Trans Am 2017 Day 16: Elizabethtown, IL to Falls Rough, KY — 137 Miles, +5,470 ft

14 min readNov 8, 2017

I woke up feeling exactly like I did going to sleep. Like I was a failure and falling behind. The only consolation was knowing that I’d given it absolutely everything I had the past 24 hours and wasted myself somewhere in the middle of Illinois, a state that now owned part of my soul, and I was now desperate to get out of it. I’d slept around 5 hours, a little longer than I’d planned but definitely necessary, and it looked like I’d be 2 hours behind anyone who’d made the first ferry. Ken and Sofiane were still sleeping and would be 30 minutes or so behind me.

The ride to Cave in Rock wasn’t bad, just some rollers on a small back road but nothing too steep or tall. I had no idea if I would time the ferry well because there is no schedule (as far as I know?), so I came into town hopeful that I’d be able to get on quickly. I had my eyes on Marion for breakfast, so didn’t need anything in town when I pulled in to find the ferry waiting. Sweet! I’d be on the move in Kentucky in no time. I hustled onto the ferry and sat there for 15 minutes while we waited for something, I wasn’t sure what. It’s one of the only moments in the race where you are at the whims of other people and really can’t do anything to move forward, and its almost a relief. I didn’t mind sitting there for a few minutes, and was in no hurry when we finally started moving. Take your time, old ferry!

I saw someone standing next to a rider across the water, and figured the rider was an east to west mover waiting for the ferry to Illinois. We got close and I recognized Michelle Lodge, and I was pumped to meet her! She is a legend who meets everyone that she can coming through Marion, and I was glad to meet her early in the day to get a little boost. We chatted for a second and she brought me over to her car to sign her poster of Inspired to Ride.

She was in good spirits, but asked me if I’d looked at the Trans Am Facebook page at all. I knew immediately that something was wrong and the grimace on her face when I said I hadn’t confirmed it. I thought immediately to Amy but figured I would have been called if something had happened to her. Grim thoughts, these.

She told me that a rider had been hit and I asked if they were killed, and she nodded. Holy fuck. Did they say who? Where was it? She said it was in Kansas and I don’t think she knew at that point who, but I knew Amy was in Missouri by then and couldn’t help but feel deeply, deeply relieved. Michelle said there was no news on whether the race would be cancelled, and I didn’t know what to think. It all took a while to sink in, and I must have looked lost to Michelle. There was a pit in my stomach when we said bye, and I told her I was going to get breakfast and call my mom, which is exactly what I was about to do.

I just felt confused and needed to gather myself. My biggest confusion was how to feel and act towards the death. How should I feel about the rider and their family? Did I know them? What if it was a name I recognized? What if I didn’t recognize them? I considered all this while I pedaled and wondered what would happen to the race.

It was Father’s Day and I called both my parents on the way to Marion, and I just remembered feeling relieved to hear their voices and to be able to let them know I was OK. They must have been feeling anxious but they didn’t show it at all. I asked them what I should do and they said to feel it out, do what I needed to. It would be OK if I needed to have a short or slow day, just go get a good breakfast and proceed from there.

I got to Marion, sat down at a bench outside a gas station, and ate a big breakfast with some needed coffee. What do I do? I felt for the rider, but my focus was still on the race and my goals for it. Was that wrong? There were riders pulling away ahead of me and riders closing in behind, and I mostly just wanted to get back on the road. The situation wouldn’t really hit me until the end of the day, and it actually would hit me pretty hard. But, in those moments in Marion, I was still focused on racing, the thing that had been my singular focus for over two weeks.

Just after I ate, a massive lightning storm rolled in and it started pouring rain. I had no where to go and just sat there waiting it out. It felt like hours passed at the gas station in Marion, and I checked the radar to see if I would get myself into any trouble if I set off down the road. The rain had slowed in town, but looked like I could run into more ahead. I didn’t mind the rain, it was the lightning I didn’t like. But, I decided to get going. I spent over an hour in town, and it was evident that this would be a slow day.

The news of Eric Fishbein’s death obviously hit me hard, and it weighed on me all day. I’d fallen off hard the day before, and I was definitely struggling even before I got the news. There was potential for the race to be cancelled, and many racers would be dropping out regardless of what happened because of the accident. My brain and every part of my body was aching for me to stop, to sleep, to recover, and this news, especially if the race were cancelled, would make it easier to listen to that impulse. I now had every excuse to curl up in a hotel for half the day and, of course, a huge part of me wanted to.

