Wow

I went from
"Holy crap. This sucks."
To
"Holy crap. This is amazing."
In the space of about an hour, yesterday.

We had a nice stay at the Little Grassy Lake campsite in Shawnee National Forest, and were making our way back towards the Mississippi river and the ACA Great Rivers route after "going rogue" to meet Joe, our friend from way back in Wickenburg, AZ, for lunch on his way East on the TransAmerica route (the original ACA route?)
We got a decent start. We were woken up by some fishermen/campers arriving on Sam's Point at sunrise, exclaiming "Holy cow! Awesome!" (I think there was cursing, actually. But I can't remember their exact exclamations, unfortunately.) I can only imagine, as they slammed their motor vehicle doors, that they were excited to have such a cool place to camp, on a nice lake, (almost) all to themselves. Ah, car alarms and car doors slamming. Heidi knows how much I love the "Bleep Bleep!" when campers keep going back to their motor vehicle late at night/early in the mornin' - and lock/alarm it - EACH time. (Just a warning - if you camp with me and do that - you may find some of your wiring cut in the morning...just sayin'. Unfortunately I'm not very good with cars, so I may end up cutting a whole bunch of wires, "out of ignorance". Sorry.)

We get on the road, have nice weather, pretty nice road - and less hilly than it has been the last couple days. But then I heard a metallic "Ping!" from my bike on a short, but very steep uphill before town - and my immediate thought was "Uh oh. There goes one of my pawls." (One of the tiny ratcheting things inside the hub which allow the rear wheel to "freewheel" when coasting, and then spring out and engage when you start pedaling.) We stop and I look at my bike, check for broken rack bolts etc. But I don't see anything and the bike is "working", so we keep going.
We only get chased by one angry dog with his hackles up, that I can recall...into Murphysboro. We only get aggressively/dangerously passed by one or two motor vehicle operators on the downhill into town. We stop, look at our bad maps, try to recall Joe's "tax-avoidance-scheme phone" map/directions - and figure, yes, we will go the way of the Bike Route green sign, even though it is in "the wrong direction". (Everyone has played those "brain teaser" games where you have to "think outside the box" in order to solve the puzzle - well, bike touring in America without a[n ACA] map is kinda like that. "Use 'the force', Luke. Use 'the force'.")
We wiggle around the poor, descendant-of-American-slaves side of town and onto "Main Street" - and I say "Let's go to the 'Market' instead of the gas station for snacks and restrooms", figuring I would rather support them (this time. We have spent a lot of money at "gas stations", and none of it has been on gas; it has all been on the higher margin stuff. They should LOVE us!) The 'Market' won't let us use the restrooms. Damn! I really gotta GO! So after snacking we go back across the busy street, for the 2nd of what will be now 3 times, to the gas station for a can of Coke and a Clif bar - and their restrooms. I get some serious "fish eye" from the poor white trash dude driving the beat up garbage truck as he pulls out of the gas station. I can only imagine that he was admiring my shorts. I figure my stink, which surely was in powerful form, wasn't what was likely bothering him given what was behind his ass.
The checkout lady didn't seem to mind my shorts so much that she wasn't willing to give us route info, and say "Be safe!" She confirmed that my hazy memory and rough idea were, in fact, heading us in the right direction. I was glad Joe let me stare at his phone, as the recent retinal image was coming in handy.
The only problem, I thought at the time, was that I was now feeling nauseous (too much chocolate milk and a banana pounded, quickly, on top of a full bladder? Did I wait too long "to go"?) I biked very slowly, but any forward progress felt like the right thing to do, at the time.
We passed the big red SUV up on blocks in front of the "descendant of poor white trash red-neck" house with the Confederate flag flying proudly out front. I wanted to take pictures, but my dizzy head and sense of self-preservation - plus my lack of CCP permit - made me "just keep ridin'".
A train passed us at about the same time: definitely on "the wrong side of the tracks", hemmed in between the freight train and the Confederate flag wavin' Colt 45 fan (either the cheap beer, or the handgun. Or maybe both?)

