After rain comes sunshine, but not in the morning :( The morning was cloudy all over with scattered thunderstorms, which I luckily managed to circumvent, so I got only a few drops of rain. Morning riding was through a more hilly terrain and soon the route turned from the larger roads to the country roads.
The country roads meant almost no cars and really riding through the middle of nowhere. There were remarkably much grasshoppers / locusts on the road, which occasionally scared me by jumping onto my legs and sometimes hitchhiked on my bike for a bit. I also encountered a turtle which I helped to cross the road (as cross country cyclists are supposed to do). Initially the turtle tried to sprint away, but being a turtle it couldn't, so eventually it let me pick him up and put him next to the road.
The only service I encountered today was a small gas station next to Cassoday after which there was a 40 miles straight, whith nothing more than a few farms here and there, really awesome... just me and my thoughts! The landscape had turned flat again and there are remarkably many fields here with small oil pumps (Dutch: ja-knikkers).
In Newton I am staying in a bike shop / hostel. When I arrived James, the shop owner, welcomed me. Heather, his wife, was already bringing a couple, Hap and Diane who are also heading west, to their home to shower, so I had to wait for her to return. The hostel itself is awesome and has everything a cyclist needs! Before Heather arrived another couple, Andrew and Caitlyn arrived, heading east. When Heather was back she drove the three of us to their house, let us shower and did our laundry. Seriously, these people are awesome doing all this and are simply ridiculously hospitable! When we got back to the hostel I joined Andrew and Caitlyn for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Back at the hostel we had a talk with James who had all kinds of stories about the Transam racers, who all stopped at their store. Shortly after I turned in a nice bunk bed in the hostel :)
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