Friday, July 31, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Forty Six |
 |
| 7/31/09 |
| From Loveland, CO |
| To Larime, WY |
| 87.6 miles |
| 8.5 avg mph |
I hate the days when we have to pedal for more than 10 hours, especially when the day includes rain, headwinds, and darkness, not to mention a lack of bathrooms, a flat tire, and a frostbite scare.
The day started out well enough. Ten miles into the ride we reached Fort Collins, a pleasant town with nice parks and architecture. In keeping with the rest of Colorado, the town went above and beyond for cyclists: we got our own lane and our own crossing button.
I don't really have an explanation for the bee hive shed, but it was cool too.
Unfortunately, Fort Collins was the last bastion of civilization for a very long time. The open land was calming but lonely, and we were fighting a headwind that periodically threw handfuls of cold rain into our faces. The weather continued to worsen as we toiled along, miles away from shelter, and eventually the wet, the cold, and the need for a bathroom drove me into one of the tunnels under the highway meant for cows. I had to jump over barbed wire and scramble down a steep, rocky hill just to get to it, and then I discovered how awkward it can be to go to the bathroom outdoors for the first time (remember, I'm not a camper) but at least it was dry under there. Kyle and I talked about staying in the tunnel until the storm passed, but it wasn't clear when that would happen. Instead we reluctantly kept riding, but we always kept track of the distance from the last cow tunnel in case the rain was joined by lightning.
Between Fort Collins and our final destination we saw one open business. One. That's one open business, of any kind, the entire day. I was there and I still find it hard to comprehend. It was a gas station and convenience store that was known as Ted's Place when it opened in 1922, and it still thrives as a last stop for tourists on their way to do outdoorsy wilderness activities of one kind or another.
We bid Ted's Place adieu and returned to the rolling, rocky hills, unblotted by anything but the occasional antelope. The land was as empty as the plains of Kansas, but at least the scenery held more variety.
In my current contemplative state that solitary cow worried me for hours. How had it gotten to those empty hills all on its own? Where was its herd and its owner, and would they ever be reunited?
Regardless of their aesthetics, wide open spaces are frustrating when all you want are a roof, a bathroom, and lunch. But then we discovered something even worse: buildings that advertise all of those things but are closed. First we saw a giant restaurant and general store, but when we made our way to its doors we discovered that it had recently closed down, and the only things stirring in the area were a horse and its owner, who informed us that the only open business for miles around was the ski resort restaurant, miles and miles out of our way straight up a mountain, which we decided to skip.
Our next disappointment was a combination Post Office and Cafe. Well, that's what the signs said, but it had clearly not been operational for a while.
Further down the road was our favorite sign in the world, but below it was our least favorite sign in the world, so we were forced to ride on once again.
I did not, however, have to go to the bathroom in a tunnel or out in the elements again. Instead I took advantage of (what I hoped was) an honest-to-goodness working outhouse.
It belongs to a small church that serves what I assume is a small and widespread group of believers. Services are held just once a month, and in lieu of a parking lot there is a field that includes places to tie up horses. I really wish our visit had coincided with a service or just someone being there (unless they had a problem with me using the outhouse). I'd love to learn more about the few people who live out here, but I doubt we'll get the chance.
We already felt like we were in wild, western, wide open Wyoming, but we didn't actually cross over until early evening.
The last thing Colorado left us with was a group of wild horses:
And the first thing Wyoming greeted us with was a violent storm. It had been raining on and off all day, but just after we passed the border it started to really and truly downpour, and the horizon was lit up by lightning strikes. We circled back and took cover in a highway maintenance shed.
We clearly weren't the first to do so, since there was a fire pit, a few cans, and a glowstick.
We waited, and watched the storm, and called home, and took random photos, and waited some more.
Forty minutes later the sun was setting and the rain had begun to abate, so we ventured out of our shelter and onto the downhill that we'd earned with a grueling climb earlier. Soon the land flattened out again, and we watched the sunset reflecting off the wet road as we weaved around construction cones on our way to Larime.
It ended up being a much longer ride to Larime than we'd ever anticipated. The rain began again, combining with the night to chill us to the bone. Then a hunk of metal caught our tire and ripped a hole in it. Instead of screaming and throwing ourselves to the ground, which was our first inclination, Kyle wrestled with the tire and tube as I struggled to retrieve tools and a spare tube without being able to see well or stop my hands from shaking. With more difficulty than usual Kyle managed to get the new tube on, then rigged up a patch on the tire using a dollar bill. We climbed back on the bike and rode on (and on and on and on), even more freezing, stressed, and miserable than we were before. When we finally spotted lights on the horizon we celebrated, but they became the most depressing aspect of the trip yet. They never seemed to get any closer, as if the headwind was pushing us backwards and we would be pedaling fruitlessly all night long.
Somewhere along the way I lost feeling in my toes, and then the numbness spread upwards until it reached my ankles and I felt like I was pedaling with blocks. All of the mental tricks I'd used during other miserable rides were insufficient for this. I don't think I cried, though I wanted to; I think I just went blank and kept pedaling because there was nothing else to do.
A century later when we reached town our ordeal still wasn't over. We stopped at the first hotel we saw, a Ramada; the guy behind the desk was great (though I don't know what a fabulous NYC artist type was doing in middle of nowhere Wyoming) but didn't have any first floor rooms available. We wanted to avoid carrying the bike up any stairs if possible, so we decided to check with the Motel 6 right behind the Ramada, not realizing that we'd have to ride a long loop around both of them because the parking lots were separated by open land that had turned into a swamp. The only room left at the Motel 6 hadn't been cleared for habitation, and when the receptionist let us check it we could smell why. She was nice enough to call the Ramada back for us and secure a room, however; at this point I would have carried the bike up seven floors to get to a warm shower. We decided to walk the bike through the muddy shortcut this time, and arrived in the Ramada lobby looking like we needed a drink, according to our friend behind the desk who gave us two complimentary tickets for the hotel bar.
We carried the bike upstairs and ordered pizza from whatever restaurant happened to advertise on the room key. Kyle was eager to use the drink tickets so he headed back downstairs, but I was more interested in showering and crawling under a pile of blankets until the food arrived. The hot water felt unbelievably wonderful everywhere but my feet, which stung painfully as they came back to life. I looked down at them and had to choke back a scream: my feet were completely blue. It looked like the day after a sprained ankle, when all the blood collects. I started to panic, wondering if it meant that I was close to frostbite. I finished my shower and ran to the bed, piling on every blanket in the room and trying to massage my feet back to their normal color. When Kyle came in I showed him my feet, now a mixture of pink and purple, but he looked fairly unconcerned and just laughed when I regarded them with panic. Apparently Kyle was very familiar with blue feet -- and the fact that they return to normal after 20 minutes or so -- thanks to all his winters in upstate New York. I felt rather sheepish, but I'm still pretty sure colorful feet are a bad sign.
We got to sleep somewhere around midnight, stuffed with pizza, back to our normal color, and finally something close to warm. I don't really want to think about what awaits us tomorrow. Wyoming hasn't exactly been welcoming so far, and I have a feeling it won't get any easier.
| posted at: 02:13 |
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Forty Five |
 |
| 7/30/09 |
| From Aurora, CO |
| To Loveland, CO |
| 90.6 miles |
| 10.3 avg mph |
This morning we said goodbye to Dave and Pickle's house, to Aurora, and to relaxation.
We were eager to ride the extensive network of paved trails, which took us over bridges, through parks full of friendly people, and alongside the mountains.
In the more populated areas we could use the multi-use paths, which were essentially wide sidewalks that pedestrians were expected to share with cyclists. Once again, I love Colorado right now.
We passed nature's condos -- a prairie dog community and a wall of stones populated by various furry creatures -- before spotting a colorful community under construction where we'd like to live ourselves.
A large part of the apartments' appeal was their location right in between Denver and Boulder. We'd heard great things about Boulder, so at the last minute we decided to visit it instead of going through Cheyenne. To get there, however, we had to deal with hastily written directions (I would be reading the cue sheet and suddenly every turn would be followed by a question mark) and bad weather. At first it was just a light mist that barely bothered us, in fact I was enjoying the riding more than usual. Just as I was about to comment on how much fun I was having, we hit a downhill and were pummelled by a cold and stinging rain. By the time we reached developed land we were soaked and shivering, so we ducked into a Panera to warm up with soup and giant cups of hot cocoa.
We met an older female cyclist there who was also braving the rain, and we rode out of the Panera with her for a short time. As we approached downtown Boulder, we could already see why it was known as a cyclist's paradise. Not only were there bike routes everywhere, but they were humorously named, marked with signs, and divided into lanes. We were in absolute awe.
Everywhere we looked, we saw more signs that we should move to Boulder: a real estate company called Pedal Properties that led house tours on bicycles, a combination fitness and rock climbing gym, ultimate frisbee dominating the cover of Boulder magazine, more coffee shops than I could count, and an expansive pedestrian mall that outshone the one in Charlottesville.
Oh, and those brightly dressed figures in the first photo? Kids dressed in 80s garb giving out free hugs. It was still dreary and wet out, but we wandered around with huge grins on our faces as we imagined how amazing it would be to live in Boulder. Kyle even had me take a picture of a map showing nearby private schools where I could apply to teach. We are completely, utterly, irreparably Boulder-obsessed and we spent less than an hour there. I'm honestly not sure that coastal Oregon will be able to top it.
After we left Boulder, which we obviously did very reluctantly, we were greeted with an end to the rain and a bright rainbow to boot.
We flew down a highway with a generous bike lane, and once again I felt glad to be on the bike and exhilirated by the ride. It's amazing what time off and a slight tailwind can do for your cycling spirits.
In Longmont we stopped at a bike shop; it was nice to do so by choice and not necessity. We admired the newest beauties in the Trek line and bought a water bottle to replace the one that I had partially broken a while back but stubbornly continued to use. We also discovered another reason to move to the area: a weekly community bike ride involving costumes and other frivolity.
In the small towns beyond Longmont, we encountered a series of interesting sights:
School's Out For... forever, hopefully. Or they need a better maintenance crew.
Raptor Sighting!
Bibles + Wigs = Genius. Why did no one ever think of this combination before?
We reached Loveland by early evening, not bad for a 90 mile day. The Super 8 was completely booked, so we ended up at a Quality Inn with stained towels and a raging party outside our room. Not ideal, certainly, but I'm still overwhelmed with love for this part of Colorado, so I'll let it slide.
| posted at: 02:12 |
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty Three |
 |
| 7/28/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
We were off to see the wizard, the one who would put our Hase Pino back together. The bike shop hadn't actually called us to say that it was done, but we were tired of waiting around the house so we grabbed Pickle and Dave's mountain bikes and rode them to downtown Englewood. To get there we took a network of trails, most of which were paved; I love this state.
We had a rough start before we got to the trails, however, when we discovered how bad we are at communicating when we're on two separate bikes instead of one. Several times I didn't understand Kyle's directions or he didn't give them quickly enough and it took time to adjust and not get frustrated with each other. I enjoyed the freedom of riding upright and being able to race each other, but I'll be glad to get our tandem back.
We weren't going to get it back right away, however; we reached the bike shop only to discover that it was still closed. We spotted the oh-so-appropriate Spicy Pickle sub shop across the street and decided to have lunch there while we waited. It was very cheery and everything was delicious except, ironically, for the spicy pickle, which was a little too hot for me.
By the time we were done the bike shop was open and to our surprise they were expecting us. They had finished up the bike and called us while we were on our way over. Recumbent Bikes & Trikes was all kinds of cool, from the bike rack to the window display to the four-person bikes suspended from the ceiling.
The owners and workers were great. They told us stories -- about everything from using newspaper as jersey insulation to couples who should really not be on a tandem together -- from all the different rides they'd done themselves or supported from their impressively stocked van. I really wish we could hire them to come with us the rest of the way.
We couldn't take all of the bikes back with us at once, though we did briefly consider whether I could hold the mountain bikes and roll them along beside the tandem. We decided that we weren't quite that talented, so we rode the mountain bikes back and then asked Ryan to drive us back to the bike shop so that we could get the tandem and ride it home. It took a lot of traveling and coordinating, but we were finally back on our bike, and it felt great. We got goofy, as we so often do: I misunderstood something Kyle said and thought that ambulances sometimes used the bike paths, and when Kyle made fun of how preposterous that was, I imagined that we were on a half-sized ambulance that wreaked havoc on the trails and had a theme song along with a siren. Watch out for Jilly's Ambulance.
When we got back it was early evening and there was still so much packing and planning to do. We were hoping to leave tomorrow, bright and early, but when we were still working steadily on everything after midnight we realized it just wasn't going to happen. Instead we'll spend one more day in Aurora, which could be the last break we take until we finish our long, hard push to the coast.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Monday, July 27, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty Two |
 |
| 7/26/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
I have a confession to make.
I've never truly considered quitting, packing up, flying back, and ending the trip entirely. Not in Pennsylvania, when my new shoes were tearing up my achilles tendons. Not in Maryland, when a large part of Kyle wanted to stop and offered multiple arguments for doing so. Not in Indiana, when we had a long talk about just how empty and impossible Wyoming would be. Never...until this week.
