Day 46: Lee County to Naperville

Posted by: Arin

I woke up having to pee so bad, so I got out of the tent in my underwear and a t shirt. I walked a couple of steps and was about to pee when I looked over my shoulder and saw a cop sitting there parked in the rest stop. I decided to get back in the tent, put on more clothes, and peed behind a tree. The cop never came out and talked to us, but was in and out of the spot all morning. He must have heard about us from the day before. I was actually kind of happy to have him there because it made sure that no one else would mess with us in our exposed campsite.

We got back on the road a little before 11 with 46 miles ahead of us to Aurora. We were kind of pumped to go there because that's the setting of Wayne's World. Road conditions were pretty terrible, but for some reason I was in a great mood all day. With only two stops (one for snacks and one for ice cream), we made it to Aurora by 2pm. We would have plenty of time to find a good place to sleep.

First order of business was to go get a pizza, which we ate in a sketchy park before riding across town to the local skatepark. It was in the middle of Phillips Park, a huge park with a zoo and a water park in it, so it took us a little whole to find the skatepark. We pulled up, started skating, and talked to some of the locals. One dude was stoked and said we could come with him to camp in his friend's backyard (something they're doing for Memorial Day weekend). His phone was dead so he couldn't call to make sure it was ok, but he assured us it was going to be fine. We stayed there at the skatepark with him until it started getting dark, then he led us in his car to where he lives.

We got there and hung out in the garage for a while. We couldn't go into the house because it's owned by his girlfriend's parents and apparently they're weird about strangers. While we waited for his phone to charge, he brought in some bread, turkey, fruit, and carrots so we got to eat a little bit. Finally he called his friend and you know what? It totally wasn't ok for us to come over. In his friend's words: "Charles Manson probably rode bikes, I don't know these guys." 

Why does everyone we've met in Illinois suck?

At least this one guy was trying to help us, but he ended up totally screwing us over. It was past 10pm and we had nowhere to sleep. He also told us that cops would probably mess with us anywhere we tried to sleep in the area. He had to leave to go to his friend's house, so we left too. All of our water containers were empty, so we headed to the gas station down the road to get some snacks and fill our water. While we were there, our friend stopped by to get some gas and beer before leaving us sitting in front of the station.

We sat outside eating our snacks and trying to figure out what we were going to do. We were either going to start riding the bike path towards Chicago or try to camp somewhere close by. As we sat there thinking, a man coming out of the convenience store stopped to tell us the lady in the store was calling the cops on us and that we should get out of there. Apparently everyone here hates cyclists. We just went for the Fox river trail, right across the street. It connected to the Illinois Prarie Path, a carless bike path leading almost all the way to Chicago. It was almost midnight at this point.

We rode into the night at a slow pace, not finding anywhere to sleep. This path had no cars, but led past lots of people's back yards. At this point we were afraid of everyone calling the cops on us, so we just kept riding.

Around 1:30am the path went out onto a big road. A small wall on the side dropped off quite a bit on the other side and had some decent tree coverage, so we decided to sleep there. It was on the side of a cable and internet provider company. We figured that no one would be working the next day, but we still slept away from any windows, tucked up against the wall next to the sidewalk.