Arlington to tribune 24th -
So if I have one real annoyance with the trip so far I would choose sleeping! I have the choice to either sleep in my tent to avoid the bugs or sleep in the open to try and avoid the heat of my sauna - esque tent. And then there's the wind. The wind can be your best friend and also your worst enemy.
Now today it looked like it was going to be our best friend. We woke up (this time I was in my tent) and ate some porridge and headed out into the sunrise. Literally the sun was just poking above what looked like the African savannah. A 15 quick miles took us to our first stop where we grabbed a snack from a tiny town with a gas station. Up to 50 miles and we had arrived on Eads to have lunch.
We didn't stop for too long before we headed off into the massive crosswind to Tribune. As tough as that riding was we got it finished pretty quickly at 4 and finished up our 90 mile day. Having for a massive early dinner we went and found the town pool and met Erin and Rachael.
We got talking, explained what we were doing etc and our somehow got on to the fact we weren't eating enough fruit and veg . Needless to say the Kansas way is to be extremely generous and they loaded us up wit more vitamin c that we knew what to do with.
They then asked us to come for supper, an offer Sam and I couldn't refuse. Jamie had to stay and get so revision done but Sam and I gladly accepted.
We had a great evening with Rachel, Erin and Kyle and a huge thank you for feeding and entertaining us for the evening. It was great fun!
25th July: Tribune to Dighton
We went to dinner in tribune with some lovely people who we met at the pool in Tribune, Erin and Rachael. They cooked us some good food all local stuff and gave us some fruit that was needed as we were contracting scurvy.
Next morning we had a good westerly wind that we took good advantage of. Got 35 miles done fairly quickly before I decided to try and cycle holding onto the Frame of the bike, this caused me to loose balance severely I went left bumped into James then veered right sharply on to what looked like a soft verge that was just weeds with gravel underneath. Dow I went and the grass was a lot harder than I thorght it was. So got some large gashes in my knee. Quick water clean, bandage and tubigrip put on. We cycled the next 20 miles to hospital to clean it up as the cuts were deep and filled with gravel and dirt. A bit grim. Sorted out we had another 15 miles on to the next town for the night. In Deighton, we Had a swim, saw a parade though the townships was pretty cool having the locals driving classic cars, floats, farm machinery, emergency crews and dirt bikes doing wheelies all throwing sweets at all the children on the sides.
Kansas is the flattest place I have ever been, it is hard to imagine something like it. Just no elevation change at all. The road goes to the horizon and just like cycling on a humongous treadmill. The only interesting thing were the agricultural
Machinery trying to kill us or just in the fields. We cycled past one field for 12 miles. Just the scale of it is unbelievable. Then the heat, as we left Scott City where I was mended in hospital and it was 106F which is 43C. This was at about 3pm, in the sun it must have been about 115F. I have never been so hot and drank a gallon of water in about an hour on the way to Dighton.
Sam
26th July: Dighton to Great Bend
Breakfast pizza is the best thing to performance enhancing drugs have before cycling other than drugs.
After consuming two pieces I was able cycle even with the hole in my knee until lunch with no other food.
The hole I created in my knee had now closed itself up a very small amount and so I got the medical stuff and put some of the doctors potion on it and started cycling. It's pretty painful doing exercise with deep gashes in your knee but there was no choice as Kansas is the flattest place I have ever been and I just wanted to get it done ASAP!
We had a tail wind and It was less than 90F so made us happy. It's pretty bloody rare for it to get below 90 in the middle of summer.
James put in a big stint on the front as I was a true grupetto survivor feeling hanging on with every lady sinew in my body. Charlie was feeling bad as well.
Sam
27th July: great bend to hilsboro note.: THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!
We left The Great Bend after a very evening in a motel and a free breakfast! One of the many bonuses of having to fork out 20 bucks each.
Our morning was very uneventful before we had a bite to eat for lunch. This was where the problems started. Leaving the diner, I began to feel iffy with a very upset stomach. As we left the town I was sitting on Jamie's back wheel feeling properly terrible, just trying to stay at Jamies pace to the next town. A couple of miles down the road I was feeling even worse and there was no way I was going to make it without being sick. What happened next however was completely unexpected, shit went south, and rapidly! So rapidly that it took me by surprise and within seconds I was running off the side of road throwing things left, right and centre out of panniers to find the loo roll before wham, it beat me. The diarrhea was out. This left two things running, myself with my trousers down, bog roll in hand heading behind the tree and then something else running down my leg!
Fifteen minutes later I emerged from behind the tree, changed my cycling shorts and gathered my stuff back together that I had strewn everywhere to find the loo roll. I got back on my bike very apprehensiosly setting off to catch up with Jamie and Sam laughing to myself about what had happened.