The bike is still being repaired and we can't be sure about when we'll get it back. We hadn't planned to spend so many days here, and now we're running out of time for the rest of the trip. We're currently on Day 42. Thanks to work, Kyle must be on a plane by Day 64, and we'd really like some time to explore Oregon before that happens. Can we really make it to the coast in twenty days or less?
We spent much of yesterday and today searching googlemaps and hotel sites, trying to figure out if it was possible, and talking seriously to each other, trying to figure out if we wanted it to be possible. I never wanted to quit before because there was never a good enough reason to do so. I'm a stubborn, driven person, and I thought we should be able to push through all of the small stuff and even the not so small stuff to accomplish what we set out to do, and what we promised everyone else we were going to do, whether they believed us or not. But now there's a chance that we'll be stopped by forces outside our control. If it becomes physically impossible to make it across, no one could blame us for quitting, not even ourselves. Right?
We tried to get used to the idea of ending the trip early. And as we discussed alternative plans, we started to feel relieved, even excited. We could ship the broken bike back home and not have to worry about it anymore. We could spend more time in Aurora, see Pickle and Dave when they got back, and then return to the realm of the blue demon horse and fly home to enjoy the rest of our summer. Our downtime in Aurora has reminded us just how nice it is to relax in one place without any pressing responsibilities. Or we could rent a car and drive to Oregon and have plenty of time to tour it, something we'll barely get to do even if do we make it there by bike. And if we wanted to, we could fly into Denver next summer with our bike and finish the rest of the trip. That would almost be the same, right? I didn't want to admit it, but that plan started to sound more and more appealing, and I started to come to terms with abandoning the trip here and now. Of course I would always rather finish what we'd started, but I started to believe that if the bike was beyond a quick repair it wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
But we couldn't completely come to grips with it, not so long as there was a chance we'd be getting the bike back soon. No matter how nice a relaxing, bike-free August sounded, the part of us that was still dedicated to finishing this trip the right way kept looking at maps and planning out a route. It would take a number of very long days, sometimes several in a row, but it was doable if we didn't run into any other major setbacks. We would also have to be a little insane. (Check.) It's going to take a lot out of us, and we still can't be sure that we'll have time to make it all the way across, but we've pursued this dream so far already that we both feel like it would be just as crazy not to go for it. Somehow after two days of talking, planning, and vacillating, we found ourselves recommitting to this crazy endeavor all over again.
Here we come, West, whether you and we like it or not
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Sunday, July 26, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty One |
| |
| 7/25/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
The bike repairs are going to keep us in Aurora for another day or two, but unfortunately our timing doesn't coincide with Pickle and Dave's. They're off on a trip to Mexico that they've had planned for a while. Fortunately they're letting us stay in their home for as long as we need, but this morning was our last chance to hang out with them. After breakfast and a flurry of last minute packing we took them off to the airport.
As we exited the highway, a blue horse with burning eyes reared up out of the grass.
On the one hand I think it's pretty stunning, on the other hand, I wonder who on earth would want to face a demonic equine with glow-in-the-dark eyes on their way to board a plane. Then Dave explained the highly disturbing story behind the already disturbing statue: its original creator, Luis Jimenez, was killed when part of the horse fell and crushed him during construction. I'm a bit afraid to even put its photo up.
Having escaped the airport and the blue mustang, Kyle and I spent the rest of the day doing nothing exciting. We blogged, we googlemapped, we played with Don Quixote, we tried out the Snuggie cult craze, we lounged.
Tomorrow is looking like more of the same, so don't expect a long, exciting, photo-filled entry. Pickle was kind enough to leave us with a list of tourist sites, but we don't have our bike, neither of us is very comfortable driving Pickle's very persnickety car, and honestly we both just want to not move for a little while. Hopefully we'll be picking up the bike tomorrow or the next day, however, so we can get back on the road again, whether we like it or not.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Forty |
 |
| 7/25/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
Today we went up the highest paved road in North America, which winds its way up Mount Evans.
Local wildlife included mountain goats and marmots, both very cute.
At the summit we wandered through the unlucky Crest House, which was built for a wife who died young and was eventually destroyed in a propane explosion.
We rode to the summit in a car, but plenty of people were riding up on bicycles (including some really badass Russians). Usually I would have felt a mixture of jealousy and shame that I wasn't there with them, but there is no way I would want to ride such a steep and treacherous path in today's weather, which included a hail storm and a thick fog.
The dismal weather meant we had to eat our picnic lunches in the car: giant, delicious subs from Lenny's, their favorite sub shop. Then we wound our way through the fog down the steep, sharply turning road without any guardrails. It was exceptionally nerve-wracking, especially for someone who is used to bike speeds, but we made it down safely.
And on the way home we got to see this awesome UFO house.
Fortunately the weather sort of cleared up by the evening, when we were due to attend a Rockies game. You know what is awesome about the Rockies? Well, I'm about to tell you.
1. Tickets are dirt cheap and available at grocery stores. Our tickets were $7.00 each, regular price.
2. Fans are allowed to bring in their own food. Most minor league parks don't even allow that!
3. Coors Field has a delicious tradition: fans are encouraged to consume vast quantities of pistachios and leave the shells on the ground. I'm already a verifiable, certifiable pistachio addict, so I was in heaven.
4. They have all of the little entertainments and diversions that most MLB ballparks have, plus center field fountains go off for every home run.
A big part of me wants to move to Denver, buy what I assume are inexpensive season tickets, and become a hardcore Rockies fan (except for when they play the Braves). I'm not used to rooting for the home team (Phillies? No thank you) so rooting for the Rockies and watching them beat the Giants 8-2 was icing on the cake. Or pistachios on the ground. Or something. In any case, it was a fantastic way to spend an evening, and even Kyle was glad that we went.
| posted at: 02:11 |
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Friday, July 24, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Nine |
| |
| 7/24/09 |
| Rest Day |
| Aurora, CO |
The Hase Pino is out of our hands and at the bike shop. It looks like we'll have to be without it for several days at least, because there is a lot to fix and some of it requires parts to be shipped in. We're eventually going to have take a serious look at our schedule to figure out how to make up the time, but for now we're just enjoying the break.
We wanted to visit Dave at his museum job, but that plan fell through when he got out early. Instead, we enjoyed downtime at the house, admiring the incredible work they've done on pretty much every surface of their home, playing on their Wii Fit for hours (because, you know, we haven't been getting enough exercise lately) and laughing at the antics of their pet bird, Don Quixote.
He helped Pickle make us a delicious breakfast.
He flew around the house, periodically landing on our heads and other round objects.
And he demonstrated his bobbing, cooing mating dance. He seems especially attracted to hands and feet.
At night we had dinner and drinks on the back porch with Ryan and Adrienne, who are also Gettysburg alums and part of the reason that Dave and Pickle moved out here. It was really great to get to know them (they were at Gettysburg before my time) and their infant daughter, whom they are already training to be a left handed sports star. Dave built a fire and we concluded the relaxing night together roasting s'mores and watching the flames.
| posted at: 02:10 |
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Eight |
 |
| 7/23/09 |
| From Colorado Springs, CO |
| To Aurora, CO |
| 93.8 miles |
| 10.4 avg mph |
We were apprehensive to do any more riding on dirt, but the bike trail we took promised to turn into pavement after a few miles, and thankfully it did.
It became a nice, shaded ride that led us to the America the Beautiful Park, featuring a giant, rotating sculpture and fountain.
After using the park bathroom, which had no stall doors, freezing metal seats, and a spastic autoflush (I've had worse) we got going again. A detour around some construction allowed us to see more of Colorado Springs, including a railroad depot and the university; gotta love a city that not only has bike paths, but has well-planned bike detours too. Back on the Pikes Peak Greenway, we passed a BMX park, a random suit of armor, and a solar-powered bird house, or so I insisted to Kyle at the time.
The best stop along the way was a bike shop that was more than ready for the Tour de France.
Of course they had a television showing coverage of the Tour, so I camped out in front of it quite happily while Kyle wandered the store fruitlessly looking for tubes in the right size. I was watching a replay of earlier events, but I hadn't checked the results the night before so it didn't make a difference to me... Until a woman came up and told me how it ended. Barely a hello before informing me "he finishes fourth in this stage." Is this woman an idiot in general or just about sports? I really wish I had told her off instead of just nodding my head in disbelief until she went away. Luckily, the other woman I met there, a seasoned recumbent rider, was really nice and normal and wanted to talk about touring cycling, not the race I was watching. I also learned more about the major races for female cyclists thanks to old posters for Tour Feminin. I really need to get up to speed on these things.
Fueled by delicious Cliff Mojo bars, we headed back to the trail, which became increasingly difficult to navigate. We had to ride, or occasionally carry the bike, up steep hills with logs across them to stop erosion. It got a little crazy. Eventually we pulled off the trail at the only nearby lunch option: a McDonalds that was having a lot of problems. The AC was broken, the floor under the soda machine was flooded, and the bathroom was apparently subpar; I actually thought it was super nice, but everyone else in there was whining about it. I did, however, have a problem with the bathrooms at our next stop: a park where the flush toilets were dangerously clogged up and the porta-potty was literally filled to the brim. It was indescribably disgusting. The park views almost made up for it (but not quite).
Mountains and trees! I finally feel like we're in Colorado and not Coloransus.
It was clear that we were riding through desirable land, the realm of the extremely affluent who can afford to build mansions on acres of undeveloped land and who golf together at a driving range with stunning views and a downhill advantage.
When we got to Lakespur we stopped at a country store with astonishly overpriced can goods, a charming outdoor dining area, and absolutely scrumptious rootbeer freezes.
We then had to decide whether to take the interstate or hilly backroads. As much as I love a flat shortcut, the interstate just looked too busy to be safe, so we took the long way. The hills were tiring but surmountable, and it all evened out when we got to coast down a long and luxurious downhill, topping out at 44 miles per hour without trying. We also got to pass a Renaissance Faire (which we initially thought and hoped was another mansion under construction) and a white horse that ran eagerly towards us like something out of a fairy tale.
We also passed a railroad yard, where Kyle decided to stop and count the train cars. I wish I was kidding.
The railroad yard was just outside of the small town of Castle Rock, a name that makes perfect sense as soon as you see the massive natural structure overlooking it.
They also have a roller derby team nearby, as well as a rival team in Denver; I don't think I can sufficiently express my disappointment that we won't be in the area for any of their matches. We got a little lost in downtown Castle Rock, and as always seems to happen getting lost meant climbing extra hills. Eventually we got out and on the open road again, which turned out to be an awful time. With evening came the gnats; insufferable clouds of them came and went in front of our faces, flowing into every orifice. I held my handkerchief over my nose and mouth, which only helped a little since my ears and eyes were fair game, and Kyle was completely at their mercy and couldn't even swat them away. I already had a healthy hatred of insects before this trip, but each day seems to increase it.
We realized that we would never be done before dark, and our main headlight had decided to run out of batteries. Luckily we were back in the bustle of civilization, so we easily found somewhere to buy them. In the Best Buy parking lot we discovered...can you guess?...a flat tire! Add an extra trip into Best Buy when Kyle realized that he'd bought the wrong batteries, and you can imagine that not even a stunning sunset over the mountains could raise our mood much.
We had two routes that would take us into Aurora, the suburb of Denver where our friends Pickle and Dave live. We could take a bike trail or a highway. Usually the choice would be easy, but with memories of the horrible dirt trail out of Pueblo still fresh in our minds, we decided to stick to the highway. Later we discovered that the trail was actually quite nice and paved the whole way, but I don't even want to talk about that frustration right now.
Even if the trail had been dirt, the other route was still a terrible decision. It was a true highway, six lanes wide and very busy, and to make it worse, we got lost a few times along the way. We clung to the shoulder, fearing for our lives as cars whizzed by, and trying to make our way to the sidewalk whenever possible, legal or not. I'm not comfortable riding at night to begin with, even with periodic streetlights and gaudy neon advertisements lighting the way, and here we were in the midst of fast, heavy traffic, blindly trusting the Garmin's confusing directions. We finally made it onto calmer roads, but whenever we stopped panicking we just realized how exhausted and irritable we were. If we had been in any state to appreciate anything, the nightlife and cleverly illuminated street signs of Parker would have impressed us, but we just desperately wanted to find the right section of Aurora. I was riding with the Garmin on my lap and started a delirious countdown when their house finally, finally showed up on the map.
Pickle was outside to welcome us in even though were were hours later than expected; she said she had been peeking her head out periodically, hoping we would be coming at that moment... or the next...or the next...and happened to catch us. Dave (aka Batman) had cooked up a heap of delicious pasta and meatballs that we cheerfully devoured. It was amazing, almost as amazing as sinking into the guest bed and knowing that for the next few days we would be off the bike and in good hands. A true break, at last.
| posted at: 02:10 |
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Seven |
 |
| 7/22/09 |
| From Pueblo, CO |
| To Colorado Springs, CO |
| 43 miles |
| 10.5 avg mph |
Since our bike wasn't going to be ready right away, we relished sleeping in and watching part of an NCIS marathon. We were planning to have a short day anyway, just 40 miles to Colorado Springs; our destination beyond it, Denver, was about 130 miles away from Pueblo, and we only travel that far in one day when we're riding a tailwind out of Kansas. When Kyle picked up the bike from the shop, they told him about the two routes we could take to Colorado Springs. One was a busy highway, the other a dirt road with great views. We decided on the latter; we'd much rather see the country than more highway, and the open views would make roughing it worth it, right?
