Days 25-30 - Actually-not-so-boring Kansas

In Pittsburgh, the first town after crossing the state border in Kansas, we check into a 70$ motel (been staying in 40$ ones so far, so this is a big upgrade) because we were too tired and wet to look for other alternatives.

Dane, the cyclist from Iowa I'm riding with for the past three days, is more budget conscious than me. The man plans to spend 90 days on his bike with a budget of around 3000$. For him it's motels once a week and camping the rest of the time..

His Adventure Cycling Association map of the TransAm route helps him find free places to sleep, like city parks, churches who take you in for the night, even a store who's owner is kind enough to let you camp in his yard. I knew about this map, but did not know it's so detailed. I thought having GPS is better than any map. Wrong. US roads have plenty of signs and are usually straight north-south and east-west, so a map is enough to navigate with.

Dry and with shelter secured, we go for a walk to a Walgreens (one of the big supermarket chains in US) to get food. Since we are two, we can buy better food from here, because we can actually eat it all. Alone I could not buy good food, because in supermarkets most of the packaging is super sized, and I don't have room to carry what I cannot eat. That's why I ate from gas stations and fast food and occasionally a good restaurant, most of the time so far.

We were walking on the side of the road, when we hear a woman's voice from a car yelling at us: "Get on the fucking sidewalk, bitch!". There are no sidewalks where we are, so we were stunned. It was a surprise even for Dane. We're pretty pissed about it, but we get a large rotisserie chicken to eat back in the motel room, plus beer, and get over it :)

After a not very restful sleep (Dane's snoring - ear buds 1:0  :) ) we start early on a nice day, this time with the wind in our backs. There are 700 km of Kansas roads waiting for us out there. I get a puncture early on. Dane is eager to make good progress, and maybe wants some alone time, so after making sure I got everything I need to fix it he goes ahead, and I would not catch him again by the end of the day. 

The only cyclists I meet today are two ladies on road bikes. At first I thought they are locals, having no luggage, but after a nice chat I learn their husbands are in a van, and they take turns cycling, coming all the way from Nevada. They fight a horrendous wind, I sympathize, but cyclists coming from west to east get tail wind more often, so I'm not actually that sorry for them. Besides, it's the same wind that pushes me with a long forgotten average speed of 32 kph, sweet!

In the second part of the day there's a welcome change in the dull scenery of fields and endless straight road. Toronto State Park.

I'm tempted to take a swim, but I still have 60-70 km to go to Eureka, the destination town that me and Dane picked for today, and want to make it on daylight.

With 30 km to go I stop at one of few lonely small family owned restaurants found along the way to eat a microwave heated pizza and ice cream. To my surprise I see humming birds outside, and I try for fifteen minutes to photograph them as they get scared and take off at my slightest move, to the amusement of the few elderly clients.

Hummingbirds

I muster the remaining energy and despite the butt pain which started bothering me more and more, I get to Eureka after some unexpected long but low-grade climbs, convincing myself more and more that Kansas is not that flat after all.

Dane is already accommodated with the city park where we will sleep, and shows me around, there's a nice picnic area with showers (only cold water, but better than nothing). It's still a chilly night but better than what we had in Missouri, and the next days look more promising weather wise. We will sleep on the picnic benches again, but I wait for the few remaining families to leave the playground next to us, before taking out the sleeping bag. Not yet fully comfortable with this idea of sleeping in parks in plain sight, although people ignore us and seem used to this kind of cyclist behavior. Dane even got something to eat from a family having a picnic. :)

Ready to camp

Next day after breakfast with muffins and coffee in a gas station, Dane tells me he will have to stop for the day in Newton, 100 km away. We get there by noon, where his map tells him he can camp on the firefighters yard, where he is actually very welcome. I would do the same and call it a day, but the weather is so nice, and we know that storms are announced in a few days, so I want to make the best of it. We separate after 3 days of riding together, and I really hope he will catch me the next days as he doesn't mind pushing the pedals fast. Once he will get to Colorado he plans to rest and hike for 2 weeks in Yellowstone Park.

On the Trans Am route there are no other motels or hotels for too close after Newton, so I take a different route for 50 km to a town I would have otherwise gone round, Hutchinson, where I make a motel booking. To get there I have to use a very busy highway with a nasty shoulder full of debris and worry I might get another puncture, which of course happens in both tires.