When I caught up, and explained to the boys where I had been and what had happened, there was not an ounce of sympathy, they just laughed hysterically at me and preceded to rip me about it for the next 40 miles to our destination!
Even in seven months in the Subcontinent, I didn't have an incident like the one I had yesterday, the speed in which things went bad was stunning and extremely alarming!
Needless to say the rest of the day was plain sailing and we arrived at our warm showers host around 19:30. Del and his family were fantastic hosts and we had a great evening with them before planning our route on the quieter roads and heading to bed at midnight (a really late one for us) after a great evening.
A huge thank you to Del and his family for looking after and feeding us so well!
Charles
28th July: Hillsboro to emporia
So the night before in Hillsboro we were hosted brilliantly but did stay up rather late. This led to a belated wake up and a slow start in the morning.
Del sorted us out with coffee and juice and then we went to the local bakery with him. I can't remember what they were called but we had this amazing German pasty bun thing which gave us a bit of a kick to start off with.
Obviously 10 miles down the road as we were sitting at our 2nd breakfast charles realised he had forgotten his water bottles and Del kindly drove them up to us. So in we went, cycling through some really lovely back roads and finally not on just boring flats. A lot of it was very reminiscent of parts of rural
England.
Towards the end of the day we had the run in to Emporia on a pretty main road with rumble strips that spanned the entire shoulder. We took the rumble strips over the lorries screaming past us!
We arrived to our warm showers hosts in the late afternoon and had a double bed each which is amazing considering the amount of camping and bed sharing we do! They took us to a great fast food joint called
Brahms and we feasted on ice cream to make ourselves feel better after a fairly scary few miles on the main highway.
A big thank you to Ben and his w
July 29: emporia to Paola: 86 miles
Before we got to Kansas, we had heard so many horror stories that we were really really nervous! People cycling 6 miles in 2 hours, having to hunker down in a motel for 3 days while storms rage, it's so boring that you will want to kill your self.
We have been pretty lucky with the weather, we had 1 really windy day but only stopped 15 miles short of our original aim so that wasn't that bad. We also had a couple of seriously hot days of 110 or more! However, recently the wind has dropped, it has cooled down nearly 30 degrees and the going been good. What's more, it's not as boring as everyone says, personally I have quite enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong it's been flat, but there's something I can't quite put my finger on that is enjoyable. Perhaps it's the fact that if you run out of water, food or energy ,it will only be 20 miles max to the next town.
Today we left our warm showers host with our route pencilled on to our map. We have turned off the bike route because we were sick of people asking us 'west or east?' And basically knowing what we are doing. So moving off the route, people began to be amazed again. A big shout out to Ben who so kindly hosted us yesterday and gave us a great breakfast and route for the day.
So because we are now about 200 miles of the route, people really don't get what we are doing. This was shown when we were having our 2nd breakfast today in Libo, Kansas and someone heard our accents, saw our bikes and asked us whAt we were doing. We told her and she very kindly gave us 20 bucks. Next, the man in the next door booth had paid for our breakfast without even telling us and leaving. So we were having a great morning, a slight tail wind, 20 bucks and a free meal worth at least 30 bucks. However, walking out the diner the first couple we walked past stopped Jamie and gave him 20 bucks, no word of a lie the next table stopped Sam and did the same thing before I walked out a minute later and the final table gave me 20.
It was crazy, in 5 minutes strangers had just given us well over $100. This was one of the many bonuses of being off the very well trodden bike route as well as a bigger sense of adventure.
So after having the most crazy 5 minutes the rest of the morning wasn't as exciting. Eastern Kansas is very plesent, very styrotyipical small town America, very neat and unlike western Kansas any of the western express (our first 1500 miles).
By lunch, we hAd 55 miles done and decided to use the money we had been given to buy a motel room to heal our weary bodies. Sams knee still isn't in great shape whilst I am beginning to struggle with saddle sores . Both conditions are only made worse by living in a tent so we thorght 'when god gives you lemons , take em' And we are currently in a motel 30 miles from the Kansas-Missouri border which we will cross tomorrow morning before heading on to the Katy trail.
Anyway, we have 3 days on the Katy trial so more of that later.
Charles
30th July: Paola, ks to Leeton, Missouri.
We left the motel late because we had to make the most of having what was effectively a free bed due to the generosity of the people of Lebo.
However, things took a turn for the worst as we hit the Missouri hills in Kansas. The flat state wasn't so flat as we flicked between our biggest gear on the down hills and our smallest on the 15% inclines we were battling. The hills were short, 100 meters max but that's what made them so difficult. We couldn't get a rhythm. In Colorado and Nevada when climbing 2000 foot hills we used to slip into our lowest gear and spin up the hills getting up an hour or two later, however these were too short and before we knew it we were racing downhill at 50kph again.
