Sometimes, it is a small world

Sometimes the lead news stories are far away. Somtimes they are close at hand. And sometimes they are somewhere in between.

This week, two news stories struck me not because of personal involvement.  They weren't all that close to "home", if truth be told, but they did feel like it. One was local; the other international.

After a year of looking, authorities found the remains of Kelly Morris of Stem near / along Sam Moss Hayes Rd.  Stem and Sam Moss Hayes Rd are familiar to all "irregulars", or would be if you rode "irregularly" more frequently (or at all).  If you know anyone that lives or previously lived in Stem or Creedmoor, you have likely been at least slightly touched by this story in ways unrelated to cycling thru Stem or on Sam Moss Hayes Rd.

The second story that struck home to me is the one about possibly moving the prisoners in Guantanamo to Thompson, Illinois.  Thompson is a small, small town (not much bigger than Stem) on the Mississippi River north of . . . well, the Quad-Cities are the big nearby entity.  (Rock Island, Moline and East Moline in Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa are the large towns of the Quad-Cities -- and, yes, I know I listed five cities -- the world is full of quirks.)  Thompson is close enough to my home town (Prophetstown, Illinois) that last year I explored a cycling route from P-town across / up to the Mississippi / Thompson.  The route I found was FLAT with one exception all the way from P-town on the Rock River to Thompson on the Mississippi, and at Thompson turned due east to climb up stair-steps into the lower hills of northwest Illinois -- at the time I thought "this would make a great 'irregulars' route: flat for nearly 30 miles, then repeated climbing of the five steps -- and from each false summit one could look back and see the mightly Mississipp" (that is an intentional "misspelling").  I didn't get to ride the route, but the roads will still be there the next time I visit home for any length of time.  I hope.  I write "I hope" because the shiny, new, barely used State of Illinois prison is within sight (maybe closer) of the route I found.  That prison is being considered as the new detention center for terrorist types now in Guantanamo.  Would transferring those detainees to Thompson change the area?  Would al-Queida (sp?) and their friends make that prison a "target"? 

Sometimes the world is too small.