7/26/96 (Friday) CRESCO to FAYETTE (56.8 miles)

Since it's a short day today, we took our time getting out of town. Well, we still had to get up at 5:00 am to get our luggage on the truck, but we grabbed a bagel and coffe in town at a little bakery so we didn't get on our bikes for real until about 7:00.

The first stop, Protovin, was a Czech community and had a chorus of women in Bohemian costume singing along with a very out of tune piano. They even did a fairly odd rendition of "Deep in the Heart of Texas". The Catholic Church was quite a sight on the hill, with several huge American flags lining the street in front of the church. Since the route was mostly southerly, we had hoped for a tailwind comparable to yesterday's headwind, but as the limp flags attested, there was no wind at all.

Between Protovin and Spillville (the American-ized name for a town founded by a man named Spielman), Kath and I opened it up (well, for us) and averaged 20 mph on the long rolling hills. We got to Spillville about 9:20 and with only 11 miles to our lunch town, we decided to do some sight seeing. We ran into fellow Big F-er Cheryl who recommended the Bily Clock Museum, so we got into the hour long line, met a ham radio operator and a Green Peace supporter from England, and finally made our way into the museum. And was it worth it! These clocks were hand carved by 2 Czech brothers in the late 1800's and early 1900's, with very intricate carvings and little mechanical mechanisms. Some of them were over 9 feet tall, and several included mosaics, such as the tribute to pioneering clock which had carvings of the Mayflower, farmers planting, and Indian attacks. A miniature version of a church had been carved from looking at a picture postcard because the brothers never travelled more than 35 miles from their home, and it included a wedding party that made their way around the outside of the church, entered the church and had the door close softly behind them. There were at least 20 clocks and they were said to be priceless since the brothers had been offered over $1 million for one of the clocks in the 1920s but had refused to sell them. The building they are now housed in was the summer home of Antonin Dvorak in 1893, prior to the release of the New World Symphony. He was said to have been homesick and appreciated the Czech still spoken in Spillville at the time.

We had decided we had enough pie and pork products for a while so we opted for the baked potato in St. Lucas. There was a 2 piece country band playing, followed by an Elvis impersonator. We hit the road again to the tune of Blueberry Hill.

Again the weather was beautiful with thick white clouds building throughout the afternoon against the very deep blue sky. The rolling hills were punctuated by an occasional red bard with huge silos.

We were greeted in Hawkeye by a _huge_ ear of corn that had kernels made out of gallon milk jugs painted yellow. The "artist" told me he had been paid the highest compliment when a paper in Texas said it was a Texas-sized ear of corn.

We stopped in Randalia, a town of 75, long enough to meet a family of tandem riders whose MIT-ish father had engineered the gearing mechanism for the daughter, and to enjoy a 25 cent freezie (tube of slushy ice). Fayette wasn't far and we rolled in about 4:30. The town was the poorest we'd camped in, mostly run down brick buildings, and it was quite a walk to the showers. Luckily the route was entertaining, with one house sporting two mailboxes, a regulation height one and another about seven feet off the ground labelled "Air Mail." The showers were the most crowded we had seen all week and the first shower head to become available had water so cold it was almost solid. Just before passing out, another opened up and we clotheslined our way to it to enjoy a moderately luke warm shower. And even though it was the end of the week, people were understanding and not very cranky.

Maybe that's the best thing about this trip. No one snipes. The bikers are courteous, calling out their entrances and exits into the non-stop stream of bikers, moving aside for others passing or entering, and joking with those making accidental bone-head moves, like my attempt to eject my gum into a cornfield, only to nearly lose my balance in the shoulder sand.

We grabbed spaghetti at the fire station after only 20 minutes in line. We were lucky though because they ran out shortly after we got ours and turned away people who had been waiting quite some time. We trudged back to camp and Kath stayed to talk around the circle of chairs, while I re-packed my bags and crashed. It was a night Jeanie had set up a rendezvous with Chris' brother but there was no cell service at all so I gave up on calls. I'll try to catch Stewart tomorrow on the bus.