Wrong. This afternoon was probably the worst ride we've had so far. The heat was intense, the road became a mess of deep ruts and scattered rocks, the only signs of civilization were angry "No Trespassing" warnings, and a veritable army of bugs attacked us constantly. They were so bad that we couldn't stop for anything, not for the food that I desperately wanted, and not even to change the tire that went flat (like we needed any more problems). Instead, every few miles Kyle would hop off and reinflate it as quickly as possible so that we could get moving again before the bugs completely ate us alive. Coloransas continues to kill us with its hot, buggy, monotonous misery. The only positive moment was being passed twice by a strange Union Jack dune buggy type vehicle; as you can tell I don't really know how to describe it and I didn't get a very good photo, but trust me, it was pretty cool.
(Note that he's even driving on the British side of the road in order to pass us.) As you can see, the second time it passed us was after we made it onto a real road. We wanted to get down and kiss the pavement, but we had to wait until we reached an actual town and left most of the bugs behind. Then we were finally able to eat a snack and change the tire outside of the town library.
We spotted signs for a water attraction and decided to check it out since we were still horribly hot. It turned out to be a kiddie splash area that wasn't very accessible, but then we spotted something just as good: an icecream truck. Chasing an icecream truck around a neighborhood is actually pretty fun, and finally catching it is even better.
But just as I was enjoying my orange creamsicle, Kyle discovered another flat tire. Arrrrrrgggg. Our "short" day felt like it would never end.
As we finally approached Colorado Springs, we discovered a network of bike trails. Usually we would have loved to explore them, but after the afternoon we'd had we just wanted to take the main road into town and find a hotel room. We got very excited when we saw a LaQuinta; it had a higher price tag than we were used to seeing, but after checking a few other hotels we realized that the problem was CO Springs, not La Quinta, so we got to stay in our favorite once again.
When we were all showered and human again, we got to tour Colorado Springs with our friend Pickle (or Karen, as those who don't know her ultimate frisbee nickname call her). She'll be hosting us in Denver, but wanted to drive over to Colorado Springs a day early so that she could show us around Garden of the Gods, a park with impressive red rock and a long history. It was rainy and cloudy but we still had a great time wandering around and taking photos, and when the weather cleared up we were greeted with a rainbow.
After Garden of the Gods, we had a late dinner at a laidback bar downtown. When we went to put in our orders we found ourselves behind an ultimate frisbee team, so we used our frisbee nicknames too, which amused the guy at the window who tried very hard to come up with a song by Devo (Kyle's nickname) other than Whip It (he couldn't). As we waited for our food, we watched a kid's rodeo on TV (main event: sheep riding) and talked about our respective teaching experiences. After stuffing ourselves we headed back to the hotel and sent a few of our belongings back to Denver with Pickle. We can't wait to get there tomorrow!
| posted at: 02:07 |
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Six |
 |
| 7/21/09 |
| From La Hunta, CO |
| To Pueblo, CO |
| 73.8 miles |
| 13.2 avg mph |
Kyle decided he wasn't up to eating a cinnabun the size of his head, so we skipped the place from last night and had breakfast at The Barista Coffee House instead, which was a perfect way to start our morning.
We then went back to the pharmacy with the Amish romances, and things went much more smoothly this time. Outside, I started talking to a woman who was in town for her daughter's gymnastics competition, and whose car had been severely damaged by that hail storm we barely escaped in Garden City. Our final stop before getting on the road was at a Walmart, where I purchased a hankerchief to cover the deep sun damage I'd gotten from Garden City. I figured it was also part of my indoctrination into the West; when Kyle's mom saw a photo she said I looked ready to rob a stagecoach. I was just trying to fit in with everyone we saw: the strange bathtub cowboy we discovered in downtown La Hunta...
one very aggressive bean mascot...
and a real cowgirl (I hate that term, but you know what I mean) whom we passed on the road to Rocky Ford. Kyle insisted that her dead partner was in the sack on the second horse.
In Fowler I got another excuse to release my inner cowgirl (or whatever). We asked a local for a lunch recommendation as we pedaled by, and she sent us down the road to the Tamarack Grill, which had an adjoining livestock yard.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to order meat with the source so close, but as I should have suspected the menu didn't give us much choice. So I had a delicious hamburger with a side of waffle fries and guilt.
Cowboy culture is great and all, but the most exciting part of my day had to do with something else entirely. Remember how all I wanted to see in Kansas (other than anything besides grass, locusts, and cows) were fields of giant sunflowers? And remember how Kansas failed miserably on that account? Well, guess what they have across the border in Colorado? Giant freaking sunflowers. I should have known.
When we originally planned this trip, we expected to follow the Adventure Cycling Association TransAmerica route for much of the way, but the more Kyle looked at maps the more he went for routes that diverged from it. Today we were intersecting with it again for a few miles, and we hoped to run into other cross-country travelers. The road was still fairly empty of cyclists, but we did happen on an unofficial ACA stop.
It was a hostel of sorts, where the flooring ranged from dirt to shag. It was run by Larry Taylor (the one in overalls) who seemed to own most of main street, which meant he owned most of town. He was very friendly, let us use his bathroom, and would have let us use the hottub too if we'd had the time. We talked cross-country cycling with him and his friends for a little while; my favorite story was about a guy who crossed the country on a penny-farthing bicycle, which will always astound me, especially when I imagine the giant wheel rolling up the Rockies.
We left Boone on the ACA route, which went from a rough back road to a busy four-lane highway, making us wonder if staying on 50 and skipping the official route would have been better. We did, however, get to see some courageous local wildlife: a colony of prairie dogs had dug their homes less than twenty feet from the bustling highway. They showed no fear of the traffic rushing by, but when we approached they scampered back into their homes.
Once again we found ourselves riding near crazy storm clouds, but we were close enough to our destination to outrun them. We had to take an exit ramp to get into Pueblo, which again seemed a little ridiculous for an official cycling route. As we rode toward the bike shop, we saw two very different sides of Pueblo: the rundown downtown where some teenage boys and their rottweilers scared the crap out of me, and the affluent side dominated by towering Victorians on spacious lawns. We finally found Bob's Bicycles:
We were just glad to find a bike shop -- the first in over 400 miles -- but the people at Bob's Bikes went above and beyond. One drove us to our hotel while the other worked late into the night to make sure our bike would be ready to go the next day. They couldn't fix everything, but they did an amazing job with what they had, so that hopefully we can get to the bigger shops in Denver without any major malfunctions.
To make it even better, we finished the day with dinner at Cracker Barrel and a night at La Quinta -- my two favorite places, and more than worthy of an awkward song and dance.
| posted at: 02:06 |
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Monday, July 20, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Five |
 |
| 7/20/09 |
| From Lamar, CO |
| To La Hunta, CO |
| 61.5 miles |
| 11.6 avg mph |
The vast majority of today was miserable.
We started early -- too early -- and it was sunny and hot before we knew it, over 100 degrees for much of the day. Colorado persists in resembling flat, vacant, heat-soaked Kansas, so much so that I refuse to call this part of the country Colorado, insisting that we're stuck in a horrible purgatorial region that I christened Coloransas. The bike problems also refuse to go away. We can only use one brake because the other one gets stuck, and we can't coast at all because as soon as we do a horrible, unidentifiable clanking sound starts. Not that we had plentiful opportunities to brake or coast today, since the terrain is still fairly flat and empty, but we'll need to fix the problems before we reach the Rockies.
For hours we rode through endless alfalfa fields in misery. I was exhausted, Kyle was in pain, and we both felt like our brains were melting. Occasionally we amused ourselves in the usual ways, with accents and songs, but then we would lapse into bored and brooding silence. A ladybug landed on me and rode along with us for a while, but it didn't seem to help. We finally reached a delightful oasis: a charming cafe that served scrumptious smoothies.
But even this relaxation was ruined, by another flat tire. I can't believe flats are becoming a daily occurrence. It's enough to drive a person crazy, and Coloransas has more than enough to drive a person crazy already.
We're also getting used to fleeing bad weather surprises every day. When a few clouds appeared off in the distance, we called Kyle's sister for a weather report, and she said the map was clear in our area. Not five minutes later a massive storm appeared. Soon we were riding beneath an expansive, ominous cloud, rain and lightning visible ahead and to the side of us.
We went into a full sprint and sustained it for the fifteen miles of nothingness it took to reach a rest area. I have to tell you, I'm getting really tired of riding for my life. Feeling a hundred times more secure with concrete cover beside us, we sat on boulders and watched the storm approach before taking cover in our respective bathrooms, partly to avoid a chance stroke of lightning, but mostly because there were fewer bugs in there.
The storm passed quickly, as they seem to do out here, and we were able to ride towards town. We stopped at the Forest Service building and talked to a very nice woman who checked the weather for us and sold me an egret pin. (Remember how I was going to collect pins on this trip? Yeah, I forgot for a while too.) We were really upset to find out that the dinosaur fossils and tracks were too far away for us to visit -- we've started talking about making a car trip out west to pick up all the sites that we're missing, so hopefully we'll make it there someday.
I needed to get a prescription filled and had chosen a pharmacy in La Hunta since I knew we'd be passing through well before it closed. I waited in the long line, passing the time by staring in confusion at a rack of Amish romance novels (you heard me right), only to find out that my medicine wasn't ready, and in fact hadn't even been called in. The incredibly unhelpful nurse back in Pennsylvania didn't seem to understand or want to work with the scheduling issues that arise when you're bicycling across the country, so even though I had explained the situation yesterday and given her plenty of notice she hadn't yet phoned it in. When I called the office she was apparently too busy to talk to me, though the receptionist promised it would be in by tomorrow. I started to silently fume, since it meant Kyle and I would have to stay over in La Hunta instead of continuing on to our planned destination. To make it worse, the LaHunta bike shop was closed, so we couldn't make productive use of our time there.
But as we were riding through town in search of a hotel, we found a perfect way to spend our evening: we could finally see the new Harry Potter movie.
We found a hotel and showered in time for a rushed dinner before the only showing of the movie started. We settled on soup and mozzarella sticks at a cafe down the street from the theater. What we ate was nothing to write home about, but the service was great and we were captivated by the bottles of grape-raisin soda and the cinna-buns that were the size of human heads. Kyle plans to tackle one for breakfast tomorrow.
What a difference an enjoyable evening makes. Here we are after the long day, before showers and Harry Potter. (You can also sort of see the deep burn patch on my chest from the day that we didn't have sunscreen.)
And here we are after our evening out, so much happier. The new Harry Potter would have been a good movie regardless, but after spending our days staring at fields and cows and not seeing any summer movies, it seemed like mindblowingly awesome entertainment. It was an excellent end to a rather awful day, and we'll take any reason to smile we can get.
| posted at: 01:29 |
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Sunday, July 19, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Four |
 |
| 7/19/09 |
| From Garden City, KS |
| To Lamar, CO |
| 113.7 miles |
| 11.3 avg mph |
The best motivation for riding more than 100 miles in one day? Finally getting out of Kansas.
We started before sunrise, sharing the road with what we're pretty sure was a coyote. We spent a few minutes at a truck stop to watch the sun crest the horizon, pose with a sunflower mural (since we're having such difficulty finding real ones), and chuckle knowingly at the fact that there were tourism brochures for every region of Kansas except for the Southeast.
After miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing much (you know the drill), we finally reached a tourist attraction: the famous Sante Fe trail ruts. The Sante Fe Trail was like the Oregon trail, except that the settlers following it either ended up in New Mexico or died of dysentary without a computer game to memorialize them. And here we were, standing near original ruts made by their wagons! Woohoo!
Wait a minute, you may ask, your biggest "tourist attraction" of the day consisted of a rusty fence and a footpath leading to barely visible depressions in some hills? Yes, yes indeed. Once again, welcome to Kansas.
The ruts did give us a chance to think about the amazing boldness and resiliency of those original settlers. We at least know that eventually these lonely, wide open spaces will be replaced by the established comforts of civilization, but the earliest settlers were headed off into the dangerous unknown to start their lives and their towns from scratch. What must they have thought, seeing these expanses for the first time?
If their experience was anything like ours today, they may have thought that the plagues of Pharoah's Egypt were about to rain down on them, starting with the locusts. Ok, maybe the insects were just supersized cicadas or grasshoppers, which is admittedly what they looked like individually:
But I will always think of them as locusts, a plague by the thousands. They emerged in droves from the plants lining the road, coating the shoulder with their milling, mating, leaping bodies. In swift and impossibly high jumps they moved back and forth from field to road, and it was hard not to scream every time one landed on us. The unlucky or uncoordinated found their leaps and their lives cut short by the front tire, which left a trail of smashed and decapitated bodies behind it. Their unsettling infestation lasted for hours and we started to yearn for the uneventful boredom of Kansas that we knew before.
