This was an easy 55 mile ride (flat! not very hot! tailwind!) to our
campsite in Sterling's lovely little city park -- showers, swimming
pool, lake with jogging path and fishermen, picnic pavilions, outdoor
concert stage; idyllic small town America, en otras palabras. Everyone
got into camp by noon or so, and from then on the common approach to
the rest of the day for just about everyone (except for the cooks) was
lazy summer afternoon chill mode. At one point the local police
showed up to (I was sure) either (a) order us to move because we were
camped in the wrong spot, or (b) order the end of beer consumption, or
both. Wrong. They wanted to tell us they'd be patrolling the area
through the night to prevent any mischief, and that they'd see to it
that the bathrooms associated with the pool were kept open for our use
all night, and to be sure to give them a call if we needed them for
anything. In the evening we were treated to a dixieland band concert
by 8 local musicians -- two trumpets, a clarinet, a trombone, a sax, a
tuba, keyboard, and drums. The music itself was a little rough --
occasionally pretty good, but mostly just spirited (in fairness, the
group as a whole had never played together before) -- but the scene
was great: maybe 3 or 4 dozen locals, a few of us bikers, the sound of
kids playing in the background, the pretty little lake as the sun went
down serving as a backdrop, all on a picture-perfect summer evening.
And, maybe best of all, the band closed up shop at a little after 9,
which is pretty much the far end of go-to-bed time on the 2010 Trans-
Am tour.
That wasn't the end of the excitement, however. We had a late-night
street-cleaner who set a new world record for noise:speed ratio, plus
the world's loudest and longest-lingering train, plus the kicking in
of the grain elevators doing whatever it is that grain elevators do
(which I thought was the sudden emergence of a nearby freeway), and
then, to top it all off, an automatic sprinkler system that kicked in
at about 3 am, dousing several tents, some of whose occupants (e.g.,
Hugh) hadn't deployed his rain fly under the crystal-clear sky, and
had left some clothing out on the grass to dry overnight. I heard the
sprinklers go on, and heard the unmistakeable sound of rotating
sprayers blasting tent fabric (accompanied by very little human
vocalization (i.e., cursing), surprisingly) which elicited, unbidden,
the following not-completely-charitable thought: "Man I'm glad that's
not me those things are hitting."
TUE 6/29 (today) -- Sterling to Larned (53)
See description of yesterday's ride. Add "totally straight" and
"nothing -- no towns, no rogue gas station, nothing -- between point A
and point B," and in place of "tail" insert "modest head." The
landscape remains very flat, but with an unmistakeable gentle rise in
elevation -- I think we've climbed about 1000 feet since we entered KS
a few days ago. Fot the last 20 miles or so of the ride, Hugh, Clive,
and I had a nice little pace line going -- each rider hard on the
preceeding one's rear wheel, the lead rider doing most of the work by
breaking the wind for a few miles, then moving out and dropping to the
rear to let the next in line take over. Fun; and so the miles passed
by. We had the perfect conditions for this kind of riding -- smooth
road, flat and straight, with little traffic. We're spening the night
in the reception hall (and a few scattered other rooms) of the First
Presbyterian Church of Larned (which must have had another "r" in it
at some point in the dim past, now lost, since the locals pronounce it
"lar-nerd"). There's a guitar set up on a little stage at the front of
the room, which I've been banging on -- my fingers have lost all trace
of their guitar callouses, and my skills (always modest) have eroded,
but it's fun to play again; another thing I've missed on the ride.
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