For Every Day I Workin' on the Illinois River

Before I left Atlanta, people would respond to the name "Peoria" in one of two ways:

1. "Wait, where did you say?"
2. "WHY?!?"

So, for those of you who don't know anything about Peoria, it is a small city of about 115,000 people located on the Illinois River in central Illinois.  About two and a half hours SW of Chicago and two hours NE of St. Louis, Peoria is a city that is comprised mostly of Caterpillar buildings that are named all different letters like alphabet soup.  The locals are just that: locals.  They have rarely ever ventured too far away, and if they have, it was probably to do Caterpillar's bidding.

For those of you who question my decision to come here and continue to ask me why, I ask you to check out some of the pictures I captured on my morning runs.

In Atlanta, I love inhaling smog (which I thought was bad until I took a meander around Beijing) during my runs throughout the city while dodging sketchy looking people that the news has warned me to keep an eye out for all while turning my iPod up to extra loud to drown out the sirens.  In Peoria, I just lace up my neon running shoes, take in my surroundings, and before I know it, six miles have come and gone.  On my new route this morning, I was surprised to find this view at the top of one of the rare hills you can find in Peoria:

Yep...that's downtown Peoria for you!  I've always been a firm believer in the iPhone camera capabilities, but it just couldn't quite capture everything this time. 

Now, back to me.  Why is this place potentially for me?  Well, after letting the beauty of this scene really sink in all I can think about is taking on that river.  I'm thinking that a kayak may play into one of my next few blogs.  If not a kayak then maybe a canoe.  If not a canoe, maybe I will pretend that the Illinois River is the English Channel and just swim across.