We spent much of the day biking back into downtown, towards a bike shop. I was sick of getting flats. Our old tires were worn out. We bought new tubes and much skinnier tires. While the place closed I changed all our tires. I wasn't real impressed with this shop. We caught a lot of attitude inside, and the only tires we could get were too skinny and not sturdy enough in my opinion. I was worried about them for a while but they did hold up for the rest of the trip. We also did our wash, and mailed stuff home while we were downtown.

We got out real late. It's hard to explain the feeling of riding out of town, not knowing where you are going to sleep. You ride, looking at every flat or hidden area evaluating it for tentability. After a false stop at some kind of health institution. We continued on to Bronson. At that false stop a woman was kind enough to give us here state highway map. We hadn't been able to find one yet.

In Bronson we did our routine again. As always we planned to stay in the town park. We met Jamie and Randy, some more kind people, who let us stay with them. Randy is a former cyclist who was really interested in our trip. It definately isn't a myth that mid-westerners are the friendliest people in the country.

We also talked to a custom hay bailer. For weeks we had seen hay and corn. Recently we started to see a small leafy dark green plant. We couldn't figure out what it was. Our friend told us what the mystery crop was - soy. He also explained the tradeoffs of the various hay bailing techniques. Square bails can have as much as 25% loss. Round bails around 15%. Custom bailed hay, surrounded with a mesh which directs rain around the hay, has only 5%. Of course all of these numbers are reduced when the hay is stored under a roof. That way the rain can't get in and rot it.