Past the Halfway Point (June 16th - June 26th)

The ride through Nebraska continues, and on June 24th I passed the halfway point of my ride and ended up in the city of Norfolk, NE. Norfolk is a decent-sized city for Nebraska, so it was a nice place to celebrate. Based on the name alone, I had to have dinner at the Black Cow Fat Pig Pub and Steak. Here's what halfway looks like:

Norfolk, NE - the middle

I got some good riding in over those next couple of days and ended up in Neligh, NE on the 26th. Neligh is not a big town, but it does have some interesting history. In particular, there is the story of the grave of White Buffalo Girl. You can check that out in this video:

Real Life: This stretch of real life riding included Bike to Work Week (or more formally the Bike Commuter Challenge). It is a week-long challenge that is organized by Active Transportation Alliance, which encourages people to ride their bikes to work. Every year it helps more and more people discover that cycling is a great way to get around. During this challenge in 2012, I got on a bike for the very first time in Chicago. Total annual mileage: 1857.1 miles (94.2 miles ahead of target pace)

Into That Great Void (June 8th - June 15th)

After spending 6 more days in Iowa (26 days total), I crossed the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge into Nebraska, where I was welcomed by the fine city of Omaha. The city was mostly of interest to me because of its music scene. After all, Omaha is the birthplace of Elliott Smith and Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes). While Elliott Smith moved elsewhere before becoming a musician, Conor and Bright Eyes got their start in Omaha. In order to take in the current music scene a bit, I caught a local band at The Waiting Room, and then went to the Crescent Moon Ale House and tried a DL's Cafe Leche Stout from local Upstream Brewing.

My interesting fact of the day for Omaha is that it is nicknamed the "Gateway to the West", which makes it one of at least six US cities that use that nickname. What are the other five? I'm saving that for a trivia question one day. After Omaha, it was on to Bennington, which was originally called Bunz Town. I have no idea why they changed such a great name. I'm now shacking up for the night in Valley, NE, which does not have any cool former names.

Nebraska (according to Bruce Springsteen)

Real life: As of now, I'm at 12 straight days of riding at least 10 miles, including a 36.6 mile day, during which I rode from the north side of Chicago to the south end of the Lake Shore Path and back. As I rode home from work this evening, Chicago's tornado sirens started blaring. For those who are unfamiliar with what that sounds like, you can get a feel for it here. I got home safely, if completely soaked.

My view from Lake Shore Path at 39th street

Total annual mileage: 1734 miles (80.6 miles ahead of target pace).

Picking up the Pace (April 26th - June 7th)

It's been 43 days since my last update, and thankfully I've spent a lot of that time on a bike despite the lack of blogging. In the last 43 days I've traveled 485.6 miles with stops in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Since I was able to average 11.3 miles per day during that time, I've been able to erase my mileage deficit and actually build up a bit of a surplus. I am now in Guthrie Center, IA and 31.1 miles ahead of my target pace. Here is a very non-scientific map of my ride so far:

From Montauk to Guthrie Center in 158 days

As you can see, I've now crossed the Mississippi and am almost halfway across the country. The obvious highlight of the most recent stretch was my stop in my home city of Chicago, IL for two nights at the end of April. There I was able to spend some time with my beautiful, pregnant wife. Having a baby could throw a bit of a wrench into the last month or so of my ride, so it's all the more important to build up a surplus this summer.

While in Chicago, Mo and I made the most of it. We grabbed brunch at Uncommon Ground, a perfect pint from Jimmy at O'Shaughnessy's, played 9 holes of golf at the Sydney Marovitz city course on Lake Michigan, and had a picnic in Winnemac Park. Two days is certainly not enough time to spend in the beautiful city of Chicago, but it was a treat nonetheless.

Just before reaching Chicago, I also played some golf at Lost Marsh in Hammond, IN. It's a course that I've played many times and am very familiar with, so I'm glad that my route took me past it.

So far I've spent 20 days in the fine state of Iowa. Iowa is probably best known as the home of The Bachelor's Chris Soules. While I was in Iowa, I was shocked and saddened to find out that Chris and Whitney had broken up after an abbreviated engagement. Hopefully Kaitlyn will have better luck finding true love on this season's Bachelorette!

I'm going to do my best to post a little bit more frequently moving forward. I certainly won't make any promises, but my goal is to get into more of a rhythm of posting about once a week. That way I'll be able to dive into a little bit more detail on the places that I pass through on my route.

Real life: The highlight with regard to cycling for the last 43 days has actually been this past weekend. Yesterday was the opening of The 606. I encourage you to follow the link and read more, but The 606 is a new walking/hiking/biking trail that runs for 2.7 miles over what used to be an abandoned railroad route. It still needs to grow in a bit and develop some more character, but it's still exciting to have a new route in the city. It was a madhouse this weekend, so it was a little difficult to navigate, but I did ride about eight or so miles on it over the last couple of days. I look forward to seeing it develop over the coming years. Here's a montage of photos from yesterday (please click the link on the right side of this page or below if you want to follow me on Instagram):

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Total Annual Mileage: 1604.8 miles (31.1 miles ahead of target pace)