We were thrilled to finally encounter other people: a couple from Oklahoma had stopped their car by the Mountain Time sign and were kind enough to take our photo in front of it. Crossing a time zone line doesn't actually gain us an extra hour, since we're governed by the sun rather than the clock, but progress markers are always welcome.
Farther down the road, several wall murals and a sort of Abe Lincoln cowboy welcomed us to the town of Syracuse.
It was home to what locals told us was "the slowest restaurant in Kansas." Of course they didn't tell us that until after we had sat down, ordered lunch, and waited a very long time for it to appear.
After the long delay we were eager to get back on the road, especially since we were only 15 miles from the border. We started an enthusiastic countdown, cheering and taking a picture at every mile marker. (I didn't bother to post them since a little green number in front of the same boring brush isn't very photogenic). The last interesting things we saw in Kansas were a telephone pole replacement project and a group of curious horses that ran up to their fence to see us.
I was happy to see that four-legged Kansans were as friendly as two-legged ones, but I was even happier to see this sign:
The friendly people of Kansas might be enough to convince me to "Come Again," but it will never, ever, ever be by bicycle.
A few feet up the road was a "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" sign, which we couldn't resist pairing with a sign of our own:
Unfortunately, the world didn't miraculously get better on the other side of the state line, in fact if anything it got worse. Our surroundings still looked like Kansas, but the people weren't as nice, in fact the first ones we met -- two convenience store employees -- were downright bitchy. I don't think I'll be able to handle it if Colorado makes me miss Kansas.
We were happy to roll into Lamar, our destination for the day, especially since it was still light out and we could get under cover before this intimidating cloud started to unleash any rain:
We pulled into a rest area so that Kyle could research hotels while I took photos of a statue and a sample windmill part.
And then we discovered that we had a flat tire, again. It was caused by a metal staple of uncertain origins, again.
Flat tires are inevitable, but having three in as many days is annoyingly above average. When the tire was ready to go again, we rode into town to check out our motel options. Along with seeing another Turkey Hill symbol, this one on a Loaf 'N Jug, we spotted the Holiday Motel, which looked nice enough and advertised "clean rooms" for $45. A quick call to my mom confirmed that online reviews were mostly good, so we inquired about getting a room. The owner personally walked us to the room to let us see how clean it was before we paid, which was pretty impressive. According to the newspaper article in the office, he's a community leader who buys rundown local properties, revamps and revitalizes them, and eventually sells them to other local business people. He's improving the town a few buildings at a time, and the Holiday Motel is one of them. Colorado is looking better already.
| posted at: 01:22 |
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Saturday, July 18, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Three |
 |
| 7/18/09 |
| From Garden City, KS |
| To Garden City, KS via Ingalls, KS |
| 66.1 miles |
| 14.5 avg mph |
Even broken spokes and hail storms have a silver lining: without them we never would have met Rupert at the hotel this morning. He's also bicycling across the country, and is the first person we've met who is making the trip in the same direction we are.
Rupert has lived in Denmark for many years now, but he was born in England and you couldn't ask for someone more perfectly British at first glance: when we met him he was drinking tea and checking cricket scores, and within ten minutes he had said "rubbish" several times. Along with touring this country for the first time, he's putting on impromptu concerts along the way to raise money and awareness for MS, which is even cooler than the fact that he's an English/sports/music/woodworking teacher. He has a blog too, most of which is in English.
Rupert was headed to northern California on a route rather similar to ours, but having to make up the miles from yesterday will keep us a day behind him. Fortunately, we were able to ride together for a few miles through town. We traded dog stories, and in a rather offhand manner he described the time he was struck by lightning while riding. It was really nice to share the road with someone new, but too soon we had to part ways. Rupert headed onward to the west coast while we were stuck riding over sixty miles to end up exactly where we started. I'm sure we'll feel like better people when we make up the miles that Jon carried us yesterday, but still...Sigh.
I believe I've expressed how uneventful Kansan scenery tends to be; imagine having to ride by it twice in one day. I can count on one hand the interesting sites outside of town (unless I have to count each one twice).
There was a farm that raised pheasants for hunters to shoot (Jon explained it to us yesterday).
Also a disturbingly massive feed yard for cattle (can you tell that this area isn't a place for vegetarians?):
And a sign about eight man football, which I'd never heard of but which makes sense if you think about how small school populations must be out here.
We weren't going to be out for very long today, but because of a serious mistake I became worried about every minute. It was supposed to be very overcast all day, so I didn't put on any sunscreen right away. Unfortunately the weather reports lied, and within an hour it was positively blazing. When I went to put on sunscreen I realized that I couldn't -- it was back in the hotel room, where we had left most of our belongings so that we could travel light. Clearly I've built up a solid base tan already, but I still wonder exactly how damaged my skin will be after our roundtrip today.
After we passed Ingalls, we rode several additional miles until we reached a rusting train car that I remembered passing on the bike yesterday. I don't know what it was doing on a hill and not on the railroad tracks, but thank goodness it existed so that we knew we could turn around and head back. The scenery was even more boring the second time around, but we finally made it into town and past its major landmarks: a giant brewery that I thought smelled hideous (I'm not a beer drinker) and a street sign that necessitated a cute photograph.
Thanks to the relatively short distance and light luggage, we made it back in time for a late lunch. We returned to Lonestar, where the bartender made us amazing frozen lemonades that more than made up for her surliness. Back at the hotel Kyle had to fix the flat tire that we'd gotten in the parking lot -- so infuriating -- before he could ride it to the bike shop to see if they could true the wheel and look at cassette and the other problems we've been having. Meanwhile I showered, blogged, and tried to figure out how I was going to get a prescription filled without my new insurance card or a definite idea of when we would reach a given pharmacy.
Kyle returned for dinner at IHOP, including an incredibly friendly waiter who made me a stellar ice cream sundae. It was a good end to a short but annoying day. We look forward to tomorrow, when the miles we ride will actually get us somewhere.
| posted at: 01:22 |
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Friday, July 17, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Two |
 |
| 7/17/09 |
| From Dodge City, KS |
| To Ingalls, KS and Garden City, KS |
| 30.1 miles |
| 10.0 avg mph |
This morning we went on a rapid fire tour of Dodge City, a famous wild west town on the old cattle route and the setting for the show Gunsmoke. By rapid fire I mean I took most of the photos while pedaling.
One thing that I couldn't photograph from the bike was the pretend wild west street -- complete with two saloons -- that cost money to tour. Luckily the fence had large gaps that I could shoot through.
We weren't exceedingly impressed with Dodge City, but it was a pleasant jaunt and we enjoyed being an odd spectacle that distracted tourists from all of the wild west flair. I actually got most excited about two businesses that probably didn't make the tourism brochures: I spotted a Wyatt Earp liquor store that reminded me of The Boondock Saints, and wouldn't you know that the McDonalds had the first tall sunflowers that we've seen in all of Kansas.
Less than twenty miles beyond Dodge we reached Cimarron, and our troubles began. First we got a flat tire; not a big deal in the grand scheme of bike problems, but a pain to fix all the same. We changed it at the edge of someone's front yard in the middle of town, where I got very distracted by a large and beautiful mystery bug who showed no fear of me.
With the flat tire fixed, we continued down the road until we reached a gas station, where we discovered a bigger issue: we had a broken spoke. Unlike a completely flat tire, it is possible to ride with a broken spoke, but it's not a great idea; it makes everything unsteady and soon enough other spokes will break or the tire will have a massive blowout. Regardless, we had to ride on: there was nothing helpful around us, but about 35 miles away was Garden City, which miraculously had a bike shop. If we could just make it there we would be fine.
We made our wobbly way down the road, crossing our fingers and counting the miles. Suddenly a loud shot rang out: in a second our tire was decimated, and we were stranded.
We sighed and got out our phones, planning to call an Enterprise shop that we'd seen on the Garmin. If their slogan was true, they would pick us up and we could drive to Garden City, still 30 miles away. We didn't count on Enterprise being out of vehicles, however. As we were discussing our other options -- which included walking several miles to the town that we could see in the distance, Ingalls, which was probably too small to be of any help -- a state trooper drove up and pulled over beside us. Based on how few cars were on the road, we couldn't believe our good fortune, but it actually wasn't luck that brought him to us. His wife had spotted us earlier and had called him to let him know that a strange tandem bicycle was on the road that he might want to drive out to see. He was expecting to find us cheerily riding along, not beside the road in need of rescue, but he was very eager to help. While he was calling around trying to figure out how to transport the bike and us, a guy in a pickup truck drove up and asked us if he could help out in any way. A few minutes later we had the bike shop address from the trooper and we and the bike were in Jon's truck, headed to Garden City. Sometimes I really do love Kansas.
Jon is in the construction business, so he and Kyle chatted about Leed certification, the relative merits of different concrete mixtures, and other things that I vaguely understood. His latest job was rebuilding a nearby town that was almost completely destroyed by tornadoes, so he also gave us some insight on reading the rapidly changing weather patterns and getting under cover whenever the sky turns green. Without those town-destroying tornadoes, however, most local construction workers wouldn't have any work right now; Jon said that while most issues and trends that start on the coasts fade considerably before they reach the middle of the country, the current economic crisis was a brutal exception. Jon also offered a response for the question that rattles around my head whenever I meet one of these wonderful Kansans: What on earth made you want to live here? Jon talked about the merits of being left alone in "fly over country," including never feeling crowded (after riding through New Jersey I guess I can understand) and never having to deal with real traffic: a bad commute is when he has to drive 65 mph instead of 70, or when there's more than one traffic light in his way.
Not only did Jon get us to Garden City, he also saved us a good deal of money there. Instead of taking us to the regular bike shop, he stopped at his friend Earl's tinker shop.
Inside was a crazy hodgepodge that resembled a garage sale, but Earl knew what he was doing and had treasures in those boxes and piles that he was willing to part with for almost nothing. He went outside with us to look at the wheel, and then dug out four spokes that would fit and sold them to us for a dollar. Amazing.
Jon insisted that we do the repairs back at his house, where he had a workbench and all manner of tools. Kyle was ecstatic to work on the bike in a proper space with proper equipment, instead of making do on the side of the road or in a cramped hotel room. Changing out a spoke is a tricky business, since it needs to be tightened exactly so that the wheel is balanced, or "true." Bike shops have truing stands for the purpose, but Kyle was eventually able to get it close enough to work. Jon was kind enough to invite us to the dinner he and his wife would be cooking in a few hours, but we were going to try to get in some more riding before dark, so we sadly had to turn him down. We said goodbye to our hero and got back on the road.
THANK YOU JON!
We didn't get very far before realizing that staying outside might be a very bad idea. The sky had begun to look very foreboding, and after all our discussion of severe weather we wanted to be on the safe side. We rode to an America's Best Value Inn and used their guest computer to check a weather map, and it didn't look good. We gave in and rented a room for the night, and a good thing too: twenty minutes later it was hailing outside.
Clearly, someone forgot to remind Kansas that IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER. I mean, really, Kansas? Hail?
The hail prevented us from returning to Jon's house and taking him up on his dinner offer after all, but it wasn't a long storm so we eventually made it across the street to Lonestar. Over meat, potatoes, and delicious lemonades, we planned our next move. Both of us felt like we had to ride back to where our tire had blown and make up the miles that Jon had driven us. We just wouldn't feel right knowing that we had ridden our bicycle all the way across the country except for one thirty mile stretch in the middle. We were also both worried that the other person would disagree and argue about how crazy it would be to go backwards, so we were incredibly relieved to find that we were on the same page! We decided that our best bet was to book the hotel room for another night and spend tomorrow just making up the miles, which would be a little over 60 miles round trip and hopefully give us the afternoon and evening off.
For the past few days I've been creating verses of a song called "That's the Magic of Kansas," which chronicles all of the strange and undesirable aspects of the state.
"Ride for hours and the scenery stays the same / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas."
"Fifty long miles between small towns / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas." (Don't forget your jazz hands!)
And now, "Freak hail storms in the middle of summer / That's the magic of Kaaaansaaaaaas."
And while I stand by my dislike for many aspects of the area, today reinforced what we've found to be the true magic of Kansas: the fact that its people are as amazingly friendly and generous as everyone claims they are. Maybe they have to be kind and community-oriented in order to survive in a place with such wide open spaces, low population, and hostile weather; I don't know. But I will always maintain that Kansas has, hands down, the best people in the world.
I just don't understand how they handle the rest of life out here...
| posted at: 01:21 |
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty One |
| 7/16/09 |
| From Hutchinson, KS |
| To Dodge City, KS |
| 139.3 miles! |
| 14.6 avg mph |
Anyone from PA recognize this symbol?
That's right, it's the Turkey Hill symbol, but on a store that is not a Turkey Hill. And this isn't the first time I've seen something like this out west. Apparently Turkey Hill is buying out other convenience stores but changing their symbols and not their names (or vice versa)? I'm not quite sure, but it means that I can drink delicious lemonade that tastes like home.
