JUNE 19: Winimac, Iowa to Bradley, Illinois. 82 miles via Indiana Route 14, a Newton County, Indiana, road; Kankakee County, Illinois, roads, Illinois Routes 1 and 17, and Kankakee and Bradley city streets. Average speed for the day, well over 12 mph (don’t have bike computer for exact read). Total trip mileage to date, approximately 1,120. Miles to go: I don’t even want to think about it, but in the neighborhood of 2,700.

We have pledged allegiance to Indiana Route 14: It’s a rail-straight, tabletop-flat dragstrip with little wind, less traffic and everything to offer the well-laden bicyclist.  It runs 75 miles from Akron to Enos, Indiana like a two-strike fugitive with the sheriff on his tail.

For the first 20 miles out of Winimac, we averaged well over 14 mph on 14. Now this may seem like a pedestrian pace and might get you a ticket if you were driving a car, but for us it was warp speed. Only when we hit the Interstate 65, about 30 miles into the day’s ride, did we slow.

At the 65 interchange was Heritage Farms, a huge, Holstein-themed tourist trap that promised “A Dairy Adventure.” What it delivered was one of the best milkshakes I have had on this trip – and I’ve had a lot. It was cookies and cream and, unfortunately, I drained it all to quickly.

When we got back on Indiana 14, the temperature had risen and the pavement quality had fallen. Seems Indot (Indiana Department of Transportation) figured so little traffic would be heading into Illinois at this isolated location that it would let maintenance go. Or maybe it was a ploy to keep tourists in the state or discourage any Hoosiers thinking about moving west.

Anyway, it was cracked and washboarded and had us fretting about flat tires for miles. At Enos, Route 14 gave way to a Newton County, Indiana road that wasn’t much better. We rode through Willow Slough, a swampy, woodsy preserve, on the way out of the state. There were no signs, little traffic and no markers greeted us when we crossed over into Illinois (and the Central Time Zone) at about 1:30 p.m. Only a Kankakee County road sign let us know we had left Indiana.

We were without an Illinois map and our bike-mounted GPS was a little sketchy about where we might ease our by-then gnawing hunger. We flagged down a truck driver.

“Try St. Anne,” he said. “One, maybe two miles down the road.”

Five hot miles later, we pulled into town. But the ride was well worth it, thanks to Joey’s Café, a delightful burger joint on Route 1.

 “There are no strangers, just friends we haven’t met,” read a homily on the menu. Now we get a lot of such backwoods hokum on the road, but at Joey’s it was true. Our fellow diners were all interested in out trek and peppered us with questions, information and suggestions.

The guy at the table next to us shook our hands and wished us well after delivering dire information on Mississippi River flooding and on our planned crossing from Illinois into Missouri. But moments after he left, a little girl delivered us a note her mom had scrawled on a napkin.

It said the bridge at Quincy, Illinois, was open and that river levels were scheduled to drop over the next few days. Not only that, but she heard we were looking for a Kankakee-area bike shop to leave our wheels for a few days, and gave us directions to one in nearby Bradley.

Then, when we tried to pay for our delicious sandwiches, café owner Janice Hoffner wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s on me,” she said. “I think it’s great what you guys are doing.”

So if you ever get to St. Anne,  grab a bite at Joey’s – which Janice named for her son, who had died unexpectedly a decade ago – and say hi for us.