I may have considered it for a split second, but never seriously. If I was going to continue racing to Yorktown, which a lot of racers chose not to, I didn’t want this to become an excuse for me to cave and have an easy day or easy rest of my ride. It felt like a cop out that would allow me to do something I already had the urge to do. I talked to everyone in my family and I expressed this sentiment. I’m continuing my race, and is it OK if I don’t want this to become an excuse for me? I was seriously confused. Guilty for not feeling worse and slowing my race, but adamant that I wouldn’t let this change my approach and become an excuse to slow for comfort. The point of views couldn’t coexist long and I was torn.

I thought constantly about it until I ran into Ken and Sofiane in Sebree. We chatted at the gas station where Sofiane was pissed that we hadn’t been told by Nathan what to do. Was the race still on? Should we stop? I didn’t understand this point of view. I wasn’t racing because Nathan Jones told me to, and I wouldn’t stop because he told me to. Even if the race was cancelled, I knew I would keep going, and, if I was still biking, I was going to keep biking hard. I was biking from Astoria to Yorktown to test myself against the goals I’d set out before the race, not to get a finishers medal or a pat on the back from Nathan. Sofiane’s comments seemed to imply that he was in the race only if it were a race, and I was at complete odds. Fuck that man, I’m leaving it all out there regardless of whether the “race” is on or not.

I left the gas station before them hoping to put some distance between myself and their waffling. I pedaled strong and was getting a good gap as I cruised through western Kentucky.

When I was on the phone with my dad just after Marion, he told me about a funny bit of Facebook banter that had gone on since I left Michelle. She’d posted some photos of me, in which I obviously look wrecked and dirty, and he’d commented asking if anyone in Kentucky could help me get a clean jersey. He was laughing about it and said that someone in a bike shop in Owensboro had commented saying they could help out.

The hilarious banter. Also, thanks Chris!! Hope you are healing up. And yes, Michele, you are a legend.

I didn’t want a new jersey but it was hilarious that this had all transpired so quickly, and I didn’t think much about the bike shop in Owensboro after our conversation. Then, all the sudden I see two guys in bike helmets and sunglasses rolling towards me on a moped. As they go by, they holler, “there he is!” and start the apparently challenging process of turning around (turns out they just bought the thing so were still getting a hang of it). I was on the phone with my mom at the time and I told her I gotta go, some dudes are on a moped here to say hey!

It had been a pretty terrible day. A rider had died, I was moving slowly, and I had hardly put down any mileage by that afternoon. So when these two dudes rocked up next to me all smiles in their neon helmets and stacked on top of each other on their red moped, I couldn’t help but be so stoked. They rolled on next to me while I pedaled and we chatted for a while. I asked about news about the race and the accident, and they said they hadn’t wanted to say anything until I did in case I hadn’t heard. They said no news on the race, so it seemed to still be “on”. We shot the shit about the ride and they had lots of questions. Then they asked if I really wanted a new jersey and told me they were from the bike shop in Owensboro and had been the ones to offer it to my dad on Facebook. Classic, what legends! Despite my filth, I told them I didn’t. Weeks after the race, I now wish badly that I had a Big O jersey to represent back home! What was I thinking.

We rode by their house and they accompanied me almost all the way to Utica. It had been an awesome diversion from the day and a huge, positive boost. I think they Facebook Lived it, so if there is a link out there somewhere, please send it to me! Also hilarious because they really did not know how to drive the thing yet.

I kept pedaling fast and skipped a resupply in Whitesville that I figured Ken and Sofiane would go for, opting instead to head for Fordsville.

Despite not feeling well early in the day, I hadn’t gotten off my bike in hours and had ridden well for that time. When I finally did chill out for a minute at the gas station in Fordsville, it all kind of caught up to me. The reality that someone had died in the race set in and I felt really sick and deflated. It was late afternoon, clouds were gathering, and things were getting dark. I felt unsafe, lonely, tired, and anxious. I sat on the ground outside the gas station and called my mom, again. It wasn’t a question of what I should do (I wasn’t going to waver on the race), but I needed to calm down and get some amount of focus back. I wanted to ride, but for a moment I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it. The main thing on my mind pushing me forward was this steadfast desire to not let this accident be an excuse for me, and, sitting there on the pavement, it started to feel like one. Fuck that.

