We’re currently camped at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky – very close to Cincinnati, and as I’m writing this it is storming like you can’t believe. The (new)tent is holding out well, the lightning is making almost permanent light outside, the wind is blowing bubbles to all sides of the tent and the rain is pouring down like there’s no tomorrow. We heard all our(unwashed) dishes being blown from the table outside but they’ll have to wait for the morning. I wonder if the bikes have been blown over yet…

Bison at Big Bone Lick

Big Bone Lick is close to Beaver Lick and the name hails from the number of prehistoric bones that were collected here from the days of the Indians and throughout the 17th century and to date. These Bison, Mastodon and Mammoth bones were preserved very well here because of the stability of the ground throughout the Ice Age. The animals died here in the first place after being trapped in swamps trying to get to the salty waters of the area. Which is where the lick part comes in. I think. Something like that, just my cup of tea. In the morning, weather permitting we’ll do a little hike to see the Bison before setting off to Cincinnati.

Happy days when Derek was still riding with us

Today, the 2nd of June, we’ve been on the road for a month, and we’ve cycled in excess of 1300 miles. Today is also the day we parted from Derek, who’d been riding with us for the whole past month: He’s heading straight to Halifax in the South Eastern corner of Canada. He’s then planning to cross Canada East to West during the coming months. It was really sad to see him go, and we’re already missing him even though it’s only been about 6 hours since he left us

The Frenchies are still riding with us and are joining us in Cincinnati too. We’ve been riding together with them for well over 10 days now, separating at a whim and meeting up again later. Today we re-met them in Glencoe after having left them behind in a beautiful town called Madison. We’ve been trying to keep the pace up and trying to cover 50-60 miles per day in order to get to Erie by the 15th of June, and we’ve been making good progress too. Another 450 or so miles to cover in about 10 days if we get going from Cincinnati on the 5th.

The past few days have seen us following beautiful quiet country roads though lush farmlands. The hills have been OK varying from today’s 2-mile long steep climbs where we crawl up at 3 MPH to the day before yesterday’s hundreds of steep short hills. They’re fun to ride, but oh-so-tiring.

Last Friday evening we arrived in Payneville, Kentucky. During the approach to town we sensed that we were getting into something stranger than what the town’s name implies. The only shop for about 30 miles was a Menonite establishment selling some of the most natural unbranded raw foods and we stocked up on a few nice items before heading into the Payne. The people at the shop were terribly nice, but you get a kind of strange feeling when you’re surrounded by many people who are so different than you are. A feeling we know well but don’t encounter too much here in the States.

Next stop was the Payneville Baptist church – our first choice for sneaky camping except on Saturday nights. It didn’t offer much of what we needed(hidden patch of grass, tap/faucet/spigot, electrical outlets, wi-fi, etc), but across the street was a Catholic village with a board out the front proclaiming Bingo: Fridays 7h30PM. Looked good to us. Derek knew the Bingo rules (why?), and Hanlie and Helene went to ask the preacher if we could camp somewhere on the baseball pitch or somewhere behind the building. His suggestion was for us to set up tent next to the dam behind his house and right across a tiny road from the graveyard. That would be the darkest spot when the night lights came on. I set off to see if there was some beer to be had and indeed, the town had a liquor store right next to two churches but no food store or any other shops whatsoever. This is not a very normal town, I figured, as we’ve been caught dry-mouthed in many silly dry counties along the way. The town had no bar, but you can drink your drink inside the liquor store if you like. In the USA it is apparently illegal to drink in public except for one street in New Orleans and the strip in Las Vegas. A little bit unlike England where people like to hang around outside with a pint of beer, or walk down the street drinking a can of lager.

I ended up talking to Johnny, who was very drunk, outside his house, trying to set up a TV aerial while his wife was lying on a bed (outside the house in the garden!, at the town’s main intersection across the street from this only shop in town) giving him instructions and telling him that he’s too drunk to fix it. I did not manage to get much information out of them, but later Helene came back from buying beer telling us that she’d seen a guy falling off a ladder and some other guys asking him if he was all right. Much later, after the Bingo game, when Derek and I went to buy more beer, the ambulance, fire truck and police were around to come and fetch a guy who broke “his back and both his legs” according to one of the locals. Alas, the following morning as we were riding out of town Johnny was standing in his front garden waving at us.

What we did on our tour of the USA

Meanwhile, we arrived at the Bingo game an hour late, unprepared, and most of us having no idea how on earth the game works. We were an hour late because apparently we crossed a time zone some time during the day and there were no signs next to the road or any other indication that this had happened. We were excused for being so very late and after scurrying around a while to figure out that we need to get blotters and which colour paper to use, we pretended to know what was going on. After a few rounds of playing the lady calling the numbers brought us a sheet containing examples of what we should be looking for – she probably gathered from our chattering that we had no clue what we were doing. This did not improve our game and 2 hours later the game was over without any of us even getting anything close to a Bingo. After everybody left we scored, though, as they gave us free chilli dogs and Dr Peppers. We probably looked like a gang of homeless trying our luck on our last $18.

…more pictures here

Wim