Abilene, KS to Topeka, KS
113 miles, avg speed 16.6
The good news today was that the winds would be coming directly from the South. As we were headed east with a few brief turns north, the wind posed little impediment. The bad news was that we were going to hit record highs here in Kansas, projected to be in the mid 90's. To think that just a few days ago, I wasn't able to stay warm enough, now the opposite is happening.
We started the day with a gigantic Holiday Inn Express breakfast. At home, I would never consume such large amounts of food before a ride, but it's different here. My stomach can handle it, provided that I avoid bacon and sausage. However, muffins, oatmeal, sticky buns, english muffins, eggs, and bananas are all fair game. . At rest stops, I'm having fig newtons, gorp, nuts, and bananas. At lunch I'm having all of that plus a PB and J sandwich and a can of soda. While riding, I usually have shot blocks and water, but on these hot days I've been filling one water bottle with gatorade. After the ride, I'll usually have some Endurox (recovery drink) and a milk shake if I can find one. Dinner is typically a burger, salad, and a baked potato. No joke, I estimate that I'm consuming between 6000 and 8000 calories a day. There was a scale at our hotel this AM and in spite of this caloric tsunami, I've lost 3 1/2 pounds so far.
I felt fairly wiped out after yesterday's ride and was still feeling it's lingering effects when I finally got going. We traveled through beautiful Kansas farmland and prairie grass. As we've headed East, the flat terrain has ceased and hills are now the constant. My goal for the day was to drink plenty of fluids, draft as much as possible, and try not to unnecessarily exert myself. I succeeded on all three accounts. We got in around 2:30 and beat the luggage van here. There was little else to do but to get back on our bikes and seek out the nearest establishment that served shakes. This turned out to be Steak and Shake. We were also in time for "Happy Hour" which meant half priced shakes. We discovered these "Happy Hours" the other day when we couldn't understand the line-up of cars at the drive thru window at 3 in the afternoon at a McDonalds. They seem to exist at all the fast food places here in Kansas. We don't know if this is a unique thing to Kansas or whether this will carry over to Missouri, which we will visit tomorrow. I will report back on this.
In my pictures today I included one of Kansas cows and one of Lassa, the gigantic man from Oslo, Norway on our bike trip. I posed next to him, so you could have some point of reference as to his size. He's a very strong rider in the flats, overall a much faster rider than me. One of the unique things about Lassa, is that he doesn't use or need a tire lever to change his tire. He has no trouble removing the tire from the rim with his hands. Anyway, why I mention Lassa is that the other day we asked him what he did during that day's ride and he mentioned that he had seen the coal plant. We were baffled by this as we didn't know of any coal plants on the route. He insisted that he had stopped at the vista to see the coal plant and after this went back and forth a few times, we realized that he was mispronouncing cow as coal, and it was the beef processing plant he was referring too. Thus, whenever we see a cow and Lassa is around, we say, "Lassa, do you see the coalsssssss?"
Tomorrow we will be leaving this wonderful state. I never realized how big Kansas was until trying to bike across it. Reportedly, it is 900 miles from diagonal corner to diagonal corner. They have a map of our journey posted in the lobby of each of the hotels we stay at. Tonight, as I looked at it, I was astounded by just how far we've come. We are now in the middle of the country and tomorrow at some point in the ride we will hit the halfway point. I know this is true, but even after seeing our journey on a map, it just doesn't seem possible.
-Grinner
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| Rippling highway in Kansas |
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| Coalsssss! |
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| See how green the countryside is here |
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| Lassa and me |
However appealing the coals are in Kansas, just remember that there's no place like home. The Angel
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