All this up and down made progress slow and morale very low. We decided that enough was enough and it was time for a McDonald's breakfast. The day got even worse when we realized that it was lunch time and we realized how slow were going!
Not even a state border crossing from Kansas into Missouri could brighten the mood as highway 69 turned into highway 2. To make matters worse, Missouri roads had the dreded rumble strips right in our track. This either meant battling glass, gravel and gunge on the hard shoulder or risking death by 18 wheel truck.
As we came into Harrisonville, we realized something. We hadn't seen, touched or eaten a vegetable in 5 days and our last meals had consisted of macdinalds, Burger King, Dairy Queen and subway: NOT VERY HEALTHY! We then realized why we felt so shit, you are what you eat! Thank you Jamie Oliver for that one.
Therefore or mission for our stay in Harrisonville was to find the healthiest restaurant in town . Being a town in the middle of America this was a pizzeria. Luckily, they had a very well stocked salad bar and some light pasta options which made the world of difference making the next 20 miles afterwards much easier.
Next came news we didn't want to hear as a red neck, hill billy, trailer trash farmer told us things were about to get real hilly. Nothing beats a bit of local knowledge and the next 20 miles were absolute brutal.
We arrived I Leeton at 7ish and looked at each other simultaneously saying that we were NOT doing the planned next 10 miles to get to the katy trail because we were all shattered so it was pizza, bath and bed for us but not with some difficulties.
Because we are miles off The planned trams American trail people are not used to seeing cyclists who have come from San Fran and want to camp in the town park. So to solve the problem, a town council meeting was called on the spot to meet in the gas station. Everyone turned up, we were given the go ahead to camp as well as some looks that said 'you are completely insane' and away hone everyone went in their pickups.
One gentleman let us use his bathroom for a wash which was kind and we headed back to the park for the night...
Charles
31st July: Leeton, Mo to Huntsdale, MO. 94 miles.
We started well this morning after Casey served us up some great breakfast pizza along with my first ever mocha. I hate coffee but this just was chocolate with a rancid coffee after taste and a serious kick to give get me up the hills!
This first 10 miles were the same as the day before, steep rolling hill continuously, energy sapping stuff reminding me of the cycling around Uppingham. We got Windsor and joined Katy's Trail which is just an old railroad that had been torn up and a limestone gravel path laid. It's pan flat so it requires a more continueous effort instead if doing what felt like 8 hours of interval training in the rolling hills. We Followed this down to Boomville where we joined the huge Missouri River. At this point it became downhill right next to the river. Good cycling for us as 2300 miles are starting to take their toll.
We got 60 miles under the belt before stopping for lunch had the usual cheeseburger, fries and unlimited refill soda and felt great for the next 30 miles which began at three.
We then met a man who we told about the trip and the plan to go to St Louis (Lewis), he responded with the fact that six children were shot the day before walking back fro church. This took us by surprise so we have now changed plan and shall swing north and possibly into Indiana to avoid becoming another statistic on the sheriffs database.
Camping tonight by the river it's really damp in campsite but we got a shower so very happy after a day in the dusty tracks. Our bikes are now white and our kit filthy.
My knee is healing well, scabbed well but still getting a lot of pain from it when I come off of the drugs.
Other day down stream tomorrow before we hit the great Mississippi the day after.
Sam
Huntsdale to mckittritk, mo.
Today was our first full day on the Katy trail and it took its toll on our bodies. Not cycling on Tarmac makes a hell of a difference we worked out by the end of the day. Our average speed was reduced, the effort levels were up and within 20 minutes we were covered head to toe in dust.
To be fair, it wasn't as horrific as it sounds because we meandered along beside the Missouri River peacefully stumbling across towns where we could nip to the loo, fill our bottles up and have a quick stretch off the bike.
The day did start badly though , with our planned breakfast spot being closed so it was another 10 miles on a empty stomach which was a lot tougher than it sounds.
After breakfast we plodded 45 miles a little town who's name escapes me for the usual fry up lunch, something with chips. I have become so terrible at remembering places we have just been through, it's slightly worrying and very frustrating... Especially when your trying to write a blog!
After lunch, batteries recharged we managed 30 before deciding enough was enough and calling it a day. We had done 71 miles on a dirt track which in anyone book is a good effort so decided to head in to town to find a camp site.
Arriving a the camp site, we saw the shocking news that it was 15$ per tent pitch. This was just taking the piss so we grabbed a shower and headed back out to the trail to find a place to camp.
6 days to Harrodsburg and a couple of days off, they can't come quick enough!
Charles.
