The ride to Chicago was as eventful as anticipated. We started out of Edwardsburg, MI and went south along Lake Michigan. In the first half of the ride we rode through Michiana Shores, which was a beautiful resort town on the lake with some really impressive homes. After Michiana Shores, we rode through Gary, IN. The comparison of Michiana Shores and Gary was an excellent example of the juxtaposition of wealth in America and a good reminder of why we are riding. We were riding by million dollar homes and then 20 miles later we were riding through the heart of poverty in the midwest. Unfortunately, those kinds of neighborhoods and contradictions happen everywhere without an acknowledgment that the other exists.
After Gary, the ride got very interesting for me. First, a girl I was riding with had a tire explode on her; I definitely thought she got shot. My response was, "Oh my god, Abby got shot; I'm glad it wasn't me." How inappropriate and how me. She did not get shot, but we had to sit on the curb and wait for an hour for the van to get there and give us a new tire. After the tire was fixed, I had my first experience with chafing. It was a chafing like I have never experienced before and I was very near tears the last 20 miles of the ride. Once we got into Chicago, I tried to walk down the street to a Michael Jackson cover concert but only made it halfway before I had to quit to go to a CVS and buy Desitin. I also asked for a pair of shorts and created quite the scene in CVS... I will have to tell the story in person and act it for you to get the full impact of my entry into Chicago.
We went out in Chicago that night and had a really good time. The next morning we got up and rode around downtown Chicago and went to Millennium Park, Michigan Ave, and Evanston. I rode with Kelsey, Lauren, and Angel that day and we had a really good time taking it slow and stopping at all the sights. Kelsey was a wonderful tour guide of Northwestern. We arrived in Gray's Lake and had a relaxing night in preparation for the ride into Janesville!
The ride to Janesville started out disastrously; we all got horribly lost in the first 3 miles and then ended up following Ashley's I-phone the rest of the way. Once we were finally on our way, we had some interesting roads in Illinois, but then we finally hit "the promised land" of Wisconsin. We rode through Lake Geneva and everyone had a good first impression of Wisconsin. The weather that day was questionable from the get-go and I was nervous for all of the activities (boating and grilling out) planned in Janesville. As fate would have it though, the second we got the boats out on the river, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful evening. My parents and another wonderful man took us out on boats and let us go tubing and skiing. The owner of the other boat had never met us before and his letting us use his boat was another random act of kindness from a stranger along the way.
The second day in Janesville was another build day and we got to work with the Rock County Community Action. We were seperated into three groups: demolition, painting the Mercy shelter, and insulation work in Beloit. I was in the demolition group and we went to a house that had been foreclosed on off of Delavan Drive and spent the day demoing the house so that it can be refurbished. I think that all three groups learned a lot while they were working that day. The people working in Beloit got to talk to local workers and learn about the city of Beloit; the demo group worked with the Community Action coordinator and learned about Janesville; the painters learned about the homeless community in Rock County. As someone who is so connected to Janesville, it was very sad to hear all of the problems the area is facing and to know it is happening in cities across the nation.
Madtown!!
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