A short while later, after leaving the sleepy hollow of poverty and accessing the smooth highway of prosperity on the outskirts of town, I was beginning to feel like I was weaving more than desirable. I told Heidi that I had to stop, and pulled over onto a deserted side street. She wisely told me to get my ass down the road a piece, to find a little shade. After peeing there, again, I noticed my rear brake was rubbing, slightly. So I adjusted the right/left tension to get the left brake pad off the rim, and we set off again. Heidi pretty quickly says "Your wheel is out of true", as she has a Birdsville-eye view of it, riding directly behind me (and my stink). I stop, briefly, right on the side of the small, smooth, rumble-stripped highway and feel some of my spokes, and sure enough, there is a "broken spoke" on the rear wheel, drive-side. So I open the brake up as far as I can with the barrel adjuster and go forward a hundred yards or so and pull off in the next driveway. I figure I'll true the wheel up a little bit and we'll keep goin'. We're in the middle of nowhere, in Southern Illinois; nowhere near anything like "a bike shop". I take the tent, sleeping bag, lock, and two rear panniers off the back of the bike, as well as "the top lid" off the handlebar and flip the bike upside down on the grass. I dig out the spoke wrench from the bottom of "the extra tool bag", the one full of stuff you hope you don't ever need. I start looking at the rim. How bad is it out of true? I find "the broken spoke" and figure I'll try to get the rim at least a little straighter...

Now this one wheel, of our four, is the Sesame Street "Which one of these things is not like the others" one. The other three are Shimano XT hubs, with Mavic A719 rims (I don't recall the spokes, sorry. Strong spokes; not light, triple butted race-weeny spokes. Probably straight gauge, 14? 15?). When I originally ordered the wheels, years ago, I wanted two exact wheelsets, so that I could just swap out wheels when bike commuting in the winter in the Upper Midwest; so that I wouldn't have to change tires, regular for studded, depending on that day's meteorological reality. And it worked out great. Want just a studded front wheel? Grab the matching one outta the basement, swap it out, done. No need to adjust brakes, take tires off/on, pump up tires etc. Easy. Awesome. When Heidi ordered her frame for this trip and we were puttin' the parts together I figured she would just use "the other" set of touring/commuting wheels. Solid, strong, comfortable.
But. This one rear wheel is NOT a Shimano XT hub. It is an Onyx DT Swiss hub. And? The spoke nipples are (likely) NOT the same size as either the other three OR my one spoke wrench. I would have cursed (more) about that realization if I had not noticed that it was, in fact, more than one spoke. It was more than the two loose spokes. It was the dang hub flange! WTH?! Boom. Hub flange cracked, metal missing, spokes dangling free in the space where aluminum used to live. Well, this changes things. It changes things a lot. That is not repairable. That is "replace the rear wheel" kinda bad.
It's Wednesday. We're equidistant between two small towns in Southern Illinois, neither of which likely has a bike shop. And, as it turns out, the "forward" town has no camping, no motel, "nothin'".

We look up, and where are we, stuck on the side of the road? A campground. We are in the driveway of a campground.
Heidi looks it up on "tax-avoidance-scheme" internet search engine and calls the number. I text Kevin and Laura and Terry. Heidi tells me the "new" phone number for the "campground" and I dial. Anna answers, luckily, and tells me that they don't take over-nighters, that they rent by the year. But she's on her way out from town to clean up the cabin she rented merely 2 hours ago to another fella, or we could have had it. Dang! So close!

Miraculously, our friends Terry, Kevin, and Laura work it out such that they are going to get me a replacement wheel from my mountainbike in our basement - in 2 days. What?! Crazy. Laura has been thinkin' about joinin' us fer a stretch of the ride, and she has worked it out to get a ride down here from Gary on Friday. She already has my wheel, with a different cassette on it, and will have it to me tomorrow. Wow. Crazy. Awesome.

And Anna?
She shows up, talks to us, takes a look at my hub, and shows us around. We can set up our tent beside the "rec room" building, use the shower, do a load of laundry, stay a couple days. She even drives us into town to buy groceries - and back - after she finishes changing the sheets and cleanin' up the cabin we wished we could have rented from her; that a return renter is using starting tonight. We use the kitchen, sit on the couch, and watch Colbert on the big screen. Crazy. Nice. Generous. Trusting. Awesome.

As I was takin' a shower yesterday, after settin' up the tent, I was thinkin' "Man, this situation went from 'Really bad' to 'Really good' in about the space of the last hour. How frickin' lucky. How frickin' lucky to have such nice people helpin' us out."

So thanks.
Y'all are amazing.