I literally don't remember anything of note happening until we reached the next gas station hours later, where we chatted with the very friendly cashier. Then it was back on US 50 again for a long stretch of nothing before our next chance to rest.
I hope you weren't expecting anything more exciting. This is Kansas, remember. The highest and (sadly) most interesting points on the landscape were grain elevators, so we used them to play the guess-the-distance-to-that-landmark game again. But we also had our eye on a much more important distance marker: the exact halfway point of our trip, or as near as we could estimate it based on our planned route to Oregon. Conveniently, this midpoint was right near a rest stop with shaded picnic benches. We celebrated with a happy dance (the video exists on a memory card somewhere, but I think it can stay there for now) and a very melted and messy Snickers bar.
Fittingly, our midpoint occurred just before Kinsley, a town equidistant from New York City and San Francisco known as Midway USA.
We didn't make it to the Sod Museum advertised there, but we did see some of Kinsley. We felt we had entered a ghost town, actually, since it was eerily empty and silent for late afternoon. We suspected that everyone was at the fair that was advertised all over, but we were never able to find it. The only business that seemed to be open was the town's only grocery store, which had about six short aisles. Inside, the cashiers and customers were discussing the craziest things they'd ever done, so Kyle shared our current insane endeavor while he picked up apples and bagels for our afternoon snack. Meanwhile, I was outside talking to a man who grew up riding a bicycle everywhere but who hadn't been able to ride one since he lost his leg in a horrible motorcycle accident. I told him about all of the alternative bikes I'd seen that might work for him, and about the racers who pedal faster with their arms than I can with my legs. Hopefully he can find himself a bicycle and rediscover the joy of riding without an engine.
We had considered staying the night in Kinsley, but it was still fairly early, the wind was with us, and the outside of the only motel in town had absolutely nothing to draw us in. It was an easy decision to ride onward. Soon we passed a windmill farm, and hoped it was a sign that the winds in the area were strong and steady and would continue to help us.
With an anxious eye on the storms brewing to the south, we decided to push the whole way to Dodge City, an incredible feat even with the wind to our backs. I was highly motivated, however, by the promise of a La Quinta hotel room, in fact I sang rhyming odes to La Quinta most of the way there. We made it to the hotel around sunset, even though we were forced to detour around an extensive construction project. I couldn't believe the odometer: before this trip I had never ridden more than 80 miles in a day, and today we were just shy of 140.
The universe seemed eager to reward our efforts. When we asked the woman at the front desk for a first floor room so that we wouldn't have to carry the bicycle upstairs, she informed us that the only first floor room available was an executive suite... and that she would be happy to upgrade us to it for free! For the price of a standard King room we got one with much more size and swankiness (and an extra flat screen TV, just in case). More happy dances ensued.
The outside of the La Quinta, complete with a relaxing fountain, was nice as well.
Though I wasn't so sure about the Suicide Suite on the highest floor. (I only kid, La Quinta. You know I adore you, even with your dangerous doors to nowhere.)
Next to the hotel was a family restaurant with a wild west theme (what else?) where we had heaping plates of reasonably good pasta. Tomorrow morning we'll get to see the rest of famous Dodge City, or as much as we can take in quickly and for free. Yee Haw.
| posted at: 01:20 |
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty |
| 7/15/09 |
| Break Day in Hutchinson, KS |
I really love libraries. We spent most of today in a rather nice one, alternating between blogging and reading Lance Armstrong's It's
Not About the Bike
(yes, exactly like we did in Effingham) and it made me incredibly happy. Our lunch at Subway was rather subpar, especially since the All Kansans Are Friendly rule apparently doesn't extend to their employees, but at least the cookies were as delicious as usual.
We were waiting for the bike shop across the street to finish their work, which we thought would include a much needed chain replacement. Unfortunately they informed us that it would make no sense to replace the chain without replacing the cassette (as a ragged cassette like ours would quickly tear up a new chain) and they didn't have the parts for our odd bicycle. We couldn't wait for them to be shipped in, so we had them clean the bike and fix a few minor problems and just hoped for the best. Kyle was also finally able to replace his old helmet with a snazzy new one that made me a bit jealous. I also longingly browsed the cruiser bikes, but I think if I ever bought one I would feel like a traitor.
By the time we finished at the bike shop, the salt mine and most of the museums were closed. So much for our tourist plans. Instead we decided to go out for a nice dinner and a movie, a plan that failed miserably. The movie theater was located in what we eventually dubbed The Worst Mall Ever, complete with theme song. (the only lyrics were "the worst mall ever," but I think it was pretty catchy all the same.) it was nearly impossible to access as a pedestrian, and the inside was incredibly empty and depressing. I say this having seen far too much of it, since we wrongly assumed that we could access the theater from within the mall and wandered all around it before realizing we would have to make a long loop around it outside, and in the rain no less. When we finally made it to the box office, it was packed with people waiting to see the new harry potter, which was the only movie we wanted to see. Even though we had just run the gauntlet to get there we decided that we'd rather see Harry Potter in a theater that was less depressing and less crowded, so we headed back through the rain the way we came to find dinner.
We ended up at Chili's, which turned out to be an even worse decision than touring The Worst Mall Ever. Our waiter was very charming in an awkward sort of way, but we had to wait so long for our food to arrive that we consumed two giant bowls of chips and cheesy dip. Then we had a three course meal deal from a menu that included only absurdly unhealthy options. We were fit to burst by the time the dessert shooters arrived, but they tasted the best of everything we'd had so we couldn't resist finishing them too. I don't know what we were thinking.
The long walk back and the stop at Target for ziplock bags nearly killed me, and when we finally made it back to the hotel room we just collapsed on the bed and groaned for a few hours. I'm betting my first meal at Chili's will also be my last; I just hope we recover by tomorrow. To make matters worse, we noticed on our way in that the hotel had a laundry room that we could have used last night or all day today, but now it would be too late for everything to dry. Very frustrating. But on the other hand we also finally found the switch for the main light; we had gone through yesterday thinking they had just gone overboard on the mood lighting. We felt rather stupid all around as we drifted off to sleep.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Nine |
| 7/14/09 |
| From El Dorado, KS |
| To Hutchinson, KS |
| 80 miles |
| 12 avg mph |
I started the day with a panic attack. We were riding through town, still half asleep, when suddenly a chorus of angry barks broke the early morning calm. Our heads snapped to the right, where a dozen snarling rottweilers were sprinting alongside us. I shrieked before registering that a deteriorating metal fence currently separated my flesh from their teeth, and I stayed in a state of gasping, shaking terror for a good quarter mile until I could finally see that the fence turned a corner and completely enclosed the pack of dogs and whatever they were guarding.
Well, I did want more excitement from Kansas.
True to form, the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Uneventful and blazing hot. Even though the winds have remained in our favor (though unfortunately not as strong as yesterday), I constantly have to fight the fear that we will never escape Kansas. The state's tourism motto is "Kansas: As Big As You Think." (I'm serious; you can google it.) I've never heard a more honest advertisement. Kansas is as big as we expected... and as hot, flat, boring, and empty. We had outrageously negative expectations for Kansas' topography and weather, and it has managed to fulfill if not exceed them all.
We've also had to fight with the bike itself. Over the past few days its machinery has become increasingly stubborn, shaky, and noisy. The brakes stick, the chain is jerky, and a part that we can't identify makes an awful clanging noise from time to time. Fortunately Hutchinson, our destination for the day, has a bike shop, probably the last one before we reach the heart of Colorado.
Making everything worse today was the fact that the town that we expected to hit 12 miles in didn't appear until past the 20 mile mark. Someone, ahem, had apparently read the map incorrectly. (Okay, and someone else hadn't bothered to consult the map at all.) As you might expect, there weren't many towns on our route, and we valued every one of them for their cold drinks and kind people. I was excited to stop at a mechanic/convenience store/restaurant in the middle of nowhere where we were greeted by this guy:
But the happy mood dissipated a bit when the guy behind the counter told us the story of a young couple whose cross-country bicycle trip ended when the Kansan winds blew them into a car and almost killed them. Great.
After another long and depressing stretch we had lunch in the very small town of Whitewater. As we waited for our sandwiches we had a good time reading the local newspaper and chuckling as the locals made fun of the lack of newsworthy happenings in town. Our next major stop was Newton, where we ran into Amanda, Nick, Doug, and John: a group of friends about our age crossing the country the other direction. Like all cross country cyclists passing in the night -- or the middle of the day -- we traded information and advice. Amanda had apparently run out of water earlier in the day, and eventually the heat had driven her to drink from a water source clearly marked non-potable. We wished her stomach luck and made sure to stock up on fluids before heading out of town.
Back on the road it was hotter than ever. We were carrying enough water to avoid Amanda's fate, but my head felt ready to split open and I worried that heatstroke was in my near future. Eventually I just collapsed under a massive tree in someone's front yard (the only tree for miles around, of course) and stayed there until I started to feel stable. Miserable, but stable. When we finally reached the town of Buhler we did everything we could to cool down, from riding through a sprinkler to downing a large milkshake and a 44 oz lemonade each with our dinner at the local diner. We met more friendly people, including a couple who had moved there from Conshohoken PA and a fellow bike guy who gave us his business card in case anything went wrong. It was apparently just a good day for meeting people, starting with the hotel lobby this morning: while eating a meager complimentary breakfast beside a cactus named Pedro Pete, we were approached by a well-traveled woman handing out hotel coupons and a friendly couple from Security, Colorado named Brenda and Mike. Even the people just visiting Kansas are great; if the populated areas were much, much closer together I would actually enjoy this state. Especially places like Buhler, one of those charming Western towns with a sense of legitimacy despite the tourist attractions.
I wanted to wander the Buhler streets a bit, but there were giant storm clouds on the horizon and we needed to get moving. While I would have welcomed cloudy skies and cool rain in lieu of the hot sun, I didn't think we'd be lucky enough to have a brief storm without lightning. Unfortunately, I was right, and we were soon trying to outrun a vicious one. The rain caught up to us quickly but we made it to the outskirts of Hutchinson before the lightning did. Ducking under the awning of an antique and curiosity store apparently specializing in animal skulls, we called Kyle's father to get more information on the storm. It looked too close to call on the weather map, but luckily we spotted a state trooper up the road and decided to ask him for information. He told us that there wasn't really any shelter before Hutchinson proper, but that was only five miles away and he thought we could make it. Fortunately he was right, and the storm stayed south long enough for us to make it safely to the hotel.
More friendly faces awaited us there, in this case the very eager children of the hotel receptionist. They asked us all about the bike and told us all about tornadoes, rodeos, and car races. I couldn't care less about whatever version of Nascar they were talking about, but I would like to see a rodeo while we're out west, and by necessity we're becoming very interested in severe weather patterns. Plus they were pretty cute.
We eventually escaped to our spacious room to shower, and then spent the rest of the evening watching house buying shows from bed, good therapy for those wandering far from home. We also researched some of the local attractions, which include a salt mine and several museums. The visit to the bike shop tomorrow means we have to take a day off, and we can't wait.
| posted at: 01:18 |
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Monday, July 13, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Eight |
| 7/13/09 |
| From Iola, KS |
| To El Dorado, KS |
| 92.4 miles |
| 12.2 avg mph |
On a theoretical level I was excited to be traveling to El Dorado, since it offered various opportunities for me to quote one of my favorite animated movies, The
Road to El Dorado
(see entry title). I found out that around here they pronounce it with a long A, just like back in NevAda, but I could still pretend that I was traveling with Miguel and Tulio.
Unfortunately our day began miserably. We got a late start because we were trying to wait out the rain, but eventually we gave up and ventured out into the wet and the cold. We started arguing about what to do about the weather and when to stop, and for the rest of the morning every conversation we began seemed to end in mutual irritation and silence. We eventually resolved to hit reset on the day and leave our quarreling behind us with the rain, which had been replaced by blazing sunshine. Unfortunately, our surroundings refused to improve with our mood. In fact they refused to change at all. If you'd like to experience our bike ride through Kansas for yourself, hop on a stationary bike, turn up the heat in your house to blistering, and stare at this photograph for about 9 hours straight.
Occasionally a herd of cows would start walking in a long line, and every few hours we'd see a dead armadillo on the side of the road, but that was the extent of the visual variety. We devised new alphabet games: "Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Biking Across Kansas" and "Places That Are Hotter Than Here." We also made bets on how far away a given landmark was (and by landmark I mean one of the Flint hills, since as I may have mentioned there was nothing else to see). Our guesses were short by as many as fifteen miles, so eventually the game became too depressing to play.
Kansas also gave us a new riding rule: Stop under every shade-giving tree available, because it may be the last one available for hours. I think at this point we had a shaded tree *and* a view of walking cows; you can imagine our elation.