I checked the weather, saw there was a flash flood warning until the early morning hours that stretched all the way to Bardstown, 100 plus miles ahead, where I wanted to reach before I slept. Even if I went all the way, I wouldn’t get there until the wee hours of the morning, but I felt like I needed to make up time and distance. There was a 24 hour gas station 50 miles ahead, and I decided I would just take the chance and head into the storm, hoping that I would somehow avoid it.

I set out, feeling nothing but anxious. After a few miles it started to rain, and five miles from Falls of Rough the skies opened, complete with raucous thunder and lightning. I was getting soaked, which wasn’t bad, but the lightning was getting closer and closer. I was sprinting towards town, hoping to be able to at least have real cover before I stopped, but I was forced to pull off into a barn next to the road with lighting super close. I stopped, wondering if this would have to be the place that I slept through the storm.

I looked at my phone and saw that, at some point since Fordsville, I had service, and my cousin had texted me. “Have you talked to Amy lately? Is she OK?” I can almost laugh about this now, but there couldn’t have been a worse moment to see that text. Asking if someone else is OK implies that they are not, and, in my anxiety that evening, I was panicking.

I didn’t have any service where I was but needed an answer from my cousin immediately. I got back on my bike with the thunder clapping all around me and threw down watts to get into town. It was a long, wet, and loud three miles, but I finally got to where it says “Falls of Rough” on the map, stopping at some point along the way when I got service to send a text to my cousin asking what the hell he meant by his question.

There was nothing town like in the spot where I thought things should be, and the one gas station I saw was closed. I looked on the map and saw that I had to follow the route left and go a mile or so to get to the post office where I figured I would wait out the storm. When I did, I found a stretch of post office, gas station, and motel. It was a Sunday and the gas stations had all closed early, so I rolled into the post office to determine what was up with Amy.

I’d talked to her maybe 30 minutes before I saw the text from my cousin Alex and knew she was having headphone problems, so I hoped that this was all that led to his text. He had wrote back just saying that she sounded distressed, and I was relieved but pissed. You can’t write texts like that suggesting she is in trouble when we are all out on the road worried about each other!! We are on high alert here!

Relieved that the immediate worry was over, I set about figuring out my plans. I had pulled out my sleeping bag liner in the post office and curled up for sleep, but then realized none of the outlets worked. My phone was low, my lights were out, and if I was going to ride through the night after the storm passed, I would have to charge them all. After everything that day, I was also very ready for some amount of comfort and saw on the tracker that Ken and Sofiane had pulled up after me and gone straight into the motel. So, I decided that I would get only my second hotel of the race.

I had to call to get a combo for a lock box and send my card info over text, but it was a room with outlets, AC, and a bed. Thank you Bob! I showered and washed my clothes, hoping they would dry but knowing they wouldn’t.

When I got out of the shower, the room on the other side of the wall from the head of my bed started making noise that sounded like a mic getting plugged into an amp, and sure enough a few seconds later I heard “testing, testing”, followed by the strumming of a guitar. This had to be a joke. Was I delusional? No, it was real. The sound reverberated deeply through my room and it seemed I might not be able to sleep. Whatever, it was almost comical. I’ll have to tune it out.

The weather showed that the rain would slow around 2 or 3 am, so I set my alarm for 2:30. I’d wasted at least an hour walking around, going from post office to motel, and it was now 10. 4.5 hours sleep was decent enough. I fell asleep with the sound of some man talking into a microphone pumping through the wall, in the middle of a flash flood, in the middle of rural Kentucky, 140 miles into the day. I wasn’t feeling my best, suffice to say.

Trans Am 2017 Intro

Trans Am Day 1: Astoria, OR to McKenzie Bridge, OR

Trans Am Day 2: McKenzie Bridge, OR to Prairie City, OR

Trans Am Day 3: Prairie City, OR to Council, ID

Trans Am Day 4: Council, ID to Lochsa Lodge, ID

Trans Am Day 5: Lochsa Lodge, ID to Bannack State Park, MT

Trans Am Day 6: Bannack State Park, MT to Cameron, MT

Trans Am Day 7: Cameron, MT to Lander, WY

Trans Am Day 8: Lander, WY to Cowdrey, CO

Trans Am Day 9: Cowdrey, CO to Alma, CO

Trans Am Day 10: Alma, CO to Haswell, CO

Trans Am Day 11: Haswell, CO to Ness City, KS