After 8 flats in the 3300 km so far I was so sick of it. They both deflate slowly, so instead of wasting time fixing them, I decided to use the pump for the remaining 20 km which I do for one of them every 5 km.

I enter the town through an industrial area, where everything is so quiet, it's a bit apocalyptic (Sunday evening). I pass a prison, from which I hear someone yelling, brrr, then in a few hundred meters I arrive at the motel where I had the booking, with one tire completely deflated.

I'm close to cancelling my reservation and push the bike to a different place, thinking all the criminals visiting other criminals stay here. It's Indian owned like 90% of the cheap motels I've used so far, and notice its also full of Indian residents. C'mon, it must be a safe place, my mind cannot associate Indian people with crime :)      

There's no food store for a couple of miles around, so I stick to eating the few cold remaining pizza slices carried over from Newton, and my eyes close after another Family Guy episode.

Following morning, after fixing the flats and a visit to a bike store to buy a new tire and self-sealing flat resistant tubes (finally, at Gabriel 's advice), I'm on my way towards a lone stretch of 90 km between two small towns, with almost no human presence in between. Dane warned me about this stretch, to take enough water, so I think 3L of gatorade would suffice. I cannot comfortably carry more than that (I would later find a way when going through the desert).

The stretch starts with a strong south wind, very usual in Kansas (which may come from an Indian name that means "people of the south wind"), but I can advance at a decent 26kph. Later the wind changes to a NE direction, and I have to slow to around 13 kph. It's very hot, 37 Celsius, so I'm dehydrating pretty quickly. After 3 hours only covered about 50 km, drank 2L of Gatored and I'm so thirsty, but don't want to touch the last remaining liter. There's no shade so I avoid stopping and try to keep my mind occupied.

The scenery around is the most beautiful I've seen so far in Kansas. I'm going through Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. Looks like a savanna, small grass, bushes here and there, and a lake looming like a mirage in the distance. A car now and then, buy I'm not so desperate to stop one for water yet.

After passing through the reservation, at crossroads there's finally a farm. I look for somebody, but no one home. At this point my mouth is completely dry, but I do not touch that last remaining liter yet. I decide to try to find a water source in the yard, even if that means trespassing, this feels like an emergency. But no success, everything is dry here.

At this point I'm not happy about the prospect of trying to cover the last 40 km in this heat with only one liter of Gatorade and crazy front wind. So I take a road north 20 km to a small town, Ellinwood. Having the wind in my back now, I get there pretty quickly and satisfy my thirst abundantly at a gas station.

While I sit there enjoing the most pleasant sensation of quenched thirst, two dudes approach me curios to where I am going. They are storm chasers, that wander around the Tornado Alley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Alley), and get nice pictures of, well, tornadoes. I know that the weather is about to change in the direction I'm going, and they warn me of the possibility of a serious storm the day after tomorrow.

After waiting for the wind to die down a little, I continue late into the night to take advantage of the cooler temperatures, pausing a bit on the side of the empty road to watch a beautiful sunset and enjoy the silence.

At around midnight I reach the town of Lacrosse. Not a soul on the streets at this hour. A car full of noisy teenagers (drunk I suspect) passes me. At the city park, where I plan to camp, in the dark I find parked a Jeep with all lights on. It's the sheriff, and I check with him that is ok to camp there. A nice guy this sheriff, we have a little discussion about Romania and the Ukraine crisis. He soon leaves and I sleep better than in most camping nights so far. I think I start getting used to it.

Next two days and 300 km are pretty much uneventful. The same endless roads and fields, and more and more of the giant rotating irrigation devices which produce the alien-looking field circles visible from satellite.

Giant irrigation device that rotates around its far-most point

Circular fields produced by the irrigation device

A change of time zone, two bikers, one of which a lone brave girl from NY, Christine, and a German guy. Christine can even spare her last section of the ACA map, the entry into Colorado, and offers it to me.

Christine from NY

Then the big storm which the storm chasers warned me about (one of them, which I manage to squeeze past and make it into Colorado before its cloud curtain closed behind me. I'm thinking about Dane and hoping he manages to slip through before it gets worse, last time we talked he was still 50 miles behind me.

Kansas was interesting with its great silent fields and impressive agricultural machines, but I'm really glad for a change and excited to get to what I feel will be the most spectacular part of the trip. Colorado.