What I really wanted to see were the famous giant sunflowers that were supposed to take over miles of fields throughout Kansas. So far this small field of equally small flowers is the best we've seen, but under the circumstances I was pretty excited:
Then it was back to fields and cows and brush and fields and cows and brush and fields and cows and brush and ooooh look some hay bales! and fields and cows and... I would say "you get the idea," but honestly I think it's impossible to convey the extent of the openness and nothingness and the effect that it has on your mental and emotional state, especially when you're watching the prairie and fields pass by in slow motion from the seat of an exhausting bicycle. Any break, especially a building with cold water and a bathroom, was cause for major celebration. We knew that a rest area was on our route today, but I was still overwhelmed with relief when we saw that it was indeed right where the map had promised it would be. As a bonus there was a very nice couple in an RV at the stop, the first people we had talked to since the early morning. Pat and Butch gave us bottles of water and granola bars and enthusiastically asked us all about the bike and the trip. They were headed to El Dorado as well, and even offered to let us stay the night in their RV. We already had a hotel plan -- and figured at a hotel we could take the long showers we needed without using up all of the hot water available -- but really appreciated the offer. As we all get ready to leave, they asked if there was anything else they could do, and I managed to keep from asking them to drive a hundred miles down the road and wait for us so that I could have a bathroom and sun cover when we made it that far.
We expected to see essentially nothing until we reached El Dorado, and for the most part we were right. But then, deep in the midst of hot, boring, barren nothingness, we spotted an oasis. I actually worried that I was hallucinating, but there it was, nothing visible around it for miles and miles: The Lizard Lips Grill and Deli.
As you might have guessed from the sign, this grill and deli was also a gas station, a convenience store, a movie rental place, a license center, a bait and tackle shop, and the county junction. It clearly operated on the general store model: multi-functionality squeezed into a building not much bigger than a two car garage. As we waited for our sandwiches we noticed several interesting signs: an advertisement for peacocks for sale, an intimidating number of "Don't Bother or Complain to The Cook" warnings, and a prominently displayed board listing everyone who had tried to pay with a bad check. I was also distracted for quite some time by a hummingbird just outside the window who refused to stay still for a photo.
It was hard to leave the Lizard Lips oasis, but it became instantly easier when we realized that a strong tail wind was blowing. We jumped on the bike and felt the wind carry us along as the miles sped by. After a while we saw a series of signs with picnic benches on them, and thought that our luck was getting even better since they must mark another unexpected rest stop. Unfortunately we were wrong -- it was literally just a turnoff with a collection of picnic benches and nothing else, something that would only merit signs in Kansas -- but so long as the wind was carrying us along we didn't really care. Flying on a tail wind is always an exhilarating feeling, but in the middle of empty Kansas in the middle of a grueling cross-country trek the feeling is nearly indescribable. As we pulled up to the hotel, I realized that today was the first time on the trip that riding made me happier than finishing, the first time that I would have eagerly climbed back on the bike after we had reached our destination for a fun jaunt around town. I can't believe that it happened in Kansas, but it did. We even called Dave to get a weather and map report, to see if we could ride the tailwind all the way to the next town, but when it wasn't feasible we found we were also happy to check into the hotel, enjoy long showers, and go out to dinner at the vibrant Mexican restaurant across the street.
Playa Azule was delightful, and we returned to the room very content. Then I checked my email to discover that I had been offered an interview for a community college teaching job that I definitely wanted. It killed me to have to write back that I was currently in the middle of Kansas and wouldn't be making it back to the east coast in quite a long time. They don't do phone interviews, and I highly doubt the position will still be open when we return. This trip is eating up a good deal of our funds already, and now I'm turning down a job opportunity for it...the physical sacrifices were bad enough! I really hope that we make it across and always feel like the journey was worth it, because we're going through and giving up a great deal to get there.
| posted at: 01:16 |
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Seven |
| 7/12/09 |
| From Nevada, MO |
| To Iola, KS |
| 60 miles |
Nevada was a nice looking town by the light of day, with cheery storefronts, lifelike wall murals, and a town hall that resembled a castle.
So we started off in a good enough mood, even though we were headed into Kansas, the state we've been dreading since the beginning. We've heard many horrible descriptions from people who have traveled across it. It's not that the traffic is bad (in fact, there's hardly any) or that the people are awful (in fact, they're notoriously friendly, when you see them). But Kansas is known as "fly over country" for a reason: it is dreadfully boring to look at. People we know who drove across it complain about how mindnumbing their trips were, and we'll be toiling across it for days instead of hours. The less populated parts of Missouri had nearly bored us out of our minds, and by all accounts it was about to get worse.
Kyle faked a smile as Kansas welcomed us into barren prairies and tornado country.
Fortunately, our trip across the plains today was broken up by a visit to Fort Scott. It was a cheery Western tourist town, and we loved it. We didn't see much of the fort itself, since entering the buildings required money, but I was very content to wander the town. There was a lot to see, especially for Kansas.
We ate lunch at a diner packed with fun locals, then stopped by the fort entrance to ask the rangers what lay ahead of us. They were wonderfully friendly but bore unwelcome news: it would be many hours before we saw another building with a bathroom, much less a populated town.
We reluctantly got back on the very, very, very open road.
For the rest of the afternoon the only points of interest were a spider that had camouflaged itself against the guard rail reflector...
...and a silo tower covered in names; we joked that it must keep track of everyone who had ever lived in the area. Not that we saw any signs of a town, you understand, but we could just glimpse a farmhouse or two far off in the distance, and somebody had to be using the gas station that we detoured far down this road to find.
We were unbelievably relieved to finally reenter a slice of civilization, which in this case meant a road that had a gas station and several stores on it. I have developed a love of gas stations that I never expected to have. They have bathrooms, they have giant slushies, and they usually offer a shaded corner somewhere where I can lay down with a balled up shirt for a pillow and be utterly content. While I was sprawled on the ground at this particular gas station, a teenage boy and his mother, looking Kansan from head to toe, came over to ask me about the bike. They were so friendly and interested that I didn't mind being disturbed by them at all. Meanwhile, inside the gas station Kyle was seriously impressing a group of little boys with his cycling stories, and when they came out after him they were tugging on their parents' arms and pointing excitedly at us. I love the people here.
But I'm not so fond of where they live. We couldn't decide whether it was good or bad that not all of Kansas was as flat as its reputation; climbing hills in the heat, even moderately sized ones, is never fun, but at least they broke up the landscape ever so slightly. After some of the longest 60 miles I have ever ridden, we finally reached Iola, which was actually a fairly large town. We were so starving (and, I think, starved for the signs of civilization and commercialization that we usually hate) that we stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner and then packed up the extra breadsticks in the trunk and rode down the street to WalMart to buy what Kyle needed to give the bike a proper cleaning. As usual I guarded the bike while Kyle bought supplies, and in what is also becoming usual a slightly crazy WalMart patron struck up a conversation with me. She was nice enough though, and finally Kyle emerged with $1 little girl tights (to cut into rags), an equally cheap bowl (to catch the grease) and the smallest bottle of dish detergent available (which was still far more than we would need). We finally rode to the hotel and settled in. Kyle cleaned the bike, I took care of things on the computer, and we both fell asleep dreading the next day's 90 mile ride through the Kansan heat.
| posted at: 01:16 |
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Six |
| 7/11/09 |
| From Clinton, MO |
| To Nevada, MO |
| 86.3 miles |
| 10.9 avg mph |
Before leaving Clinton we stopped at the town bike shop, which was actually a lawnmower and saw shop that happened to be owned by cycling enthusiasts who kept a few bike parts in the back. They didn't have much of a selection -- Kyle couldn't even get a helmet to replace his rapidly deteriorating one -- but they certainly had expertise and enthusiasm. The owner showed Kyle the best route across the rest of Missouri while I spoke with his mother and wife. Mother and son are regular tandem bicycle partners, so we discussed the joys and drawbacks of tandem touring, including the difficulty of getting men to understand our bathroom needs.
We were thrilled to be back on the pavement, but we knew today's ride would take us through long stretches of nothing interesting, and I dreaded the tedium. Luckily when Kyle heard about the alphabet games I had been playing in my head he suggested a collaborative one: we went through the alphabet, and for each letter one of us chose a person from our distant past and shared a story about them. My favorite story was about Kyle's childhood playmate whose claim that the Foot Clan (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was hiding in her backyard led to a major drug bust. We made it through the alphabet twice and we were still surrounded by nothing. Eventually we arrived in Montrose, and had to yield to a tractor that was hauling an entire tree down the main street out of town.
It was by far the most interesting thing we saw there.
Ten miles down the road was Appleton, which was teeming with people out for a big car show. As we rode by, a tattooed man with a toothy grin called us back so that he could take a picture. He was a bike and car enthusiast, so we talked to him about the bike construction for a bit before heading down the road for lunch. We were two of four customers in the Dari-burg, which featured delicious handformed hamburgers, a nice waitress who let us fill up all of our bottles with ice water, and art made out of saws.
We rode on and eventually hit a major highway. It had a wide shoulder, but it's still terrifying to ride any road with a 70 mph speed limit. Over the roaring of the traffic we started to hear a strange clanking from the trailer, and discovered that its tire was flat. Surprised that the back most tire would be the one to flat, we pulled off on a road that turned to dirt and leaned the bike against the fence surrounding a horse paddock.
As we were changing the tube and examining the extra large staple that had caused the problem, two girls in bathing suits ran over and started working one of the horses. They seemed shy and content to ignore us, so at first we did the same, but then their younger brother rode up on a pink hand-me-down bike. That kid didn't have a shy bone in his body, so soon all five of us were fast friends. The girls told us all about their horses, though their brother kept interrupting to ask us questions, talk about his own bike riding, and invite us to visit them "next time," which he said at least twenty times. I was beginning to worry about his social development until I discovered that he just looked much older than his six years. Since we were desperate to avoid more highway driving, we made the mistake of asking children for directions. Based on what they knew about the dirt road that passed their house, Kyle was fairly sure it would take us where we needed to go. The kids grabbed their bikes and raced us around the corner -- which was as far as their parents allowed them to travel -- and we waved goodbye to them, the horses, and the last signs of civilization we would see for a while.
The road did take us in the right direction, but it was long, dusty, and deserted. The rough surface made us feel like we were back on the Katy trail, except without shade or signs of life. And when we did finally encounter life, we really wished we hadn't. Lurking outside of a storage shed -- the only building we saw on the entire road -- were two large, intimidating dogs. One had a growth protruding from the side of his neck, as if he had just swallowed a softball, and both looked ready for a chase that we would undoubtedly lose. We got off the bike as quietly and calmly as we could and stood on the other side of it as they began to trot casually toward us. Hoping they would find us uninteresting and nonthreatening, we started slowly walking away; Kyle pulled the bike along and murmured soothing words to the dogs while I focused very hard on not panicking. I refused to get back on the bike until we were completely out of their sight, and I still stole a few glances backwards just to make sure they weren't silently pursuing us.
The dirt road seemed to stretch on forever, and now I felt vulnerable as well as bored. We finally saw a crossroads up ahead, and sank back into depression when we saw that the intersecting road was dirt as well. We kept riding, not completely sure that our dusty, difficult, mind-numbing path would ever link up with a main road. Our relief when it finally did was immense, and we would have happily hopped back on the busy highway, but fortunately Kyle found an old main road that had been superseded by the highway and so was now nearly deserted. After a day of dirt, brush, and farms, it was the height of scenery, including a bridge with a view and a giant mushroom.
After another 86 mile day, we arrived in Nevada, MO. Don't confuse it with the state, in fact don't even pronounce it like the state: we learned from the locals that it's Neh-vay-dah, with a long A in the middle.
I was just glad they had a Subway open late.
| posted at: 01:02 |
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Friday, July 10, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Five |
| 7/10/09 |
| From Booneville, MO |
| To Clinton, MO |
| 82.3 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
 |
Never before had both of us so dreaded getting on the bike in the morning. We were ruined from yesterday and utterly sick of the trail. Somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of the hotel around sunrise, and rode around an industrial park for a while trying to find the back way to the trail that the very friendly manager had told us about. We groaned as we finally rolled onto the crushed limestone.
Kyle was especially hurting, so we decided to switch and have me captain for a while. It was a miserable 25 miles, (yes, I'm pathetic) though not quite as bad as facing that Ohio headwind. It was admittedly fun to captain when we were careening down the trail at a good pace, but most of the ride was a slow struggle, fighting against the surface and the slight but steady incline. I'm becoming more confident and controlled, but I still tend to veer and over-correct sometimes, so Kyle took to chastizing me in a British accent whenever I wandered towards the wrong side. (It made sense and seemed hilarious at the time.) Neither my bad steering nor Kyle's antics mattered much, since we saw very few people on the trail all day. The predicted rain never arrived, but apparently it scared other cyclists away. We could tell that no one was ahead of us when we had to clear large pieces of a fallen tree from the path.
For the record, I tried to clear the tree first as part of my captain duties, but failed miserably at it. Apparently I should spend my stoker time doing arm exercises.
It was around this time that the lens on the small camera decided to malfunction, so even when I switched back to stoker I couldn't take any photos while riding (the DSLR is too bulky, heavy, and expensive for me to hold comfortably when we're pedaling). Not that the trail offered endless variety for me to photograph. Finally we reached the old railway depot and I got a break and a camera in my hands.
