Beauitful Michigan sunrise (there's Emily)



It's been a great couple days through Michigan, Indiana and Illinois and now, Wisconsin! After our one night in Michigan in the small town of Camden, we biked into Indiana through a beautiful morning sky. We hit our first true country roads today too, meaning we could ride in a more relaxed manner on straight roads with few cars. My riding group of the morning played word games until we made it to lunch...pretty solid. For some reason, though, we hit quite a spell of road closures and detours in the midwest, forcing us to re-route while already on the road. Coming from Camden, MI we were had to get a little creative by climbing over some road construction as you can see below. But what's the fun when everything goes to plan?

6/11: If you can't go over it, you can't go under it, you gotta go through it!


Coming into South Bend, Indiana we hit our first thunderstorm of the trip! We were riding straight into the darkened skies, with no rain at first, but all of a sudden the wind picked up (almost to the point where I was blown off my bike) and the rain dropped on us. Brad, Emily, Julia and I immediately clicked out of our peddles and took shelter on a nice person's porch until the storm wore over. Surprisingly, it was our first rain since the east, and refreshing because I love thunderstorms! We had to stop twice more on our route that day because we spotted lightening again, but by the time we arrived in South Bend and were riding through the campus of Notre Dame, the weather was beautiful again.

Our build in South Bend was one of our best so far. While one grouped roofed, another worked on installing windows, and another finished the framing inside to prepare for drywall. All in all it was a productive day. 



South Bend build site

We found a kitten on the build site, who Kyle
decided fit nicely in his tool belt

The best view of the skyline in the city!

We've also crossed our first time zone!! On Wednesday morning we woke up early enough so that we were on the road to Chicago as soon as the sun rose. That meant I was putting sun screen on in the pitch dark morning, which I found hilarious. Julia and I decided our legs felt pretty good after a build day's rest and were eager to get to Chicago, so we tested our speed and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves riding incredibly faster than we did on flats back in NH. Some teammates claim we must have quite literally "had the wind at our backs" today because we were all flying to Chicago. Once we passed through the south city we spotted views of the skyline along the bike path we were traveling on, except it was hilarious because the first time we saw the view we stopped to take pictures, but as you can imagine, we kept getting better views as we traveled closer to the city! So I have a series of Chicago skylines on my camera by size haha.
    

Chicago is an absolutely amazing city right on the coast of Lake Michigan. We saw it on a perfect day where everything from the sky to the water to the skyscrapers were a beautiful blue. Our group had people tour the Sears tower, the Art Institute, the zoo, and Navy Pier so it was a great stay! Unfortunately though 2 teammates of mine got their bikes stolen in the city even though they were locked. It's a bummer to leave to the city on that note and a terrible loss for them. They're handling it as well as anyone could in that situation though and are going to buy new bikes once we reach Madison.



Bishnu, Paul, Julia, Emily, me, and Kyle



Mirror bean in Millenium Park

Now we're in Wisconsin and headed to Madison tomorrow. We've heard a heat wave is coming so luckily our milage is shorter and we'll be able to watch the women's world cup final in the city. GO USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!