On our way to the park, we passed through the small town of Fordsville. As we rode through, someone called out to Alex, it was another biker. This was the first biker I had seen since the Ozarks of Missouri and the second since the guy riding the tandem bike in eastern Kansas. His name was Greg, he was from Mountain View, California (just south of San Francisco), he was a former dot-com programmer, and he was heading east. Actually, he was heading east, then south, then west. Greg started riding from his house in Mountain View, headed up the coast to Seattle, across Washington and Montana, into Canada for a few days, over to Minnesota, down the Mississippi to St. Louis to visit his parents, across Illinois to the TransAmerica Trail where we met him. Then he was going to finish the trail in Virginia, then ride to Florida where he was going to head back west to ride to San Diego, then ride up the coast, back to his house in Mountain View. He said it would be about 11,000 miles in total and take about 6 months. Wow! So he joined our entourage and we rode to the park for the night.

After setting up camp, Alex and I went to eat dinner at the lodge. Greg had a big lunch (we met him just as he was getting back onto the road after eating), so he decided to eat a PowerBar dinner instead. He missed out. The lodge served a huge buffet. I had mashed potatoes, turkey, roast beef, chicken, corn, carrots, salad, chocolate chip cake, and coconut creame pie. There were two guys that walked around the restaraunt strutting their Fat-Albert-like guts, thinking they could put a hurt on the all-you-can-eat buffet, but they had nothing. Alex and I probably out at them by at least two plates. It was an impressive display of gluttony. On the way back to camp, we stopped to play two rounds of miniature golf. I would have beat him, but he kept hitting a hole in one at the most inopportune times. Oh well, I guess it's still good to have him along.

The next morning, Greg woke up to get an early start, as he was hoping to ride about 100 miles. Alex and I wanted to stop at Lincon's birthplace, so our day was going to be much shorter. We wished Greg good luck and said goodbye as he began pedalling and Alex and I waited for the breakfast buffet to start being served. While we were breaking down camp, the park ranger drove up in a golf cart "should be a great day for biking."

"It's not going to get to hot today?" Alex asked.

"No, it'll be nice and sunny, low humidity, and pretty cool."

"Excellent, that's what I like to hear." I added.

"They do say there's a chance of some severe weather this afternoon, but I guess it's pretty much like that every day."

So with that warning, we continued breaking down camp, packed our bikes, went to the lodge to gorge ourselves on breakfast, then hit the road again. When we started out, the weather was perfect. There was a slight haze, but the sky was clear, the temperature cool and the wind nonexistent. Unfortunately, that only lasted a few miles. By the time we got to McDaniels, the sun had dissapeared behind some ominous, black clouds and the wind started blowing from behind us. While the tailwind was nice, I've learned one thing while I've been on my trip. Wind blows away from the center of a storm. If you're in front of the storm, you'll get a tailwind, if you're behind the storm, you'll get a headwind. The closer you get to the storm clouds, the stronger the wind. If you're riding with the tailwind, then sure enough you're going to ride right into the storm.

As Alex and I rode towards the storm, thunder and lightening began in the distance. A little ways further, we reached the town of Hudson. Hudson is a tiny little town that sits on a hill and over looks a large rolling valley. In the distance, you could see the dark and threatening storm clouds, the sheets of rain coming down, and the occasional bolts of lightening. Since the road we were following went right into the center of the storm, we decided to wait it out at the little building at the edge of town that was apparently the gas station, the post office, the coffee shop, the grocery store, the sandwich store, the hardware store, and the bait store. Inside the store, up front by the counter, were six patio chairs spread out in a semi-circle. When we first walked in, every chair was filled with old men sitting around talking about fishing, farming, and the impending storm.

I asked the lady behind the counter if she had a restroom, so she told me to come behind the counter. Behind the counter was a door that apparently led to her appartment. She opened the door, told me to go down the hallway, take a left and the bathroom was the first room on the right. As I walked down to the point where I could take a left, I passed the living room, where the woman's husband was sitting in his lazy chair watching television. I looked at him, he smiled, I waved, and continued on to his bathroom.

When I came out of the bathroom, all of the old men that were sitting on the patio chairs in the store had left. So Alex and I, wanting to wait out the storm, sat down in two of the chairs to drink our Gatorade and eat our snacks. Soon after, a new batch of old men came into the store to sit on the patio chairs. Alex and I were painfully out of place. The old men never said a word to us, I don't think. They just sat around and talked about fishing, farming, and the impending storm. At least I think that's what they were talking about. One guy kept pulling a fishing lure out of his shirt pocket and showed it to the rest of the old men and they just laughed and made comments. To be honest, they could have been trying to ask Alex and I about our bikes and how we ended up in this little "Walmart" to wait out the storm, but neither one of us could understand a single word that these old guys were saying. I'm not even sure if they understood each other, since they seemed to be all talking at once, no one really answering each other, and they all were only laughing at their own jokes. Being a little too bizare, Alex and I decided to leave the store and sit on the hill in the backyard to watch the storm pass in the distance.

Once the storm seemed to have moved sufficiently off in the distance, Alex and I began riding again. We stopped again further on down the road in Sonora. This time we didn't go into the general store, we just hung out on the side of the street and stood around on the sidewalk. Soon after we stopped, a group of school kids walked by and turned to cut through the woods, apparently on their way home. One boy, a teenager, left the group to come over to talk to us.

"How far did you come from?" he asked.

"I started in Southern Illinois, my friend began in Oregon," Alex replied.

"Did you run into a guy named Todd who told you to stop at the store to say that he sent you?"

"No, when did he come through?" I asked.

"Darn! He came by a few months ago, probably June. He said he was going to Oregon. I was in the store when he came through here and we made a deal that he'd tell other bikers to come into the store. If someone came in and said he sent them, then I'd get a free drink."

"Sorry, must have missed him somehow."

"That's alright,at least it gives me something to look forward to, even if I didn't get my free drink. About the only thing that goes on in this town is when a group of bikers come through. Other than that, there isn't too much excitement in good ol' Sonora."

"What about you, do you bike?" I asked.

"No, too scary. I'm afraid I'd get hurt or something. No, I skateboard instead." He then pointed off to the field behind us to a pile of wood boards and sheets of plywood, that surrounded two 4 foot ramps. "I built those ramps to skate on."

"You're afraid to bike, but doing tricks on those ramps isn't scarry at all?" I asked, sort of dumbfounded.

"Well, it kind of hurts when you fall, but it doesn't hurt as much as getting hit by a truck."