We wandered around the train station store for a while and struck up a conversation with the friendly woman behind the counter. We were concerned about the storms threatening on the western horizon, and wondered if we should get off the trail before its end and find a hotel for the night. She was incredibly helpful, looking up the weather and digging out all sorts of maps. She even found one that showed traffic volume, which helped us plan a route for the days ahead. Then her friend came by and gave us free Stealth Bomber pins. It seemed like a good souvenir idea, so I also bought a tandem bicycle pin.
And then it was back to the Katy for more uphill miles on limestone. Ugg.
As we came to one of the trail's frequent bridges, an aggressive but tiny dog ran towards us, yipping its little head off. One of a pair of ditzy teenage girls -- the kind who usually own tiny, overgroomed dogs -- ran after it and scooped the thing up. She was very apologetic, perhaps because every few miles on the Katy Trail are signs strictly prohibiting unleashed dogs, "even obedience school graduates." We said it was fine, finished crossing the bridge, and went on our way. Apparently the owner had a very short memory or very weak arms, because less than a minute later we heard a familiar yipping as the dog chased after us. I'll admit that a small part of me wanted to stop, pick up the dog, and punt it back to its owner, or at least carry it back to her with a "My human is an idiot" sign tied to its tail. But we were confident that we could easily outdistance it, so we simply pedaled faster. And faster. And faster. The tiny dog kept pace with us, even at 25 mph. I was astounded; I have never seen little dog legs go that fast. I was about to squirt it with my water bottle when it finally gave up and headed back towards the high pitched screeches of its owner.
At least it broke the monotony and increased our pace.
As our misery and frustration were reaching their height, we were apparently reaching the height of the trail. We had felt the slight incline wearing us down all day, but the path was still flat enough that there was no way to determine the "peak" until we read the sign.
From there it was only 20 miles to the finish, and we felt every last one of them. We had a little celebration at the final trail sign before remembering that we still had to ride through town; once again it was almost sunset when we reached the hotel, a Best Western that was filled with boats -- and quite overpriced -- due to its proximity to the lake. Fortunately it was just down the road from a homestyle restaurant with giant portions, and as we drifted off to sleep we could take solace in the fact that tomorrow we would be soaring along on smooth pavement instead of crushed limestone.
But even though we're deliriously happy to leave the trail, something tells me we'll look back more fondly on it later; we might just miss the shade and the quiet when we're thrust back onto the open road.
Farewell, Katy. There was a time when we didn't hate you.
| posted at: 12:29 |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Four |
| 7/09/09 |
| From Hermann, MO |
| To Boone, MO |
| 106 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
It was a beautiful morning on the Katy Trail. We rode past seemingly endless cornfields, hazy blue mountains just visible in the distance. Dragonflies danced alongside us and somewhere close cicadas sang to each other. Other insects joined the celebration of summer warmth and natural life and OUCH! OW! Damn it, where did all of these giant bugs come from and why do they keep hitting me?
Very quickly we became miserable and cursed ourselves for forgetting bug spray. Some of the assailants were painful biters, while others just flew into us, either poor pilots or aggressive fighters who greatly miscalculated our relative sizes. Even worse than being beset by a horde of bugs? Riding along in the pleasant shade of the forest and, without any warning, getting a spider web square in the face. We would inhale pieces, flail awkwardly to try to wipe it off... it was exceptionally unpleasant, especially the third or fourth time it happened. Enduring the heat, the insect life, and the long, flat trail, we both started going a little crazy. Kyle didn't feel like talking, so I tried to distract myself with mental games: trying to remember passages I memorized in high school, going through the alphabet and coming up with a book I wanted to read for each letter... anything I could think of to NOT think about the bike and the heat and the bugs and the miles left to ride. Those miles may have been the worst part: today was going to be a long day, since we had to cover over 100 miles, and we had to do it on crushed limestone, which significantly cut our speed. The thought frequently made us want to cry.
We also had to watch out for trail washouts caused by the recent storms, leaving behind giant holes and extra rocky terrain.
I'm not sure I can describe how much we both desperately wanted to be done with the trail. But always to our left were the mountains with their high climbs and the main road full of cars, reminding us to be thankful for what we had. So we sighed and got on with it...very, very reluctantly.
Despite the distance we needed to cover, we still made sure to stop for lunch. The winery was picturesque, but inexpensive food options were limited and it took far too long for our salads to make it to the table.
We also stopped at every bathroom area available to rest on the benches and attempt to preserve our sanity.
At one of these stops we were fortunate enough to meet Dan and Lou. They provided us with delicious apples, questions about our trip, and plenty of stories of their own: she used to be a correctional officer in a men's prison and he was a bridge engineer and Vietnam veteran. Now retired, they were driving from Florida to various points around the country in their truck. They were also absolutely delightful, and showed up just when we needed a break.
A few stops later Kyle, of course, found a canine friend. They even made the same face.
Also breaking up the miserable monotony were interesting sights like a dredging boat:
Standing Rock, which marks the levels of all of Missouri's major floods (as early as 1903):
and a water fountain with a ridiculously long range:
That's right, we got *really excited* about dredging, a rock, and a water fountain. It was that kind of day.
All of those photos of us were timer self-shots, by the way, because we hardly saw anyone on the trail for most of the day. Suddenly in the late afternoon a veritable pelaton of cyclists passed by, heralding our reentry into cyclist civilization. I don't think we would have had the energy to finish today's ride in time if we hadn't spotted several cyclists going our way and decided that we must race each and every one of them, whether they knew they were in a race or not. We didn't always win, but at least these spurts of speed got us into better position for our final and most important contest: a race with the setting sun. Legally we needed to exit the trail before it got dark, and we cut it very close. We sped past farm fields as the sun set, emerging from the trail just as it sunk below the horizon.
We were off the trail and had ridden over a hundred miles, but we still weren't finished for the night. Downtown Boone was a charming combination of old buildings and sparkling lights, but unfortunately it didn't have any reasonably priced hotels.
So we had to get back on the bike, bypass several tempting restaurants, climb a massive hill overlooking a rousing softball game, and after several more miles finally reached a Comfort Inn. A hop (over a retaining wall), skip (down a steep hill) and jump (over another wall) away was a truck stop with a Wendy's, where along with my hamburger I enjoyed a giant gourmet milkshake that according to the nutrition facts chart was over 1000 calories. I'm not sure how that's even possible, but I went to bed very satisfied.
| posted at: 12:29 |
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Three |
| 7/8/09 |
| From Ferguson, MO |
| To Hermann, MO |
| 88.9 miles |
| 10.6 avg mph |
 |
We were reluctant to leave the Vosses this morning, but the open road called... and told us that if we didn't get riding again we weren't going to make it across the country in time. Our plan for the day demonstrated one of the many benefits of staying with locals: they know all the best routes. We had originally planned to take various roads across Ozark Mountains, having no idea that we could instead take the Katy Trail, over 200 miles without cars or steep inclines that partially follows the path of Lewis and Clark. To get there we rode around a picturesque waterway and surrounding park that were just starting to fill with kayaks, crew teams, soccer players, and runners. More reasons to move to the St. Louis area, if only it wasn't out in the midwest.
When we hit the Katy Trail I was delighted to discover that it offered bathrooms at regular intervals. Unfortunately they were toilets set over deep but rarely emptied pits, and I gagged horribly at the smell of the first one I ventured into. Some were better, but it was usually advisable to avoid breathing anywhere near them. But you're probably not here to read about disgusting bathrooms, so I'll distract you with the tiny, tiny frogs that we found outside of one.
Look at that little guy compared to the bolt. So tiny!
The trail also offered fairly regular food stops. We got a mid-morning snack from the icecream freezer at a bike shop and tried not to laugh too hard at the tourists getting used to their rental bikes, then a few hours later we had lunch at Dutzow Deli, which lived up to its German name with delicious pretzels and meat items. They were very possessive about their bathrooms, newspapers, and ice -- signs listing the regulations were the primary decorations -- but otherwise it was a nice place and a welcome rest from the heat and the dirt outside.
It was an especially warm day, and we sighed with relief whenever the trail turned away from farm fields and into the forest, where we would be shaded by dense trees and towering walls of sandstone.
Apparently Lewis almost plunged to his death while exploring one of the tallest of these cliffs, but managed to lodge his knife into a crevice of the rock and hang on to save himself. I hope he looked exactly like this depiction from one of the informative signs:
The part of the trail that intersected with Lewis and Clark's route was full of these historical markers, plus each bathroom area featured displays about local history and ecology along with a detailed map of the route and surrounding towns. Here I am in front of one, lamenting the fact that Kyle refused to be in any more of my self-shots today (oops).
We also passed the Daniel Boone Judgment Tree Memorial, a humble affair just off the trail in the midst of a farm field. Apparently after attaining celebrity status Boone settled down in the area and served as a respected administrator and judge, despite his lack of legal training. There is an actual tree planted there to celebrate some anniversary of the Boones' arrival, but I was more interested in the flowers and maps.
Another benefit of the trail was the prospect of meeting touring cyclists like ourselves, or so we thought. We quickly discovered that most people who appeared to be on long-distance tours had just embarrassingly overpacked (and from me this is really saying something). Many were carrying as much gear as we were... for a few days on the trail. One of these heavily laden groups actually had experience with longer trips, and all four of them thought that we were absolutely crazy to be traveling east to west. One who had crossed the country west to east described the 45 mph tail wind that had carried him effortlessly for a day or two, and laughingly wished us luck fighting against it coming the other way. They acted like we were choosing to contend with the hounds of hell when we could have just been carried swiftly across the country by a fleet of sweetly singing cherubims. After we left the annoyingly cynical group, I asked Kyle why on earth he hadn't mentioned these drastic wind trends when we were deciding which direction to travel (trying very hard not to sound bitter and accusatory). He contended that the wind has an unpredictable mind of its own (true), that the wind rumors were exaggerated (probably true), and that we would almost certainly end up with as many favorable wind days as unfavorable ones (we'll see).
To be honest, my favorite fellow trail traveler was this guy, making his way very gradually across the road:
He was an excellent reminder that slow and steady wins the race, or at least gets us to the coast. Hopefully he actually made it across.
We had to climb a hill to get into town, of course, but it was the only one we had been dealt all day. We checked into a motel and then ate at a diner whose food was less spectacular than its ceiling, which was covered with dollars raised for a local family in need. Then it was off to bed for a good night's sleep before continuing our slow and steady journey the next day.
| posted at: 12:16 |
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty Two |
| 7/7/09 |
| Rest Day in the St Louis, MO area |
With a borrowed car, a list of sites, and the energy that comes with sleeping late, we were more than ready to tour St Louis. We spent most of the day in Forest Park, which houses several museums and the zoo. We spent some time enjoying the park and pond, the water and the wildlife.
I've been trying to photograph egrets for the past few days, by the by, and this was the first one that remained still long enough for me to get my camera ready. It was a good start to the morning. What most caught our attention, however, were the fifty kids on bicycles circling the pond. They were part of a young triathlon camp, which is one of the coolest ideas I've ever heard. I really hope our future children want to attend because they may not be given much choice.
We made our way across the park to the St Louis Art Museum, heralded by a giant statue of King Louis himself.
The museum's collection was fantastic and wide-ranging.
Breaking of the Vessels by Anselm Kiefer. Inspired by the Kabbalah.
Box Candy by John Chamberlain
New Continent by Louise Nevelson
January, December, November by Gerhard Richter. A reflection on communist East Germany.
And the space itself was equally impressive.
Berlin Room
German Expressionism Room
When Kyle started to go into culture overload we headed across the park to the zoo. I've always enjoyed zoos, especially with a camera in hand.
Penguins were clearly my favorite, especially the one playing with the guy cleaning his little house.
Unfortunately some of the zoo animals just made us sad, like the black bear whose dead eyes and listless, repetitive head movements made him look animatronic.
The grizzly bear was also unhappy with his small living space, but he reacted by pacing back and forth, whipping his head around at each turn. He was the epitome of pent up rage, and I've never felt so much simultaneous pity and terror.
We probably should have ended our visit with the frolicking penguins instead.
After the zoo, we headed to the university section of downtown. Thanks to Big Shark's Bike Shop we picked up a much needed wrench of some kind (I think it's clear that I'm not the mechanically inclined one) for a few dollars. Then it was off to Fitz's, a colorful restaurant and rootbeer brewery.
The rootbeer wasn't quite as delicious as I'd hoped, but the floats were amazing.
We headed back to the Voss home very content after our relaxing day out but also very sad that we had to pack up for an early departure. We really wanted to stay with them an extra day (or week) but our recent worries about the west have made us more concerned than ever about staying on schedule. So tomorrow we have to leave St. Louis, our wonderful hosts, and this relaxing and stationary existence. :-(
| posted at: 10:18 |
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Monday, July 06, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty One |
| 7/6/09 |
| From Greenville, IL |
| To Ferguson, MO |
| 70.3 miles |
| 10.8 avg mph |
I started off the day by losing the "school or prison" game, the one where you guess whether a new, fancy building is a school or a prison. You fooled me, Federal Correctional Institution of Greenville. I could have sworn that those search lights were for a football field.
