At 4:59am, I (James) woke up. I quickly shut of my 5:00am alarm to wait for my 5:15am alarm instead. After hitting snooze, we both got going around 5:20am. We were out of the tents just before 6:00am, and thankfully the diner we were planning on going to was closed on Mondays! We instead just walked around 15 miles before stopping in the town of St. James. Both of our feet were hurting from the new sneakers and we were excited for a rest. I loaded up on food from Casey’s (a gas station shop) before finding a lovely spot under a tree where Sam met me. The cops stopped by briefly, but thankfully they just wanted to make sure we were okay. After that I also whipped out my sleeping bag for maximum comfort. About an hour later, two security guards showed up and told us we had to leave. Apparently we were on the lawn of a Veteran’s Home, although there were no signs anywhere indicating this. One of them said “Why don’t you wake up your friend.” So I woke up Sam and told him we were being asked to leave, and he had a concern look on her face before seeing the two men standing over him. They stood their creepily watching us as we packed up our stuff and left. On the bright side, we were back on the road and headed for an early finish to the day. We got back on Old Route 66 with no shoulder, and were excited to turn off for the last 3 mile stretch. However, the new road was even worse, with both no shoulder and tons of hills. We made it to a Starbucks around 4:45 and lounged around there for 2 and a half hours. We then headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, where we enjoyed 30 wings and watched some preseason football. Sam also organized a chess match for me against his friend who is rated over 2000 on Chess.com (I am around 1550). I played with white and he employed the Sicilian defense. I played about as well as I could, and after 57 moves the game was a theoretical draw. However, I blundered on the next move by offering a rook trade and allowing his outside passed pawn to promote to a queen. After Bdubs, we headed to Schuman Park and pitched our tents for the evening.
8/22/22
Commentaires