First Kansas blows, then it really sucks

WED 6/30 -- The first 30 miles of this otherwise completely
nondescript 64-mile ride from Larned to Ness City were about the
fastest, easiest 30 miles I've ever ridden. I rode north on a smooth,
flat, wide-shouldered, low-traffic road with a strong SSE wind at my
back -- if there had been anything at all of interest to look at it
would have been perfect biking conditions. But there wasn't(*). When
the route turned west for the last half of the day the wind became a
little less helpful, but it was still a pretty sweat-free, 17mph
(average speed)(**) ride.

Not nondescript and not sweat-free for Robin and Lucille, though, who
had a close call on the road -- a car coming up from behind attempted
to pass a van that was directly behind R&L, just as the van itself
pulled out to pass R&L, resulting in the car in the ditch and a very
close shave for them with the van. They were pretty shaken up by the
event, but no one was hurt; the car pulled out of the ditch and drove
away.

We spent the night in the 1st Baptist Church, which was fine and good
-- A/C and a nice kitchen to work in are a major plus for us nomadic
peoples. So far we've stayed in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and
Episcopal churches. The Bs and the Ms uniformly prohibit alcohol
consption on the premises; the Ps and the Es uniformly have no problem
with it. We're more P and E type people.

We had a number of rooms to bunk down in; I found a home in the
nursery school room. At night I put my glasses and my iPhone (alarm
clock) in one of the little cubbies on the wall -- not Gage's, not
Travis's, not Kaycee's, not Jonathon's, not Eve's, not Hunter's -- I
used the one labelled Elise.

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(*) For the first couple of hours in the early morning the countryside
IS often beautiful, with the rising sun lighting up the world in front
of us. I've decided that that is a major advantage of riding the Trans-
Am from east-to-west -- having the morning sun at our backs. Both for
aesthetic reasons, and so we don't spend the bulk of our prime riding
hours staring directly into it. It's probably safer, too, since the
cars coming up on us from behind aren't sun-blinded either.

(**) 17mph is VERY fast for me. For most of the tour I haven't paid
any attention to my speed -- in fact, I've deliberately made it
difficult to pay attention to my speed by covering up that reading on
my bike odometer with a wide rubber band. Because, again, I tend to
focus too much on that silly number, and I didn't want that irrelevant
stuff to distract me on this ride. Well, a couple of days ago the
rubber band broke. We'll see whether I can ignore the speed information.

THU 7/1 -- Ness City to Leoti (79)
This was the most dangerous day of biking I've ever experienced --
strong gusty crosswinds in combination with an endless stream of HUGE
trucks on a 2-lane road with a posted speed limit of 65 mph. (The road
was smooth, at least, and there was a small (2 ft) shoulder.) Even
when the trucks coming up on you from behind pulled over as far to the
left as they could (which almost all of them did), you'd get sucked
into the eddys of wind they create and then buffeted again by the wind
gusts in ways that made keeping the bike upright and on the shoulder
very difficult, a constant battle -- my arms ached more than my legs
at the end of the day. And the trucks coming toward you -- some of
them, anyway, and I never figured out which ones it would be -- were
almost as bad, when you got slammed by a wall of wind. I spent just
about the whole day either afraid I was going to die or wishing I would.

I've always had great admiration for Adventure Cycling, but they
really blew this one. Irresponsible. I paid a lot of money to them to,
among other things, put me on safe roads -- there's NO WAY that a
bicyclist should have spent a minute on that road, let alone 6 or 7
hours. We're lucky that no one got killed. We've got a rest day in
Leoti, and then back on the same endless road on Saturday. Maybe we
just hit a bad day -- it's wheat harvesting time, and there's some
suggestion that the truck traffic was tied to that, and will move
elsewhere in a day or so. I hope so. If not, and if there's no other
way to keep us safe (e.g., a police caravan), then I know for certain
that I will NOT be on my bike on Saturday -- I'll be in the van.

(Sent from my iPhone)