Win complained as I followed him up another hill. “I don’t know,” I said, standing on my pedals for extra leverage, rocking the bike side to side, panniers drifting just a few inches from the pavement. “Do you think we made a wrong turn? Ended up in Arkansas or something?” I felt strong. We’d made good time through Indiana, and each day I ached a little less when we started our morning ride. We were moving so fast we decided to veer toward Iowa to follow the Mississippi up a ways before heading due west again. And last night we’d gotten an unexpectedly good night’s sleep after scamping just outside Freeport—self-proclaimed pretzel capital of the world and home to about nine thousand Abraham Lincoln statues. My quads now strained slightly at the elastic of my bike shorts—the beginnings of the first real muscle I’d ever had on my legs. Two weeks and a thousand miles on a Trek will do that. Sadly, the arms were not keeping up. To compensate, we had nightly push-up contests, or pull-up challenges if we scamped close enough to a playground with monkey bars.
