South Dakota Nights (July 5th - July 23rd)

I spent nine more nights in Nebraska before crossing into South Dakota, home of the Geographic Center of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). I spent six nights in Martin, SD, despite the fact that I rode over 27 miles during that time. You would think that this means that Martin is a happening town with a lot to do. You would be wrong, but I did enjoy the HorseShoe Bar.

Real life: The good news is that despite taking a couple of days off from riding (mostly due to illness), I've still continued to build my mileage surplus. There were a couple of highlights during this stretch that had very little to do with riding a bike. Last week my wife and I found out that we are having a boy, which is super exciting. Then last weekend we celebrated my wife's 32nd birthday, which was a lot of fun despite a thunderstorm attempting to thwart our plans. I also got to witness this great Chicago sunset with thunderstorms across Lake Michigan.

https://instagram.com/p/5Qk7DmghcI/

Total annual mileage: 2151.2 miles (119.4 miles ahead of target pace).

Home of Frank Leahy (June 27th - July 4th)

There's not a lot to write about in the middle of Nebraska. I've mostly been passing through towns with a few hundred residents (some less than one hundred), so please forgive me if I don't walk you through the details of each day. However, on July 1st, as I moved into the second half of the calendar, I spent the night in O'Neill, NE.

O'Neill has almost 4,000 residents, so it's a big city for this part of Nebraska. It's also the hometown of Frank Leahy, who was a famous football coach for Boston College and Notre Dame in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. He ended up spending most of his years at Notre Dame, which was also his alma mater. However, the two years at BC are of most interest to me. In 1940, he led Boston College to an 11-0 record, a Sugar Bowl victory, and a "National Championship". This is the only "National Championship" in BC football history. I use quotation marks because BC is one of four teams to claim that they won the National Championship that year. The others were Minnesota, Tennessee, and Stanford (BC ended up 5th in the AP Poll). After that season, Leahy left to coach Notre Dame. He had a contract with BC and they didn't make it easy for him to get put of it, but eventually he did. He went on to coach Notre Dame for 11 seasons, leading them to four less disputed National Championships.

After a 20.2 mile ride on our nation's birthday, I spent the night in Newport, NE. For a town on 97 people, the fireworks display was pretty impressive. I think every resident was lighting some off on their property.

Newport, NE

Real life: Now that I've built up a bit of a surplus of miles, I've started to become a bit more lax on some days. I've taken a day off from riding here and there, or only rode a few miles on some others. However, I've made up the miles on some days with longer rides. I also just won a GoPro in a contest at work, so readers can expect some GoPro videos on here in the near future. One highlight of the last week was 4th of July fireworks on a rooftop in Chicago while watching my buddy's band, Sheep Numbers playing live. Total annual mileage: 1933.2 miles (90.6 miles ahead of target pace)