I Spy

Good morning (for anyone in the same time zone as us who is reading this right now, that is) from Greenville, Illinois.

Jody and I had a decent sleep last night, considering the tiny "room" the hotel staff gave us. Even though I forgot to move my seat forward before tucking in for the night, which meant I robbed myself of about 6 inches of extra space, cramped is cramped no matter how you add it up.


I'm a bit behind on the blog, and as you can well imagine, all the days and places are blending together, but, as they say, pictures can tell a thousand words, so whenever I write blogs, I first look at my pictures and then tell about what happened.

Yeah, so here we go with yesterday's events.

The first stop for us was Time Station 32, a "Signal" gas station in Camdenton, Missouri. As you can see in the picture, gas prices out here are much cheaper than they are back in California, probably because of the fuel taxes. Jody remembers that Missouri was the cheapest place to get gas along last year's RAAM route, and it seems like the "Show-Me" state might be the cheapest for gas this year, as well.

The majority of Time Stations are kind of like holes in the wall, in that there is no obvious indication that RAAM is coming, but this Time Station at least had the "Welcome RAAM" sign. What else was nice about the place was that the gas station attendant knew about RAAM and was nice enough to offer us ice for our cooler without us even asking for any.

Can you guess where we stopped next?

If you said, "Walmart," you're right, since it was time for breakfast.

This morning, Jody and I took pictures of two "foods" each. Hopefully, if you've been following the blog, you can tell which of the two we actually "ate."

Yes, the liquid diet is alive and well. I'm actually surprised how easy it is, to tell you the truth. I'm even thinking about continuing the experiment after RAAM ends, but I can't imagine being able to do a liquid diet in Japan (where I live), because there are so few great options like you have here in the States.

The diet has certainly made me think about all the junk I put into my mouth. I have quite a sweet tooth and probably eat far too many cookies and chocolate, for instance.

I've also learned, in a sense, to eat more with my eyes and nose than with my teeth. I think a lot of eating is directly tied to the sensations you get when you see, smell, and chew your food, so I try to imagine eating foods I'm used to eating without really doing so.

Like I said, though, I don't find myself craving a thing, because as soon as I get some calories via liquid, I generally feel satisfied. Strange but true. You should try the liquid diet sometime to see what I mean!

OK, enough about food. On to the bike race!

As you probably know, Trix Zgraggen is "comfortably" (as if riding your bike as fast as possible over 3000 miles can be comfortable!) in the lead of the solo women's field, and the solo men's race has come down to two riders, at least as of now: Reto Schoch (Switzerland) and defending champion Christoph Strasser (Austria).

When we first check the rider stats this morning, we saw that Reto was leading, but not by much.

At about 11:20 local time, we caught up to Strasser. For some reason (or maybe it's just my imagination), I always get the feeling that Strasser is in no mood to talk to us, unlike most of the other riders. I don't want to knock on the guy, though, because he's under no obligation to communicate with us if he doesn't want to. Nevertheless, my impression is that he's having more ups and downs than Reto, for instance. I could be completely wrong, though, because we only see the riders for a fraction of the time they are riding.

A mere 20 minutes up the road (by car) we caught up to Reto. Unlike Strasser, who seems to be all business, Reto looked calm, was smiling as usual, and talked to us very briefly: "It's hot again!"

Since we were only a couple of miles from Time Station 33, we decided to follow Reto and his crew for about 5 minutes so we could confirm his check-in time. Indeed, it was accurate to the minute, which was good to know.

Just for fun, I suggested to Jody that we go hide somewhere so we could also confirm Strasser's check-in time. We found a nice spot overlooking the gas station (Time Station) and camped out. About an hour later, we were then able to confirm that Strasser's crew also called in to headquarters with accurate times.

Good job, crews!