondering if I couldn’t ride on SR-9, which seemed to have a better quality of pavement. I don’t know if the asphalt has a higher melting temperature, or if it’s because it contained more stones, or what, but I was able to ride toward Bloomington on that road. There were only two cassette gears that were free enough of asphalt and stones to work, but I could move. Unfortunately, most of my historical destinations are not on that kind of road.

Myra caught up with me when I was a couple miles down the road. We took the bike back to the campsite. I got myself cleaned up (my clothes also had tar on them) – then we went to Bloomington where we could get a bite to eat and get some internet, and where I learned that the temperature forecast was even worse now than when we had left home. We considered various options — such as my trying to get in some rides in the mornings before temperatures get so hot — but I wasn’t so sure even that would work when temperatures are like this day after day. Finally we decided to go home, where it will be easier to clean up my bike. (The car needs some cleaning, too, where chunks dripped off.)

The temperatures are not quite so high here. It’s nice living downwind of Lake Michigan. Maybe I’ll at least get in an overnight ride close to home.