Amish Country

For our second biking adventure, we chose to be a bit more daring. We had planned to go on a sensible 10 mile bike ride in Springfield, Illinois. The night before, however, I was looking through the biking book and came across a trail only a half-hour away from us through a county with 4,000 "old order" Amish! As I have always been fascinated by the Amish this ride intrigued me. I asked Immanuel if we could go. He asked how long it was and I replied, "oh, 30 miles". He gave me a look, but agreed.

I began to have doubts when I realized we'd be going through three different towns. My excitement, however, did not go away so we decided this was how we would spend our Saturday. Nevermind the fact that we just became "bikers" a mere 3 1/2 weeks ago or that the longest ride I'd ever been on was only 10 miles. We were going to do this and I was going to survive.

We began Saturday by biking to Le Peep for breakfast (about 4.5 miles away) and biking back home. We gathered our gear (no five trips to Meijer this week) and headed to Arcola. We were able to find the start of the trail easily, so much less stress and arguing than last week.

The trail started at an old train depot that had lots of information about Arcola and the surrounding area. As we were leaving the building, information in hand, Immanuel says, "you didn't look at the brooms". Apparently this is also a broom museum. (Did I mention this is a teeny, tiny little town?) So, I think "Oh joy! Brooms!" and am about to walk out without looking at them when the lady running the place excitedly says, "Yes, we have all kinds of brooms, some that you won't find anywhere else!" Well now I couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to see these unique brooms, could I? So, I walked through the broom museum, which was just a room, but honestly I don't know what was so special about them, they're just brooms.

Also, while in the old train depot we learned from the broom lady that there was a better route, safer and more comfortable for bicyclists, that had just recently been re-paved since the publication of our biking book, so we changed our route a bit. We took a detour to see Rockome Gardens, but once there decided it wasn't going to be worth the money. It wasn't a total waste though because we found a nice shade tree to have a snack and drink, since Immanuel's blood sugar was in the 70s. While standing in the shade of a tree, we saw a family of Amish bicycle up and park next to the tree. Apparently Amish like to bicycle as well.

About 6 miles later (about 13 miles total into our trip) we reached the town of Arthur where we planned to stop for lunch. I decided since we were going to be burning so many calories we should allow ourselves a splurge, especially since Saturday is our free day. We went to Yoder's Kitchen, a restaurant with real Amish cooking. Interestingly, they had a gift shop that did not contain a single thing that would EVER be found in an Amish home. Also, it was a little fancier than I thought it should be and many of the employees were clearly NOT Amish. There were a few dressed plain with "Kapps" (Amish head coverings), but I really started to wonder if maybe it was all show and not for real. One Amish girl, however, had clearly never shaved her legs, so I decided that no woman would ever do that just as part of an act, so they must really be Amish. After the meal I nearly immediately regretted my decision to eat there instead of Subway. My stomach hurt, I had overeaten, and felt very sluggish. Also, I ended up having heartburn for the rest of the day and night.

As we were heading back to the main street in Arnold we go into a predicament. The road was quite busy, but there was a wide shoulder to take advantage of. We began to hear the "clomp, clomp" of horse hooves and realized they were behind us. Nowhere on the Internet, in all the reading Immanuel has done on safe bike riding, did he come across what proper etiquette is if you are being approached from behind by a horse and buggy. We couldn't go into the road because it wasn't safe to merge into traffic and we couldn't exactly expect the Amish to go around us on the road as it wasn't safe for them either. So, we took another detour through some residential neighborhoods to avoid the traffic and the horse-drawn buggies.

We decided to check out a few shops in Arnold. One store sold a bunch of different types and flavors of cheese. They had a free sample of "Lightning Jack" that Immanuel enjoyed, it was Monterey Jack with hot peppers in it. Another was a variety store with a lot of odds and ends. There were Amish outfits for baby dolls and I thought that was kind of cool.

Heading out of Arnold we realized we forgot our map of the route back in our car, so we had to use the map the broom lady gave us and ended up changing our route some. We passed many horse-drawn buggies and discovered the Amish are quite friendly, all the them waved in greeting as they passed. Once we got onto the country roads we ran across several that were gravel and that proved a little tricky, but really we just had to slow down. At one point we stopped to rest, take a drink, and give my butt, which was quite sore by this point, a well needed break. A young Amish man passing by with his horse and buggy did a double take when he saw us and I'm sure he was wondering why a couple "Englishers" (as we are referred to by the Amish) were in the middle of nowhere riding bicycles.

The country roads were nice because there were no cars, so we could ride side by side, but there was also no shade. This was the stretch where I became very whiny because my butt was starting to get sore. My legs were fine, but my butt was not, so we had to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to take a break.

All along the county roads there were more butterflies than I'd ever seen and it must have been butterfly mating season because we broke a number of butterfly orgies. We also saw several caterpillars running faster than should be possible with such short legs across the road screaming "Ow! Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot!" Their voices are much lower than I expected.

When we stopped to rest we figured out why the caterpillars were moving so quickly and screaming. You see, the road was hot enough that tar was kind of melted. There were several totally melted tar droplets all around us and our feet and bicycle tires kept sticking in it. We were actually leaving footprints and tire tracks in the road! While we were stopped we picked up a hitchhiker, a yellow ladybug. She rode on my bike for several miles, and then I thought she had taken off, only to find out later she had switch to Immanuel's bike.

I wasn't entirely sure if I was going to survive the last 5 miles, but we finally made it to Casey's where we stopped to get some cold Gatorade (we had exhausted our fluid supply on the last few miles of our trip and it wasn't exactly frosty by that point) before heading to our car to load up the bikes and return home.

Once home Immanuel charted our route on Google since we changed some of it and discovered that we actually went at least 35 miles. We biked for 3 hours and 25 minutes. That's actual bike time because I paused my watch timer when we stopped for breaks. I wear a heart rate monitor that also estimates calories burned and it said I burned 3,600 calories!!

Once you factor in the morning bike ride to and from Le Peep, we biked 4 hours and 25 minutes, 45 miles, and I burned 4,600 calories!!

I survived my first long bike ride and enjoyed every bit. Well, except for those last 5 miles!