My next discovery of the day was that Gretchen Wilson was born in Pocahontas IL, population 850. I didn't initially recognize the name, but Kyle has long tormented me with her hit "Redneck Woman." (I hate most country music, except for Taylor Swift who somehow manages to be too cute to hate). In any case, you can tell that he was very excited to ride through Gretchen's hometown.
I was much more excited about Misty's, an icecream shop that we spotted on the map this morning. We had a warm ride getting there, and we could taste the ice cream as soon as the building came into view. Unfortunately, that's the best we would get, because Misty's didn't open until late afternoon. Oh cruel mistress Misty, how you broke our hearts.
Luckily things were about to get better. Our first sign was the bike rack in the middle of nowhere.
We were incredibly confused until we came across a system of bike paths nearby. We tried to follow a map of them and made a wrong turn once or twice, but we didn't really mind. Zipping under trees, through tunnels, across bridges, and occasionally past other cyclists, we thoroughly enjoyed our shaded and traffic-free ride.
The only downside was the absurd amount of dandelion fluff clogging the air and the paths...
...but as it swirled through the air it looked like snow in a children's play so we didn't really mind it either.
We eventually reached and crossed the expansive Mississippi River.
We took the Chain of Rocks Bridge, a spectacular construction with a bend halfway across.
At various points along its massive span, small displays celebrated Route 66.
At the state line we came across a jovial tourist group bursting with accents: a Texan was showing the country to friends from Sweden. One of the Swedes was more than happy to take our picture by the bike rack that marked the state line. He complimented the camera and directed us as if we were models at a high energy photo shoot.
From the bridge we could just spot the Arch, but I was more excited by the water intake structures that looked like castles.
The bike paths led us through a nice park, and also past a group of men setting off fireworks in the parking lot. Their ring leader was the third person today who wanted to know exactly how much the bike cost; it seems to be a Missourian obsession.
Missouri gained a lot of points with us for having an extensive bike path network, but promptly lost most of them when the official bike route led us onto busy, multi-lane roads with little or no shoulder. At one point we had no choice but to ride on the sidewalk. We were headed to Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis where our college friend Emily Voss grew up. She wouldn't be there, but her parents had enthusiastically offered to host us. We were relieved to finally escape the traffic and find their neighborhood. After admiring the bike and introducing us to the neighbors, they welcomed us in. It felt amazing to eat and relax in a home rather than a hotel. As we enjoyed a homecooked dinner (and produce like we can never get on the road), we answered questions about the trip and really became reinvigorated. The ride is our reality now and we're immersed in its daily challenges, so we can forget about the enormity of what we're doing; the Vosses were so excited and impressed by the trip that we remembered again and felt inspired.
They rounded out the evening by taking us to the famous Ted Drewes, which serves vanilla frozen custard with every topping and mix-in ingredient imaginable. It more than made up for the closed ice cream store this morning, and we went to bed looking forward to more St Louis tourist activities tomorrow.
| posted at: 10:11 |
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Twenty |
| 7/5/09 |
| From Effingham, IL |
| To Greenville, IL |
| 62.9 miles |
| 11.6 avg mph |
Leaving Effingham this morning we saw "the world's largest cross." Well, Kyle spotted it right away, but it took me so long to find it that I thought he was lying to me. See, it was overcast and I was expecting something taller, thinner, and closer plus sometimes there were buildings in the way and... ok, fine, I have no excuse for missing a 200 foot cross.
The rest of the time we saw a whole lot of nothing. The road stretched on for miles. It was straight, flat, and boring, except for one town in which it was straight, steep, and boring. When the road finally turned we were shocked enough to take a picture.
As the barren landscape stretched out before us, refusing to change much no matter how fast we pedaled, I wondered how long it would take us to go insane. I was already on my way, unless it's normal to give roads funny voices and have them talk to Kyle about how far they go and what the intersecting roads are like. Then I remembered that we still had to cross Kansas, which would undoubtedly be worse.
When a bit of excitement finally came our way it wasn't exactly welcome. Three yipping dogs sped out of a front yard towards us and spread out in a triangulated attack. Their speed and strategy impressed us so much that we almost forgot to get the hell away from them. Luckily their minuscule strides allowed us to outdistance them, but those little legs were moving. There must be something in the water around here, because I swear I saw a full grown cow cantering today. I didn't even know that was physically possible.
We did encounter people as well, including a few familiar faces from Effingham and an excitable motorcyclist whose "Hell No!" at the sight of our bike made me laugh.
When we finally reached our hotel in Greenville, the woman behind the desk suggested we venture into the historic downtown, which "looks like a Norman Rockwell painting." I thought she meant that it had old barber shops and soda fountains with charming owners and cheeky young customers, but it turns out she meant something more literal.
This trip has turned me into a mural enthusiast, so I really enjoyed the town. We had to ride there, but luckily the police let us lock our bike to the tree outside of their station. Too bad they weren't around when the local pizza joint got hit.
Apparently the robbers also stole some letters from that sign.
With few other food options, we headed back towards the hotel to find dinner. We ended up eating at at a mediocre family restaurant and grabbing dessert at a convenience store -- malted milk balls that tasted like they had expired months ago. I'm just looking forward to home cooked meals tomorrow when we make it to St. Louis, where our friend Emily's parents have graciously offered to host us for a few days. I can't wait to stay with them and be a relaxed tourist again!
| posted at: 10:02 |
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Saturday, July 04, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Nineteen |
| 7/4/09 |
| From Greenup, IL |
| To Effingham, IL |
| 27.4 miles |
| 13.5 avg mph |
We planned a very short ride for today so that we would end up in a town big enough to have Fourth of July festivities but be off of the road before they began. Our goal was Effingham, which, along with having an entertaining name, was less than thirty miles away. I thought it would be an effortless and enjoyable ride...until I noticed the forecast for relentless rain.
I don't have much to report from the ride itself, as I mostly remember being cold and wet. We were focused on finishing as quickly as possible, and it's not like we could see much through the sheets of rain anyway. We did pass a sign for the country's strangest high school mascot: the Teutopolis Wooden Shoes. I wonder if their cheerleaders dance to "These Clogs Were Made For Walking" before giving up entirely.
About two hours later we arrived in Effingham very wet and very cold. We pulled into the first place that offered a roof and warm sustenance, which happened to be Joe Sipper's Cafe.
We had no idea how fortuitous this choice would be. I think it took the entire afternoon for me to get anywhere close to warm and dry, but in the meantime we had wonderful company. Frank, one of Effingham's biggest cycling proponents, happened to be having coffee there with his daughter. We talked for a long time about our experiences, his recent bike trip across Europe with his son, his daughter's post-graduation plans, and the crazy pig sacrifice bbq that happened at his cabin last weekend. When Frank heard about our mechanical problems he introduced us to his friend Chad, who used to work on bikes in Colorado. Chad and his friends braved the rain to look at the bike and in a few minutes he managed to fix our shaky headset, the same one that had plagued us through several states and befuddled every bike shop owner who looked at it. It was an Effing miracle.
Our Heroes
Frank also called his contact at the local newspaper, who came right down to the coffee shop to interview us and take our photo. I can't believe we might be in another paper!
We spent the rest of the afternoon in Joe Sipper's, very content to blog, drink large amounts of coffee, and people watch. I learned that teenagers in the midwest are just like teenagers anywhere else, except that the girls are more likely to be wearing long jean skirts. I also started reading the shop's copy of Lance Armstrong's first book; hopefully I can find more copies in shops and libraries along the way because I really want to finish it. When the rain finally let up in the late afternoon we were reluctant to leave, until we remembered that my mother had used her reward points to get us a room at the Hampton...A room with a warm shower, a big fluffy bed... We suddenly found the energy to ride again.
Ironically, we missed the fireworks that we had ridden to Effingham to see. We were holed up in the warm hotel room when they started, and by the time we stirred ourselves enough to walk outside the show was over. But we didn't really mind; after all, we've been seeing and celebrating America every day.
Happy Fourth of July everyone.
| posted at: 10:02 |
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Friday, July 03, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Eighteen |
| 7/03/09 |
| From Terre Haute, IN |
| To Greenup, IN |
| 53.3 miles |
| 10.1 avg mph |
As we were getting ready this morning, our bike and everything on it suddenly crashed to the ground. We were confused until we saw the kickstand in pieces. Apparently we're carrying too much weight because that is a serious piece of metal to snap in half.
This essentially means we'll be without a kickstand for the rest of the trip; even if we could find the heavier duty kickstand that we apparently need it would probably be out of our price range. Instead we'll make creative use of benches, trees, fences, our hips, and anything else we can find to steady the bike.
Once we righted the bike, we enjoyed pedaling in the pleasantly warm morning, though my feet were back to their usual burning agony. We rode through part of Indiana University, which offered nice bike paths and tennis courts but otherwise seemed stuck in the 70s. Then we took an early break in an expansive park by the river, which featured many attractions for my camera.
When we were done dancing and reciting Shakespeare on the stage we got back on the road. Before we knew it we were crossing into Illinois and a new time zone.
And the Lincoln love continued in every town we passed.
The charming town of Marshall was our lunchtime stop. We sat on a time capsule marker in front of town hall and ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples. Squirrels frolicked around us and a cyclist sporting overalls and lots of gray hair zipped around the square. It was delightful.
We then left town for the wide open country and, more problematically, miles of soft shoulder. As we passed a scrap yard a new friend ran out to meet us. Not that I ever consider a sprinting, barking dog a friend, but he was nice enough once Kyle calmed him down.
Unfortunately our new friend quickly wore out his welcome. Whenever we started pedaling he would chase alongside us; he seemed determined to follow us all the way to Oregon. Not only was I nervous that he would lunge at the bike or my ankles, even just in play, but he would often zigzag out into the middle of the road and would have been run over if traffic was any heavier. The guy running the machinery at the yard said the dog didn't belong to him or anyone he knew, so there was no one to take him off our hands. Eventually we had to get rid of him with a light spray of Halt. We felt really bad about it, but we didn't know what else to do. We just hope that it taught him to avoid chasing things in the road.
Our other animal encounter today was with turkey vultures. Yes, just like the ones that circled us back in Ohio. We apparently still look like carcasses. These vultures stood like sentries guarding the nearby barn; whenever I got close enough to startle one into flight it would flap a few times and move to a post at the end of the line. They were eerie but fascinating.
Today was a relatively short ride, so we reached our destination with sunlight to spare: the very green Greenup Motel.
All of the reviews described a sketchy outside but a clean and accommodating inside, which is exactly what we found. The new owner explained that he had just finished renovating the rooms; in fact much of the old furniture was still piled on the lawn. While Kyle checked in I stayed outside with the bike and had an awkward conversation with an older woman whose voice was hopelessly garbled, presumably by the cigarettes that she wasn't giving up anytime soon. Luckily her son was there to interpret with a mixture of love and embarrassment in his eyes. He liked to build and modify bikes from spare parts so we had a good chat about the Pino until Kyle came out with the key to our room.
After showering and settling in we decided to walk into town. Greenup calls itself "The Village of the Porches," and they were all decked out for the 4th.
We had hoped to find internet in town, but unfortunately the only coffee shop no longer existed and the library was already closed. The local museum was also closed, so we looked around the outside and garden before searching for a place to eat. We settled on an overstaffed pizza shop (4 waiters for 2 tables of customers) and enjoyed both the food and the fitting booth art.
Dessert was icecream at the soda fountain next door, which also served a startlingly green soda. Then it was back to the hotel to relax and watch Dirty Dancing, which Kyle had somehow never seen. But the best entertainment of the night came from the commercials for indispensable products like the Pee Patch. If you aren't aware of this little piece of genius, the Pee Patch is essentially a square of absorbent astroturf that owners are supposed to train their dogs to pee on when inside. The footage of dogs peeing and looking around for the patch was strange and amusing enough, but when the announcer got to "Great for outside use too!" we just about lost it.
When the movie ended we decided it was time for tired cyclists to get to bed. Kyle got up and wandered around the room for a few minutes before I asked him what on earth he was doing. With a forlorn look he explained:
"I can't find my Pee Patch!"
| posted at: 10:01 |
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Seventeen |
| 7/02/09 |
| From Indianapolis, IN |
| To Terre Haute, IN |
| 89.6 miles |
| 11.0 avg mph |
This morning we woke up at 4. I know that during the school year Kyle frequently wakes up at 4, but I still say no human being should ever wake up that early. We had good reason though; we wanted to start before sunrise to avoid the infamous traffic through Indianapolis. We enjoyed a delicious hotel breakfast before we left, which helped, and honestly crossing Indianapolis as dawn broke was an amazing ride. The buildings and artwork were all lit up and the streets were calm enough that we could take our time through the city.
On the outskirts of Indianapolis we passed through the Spanish Quarter, which I decided to use as an educational opportunity. I had Kyle translate signs and added this new vocabulary to the very limited Spanish I already knew: the words for hello, tomorrow, monkey, water, and 1-10. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but soon I was exclaiming in broken Spanish "Big Monkey not pedal. Big Monkey eat small children!" (I warned you we were becoming strange and easily entertained.)
Mono Grande clearly needed breakfast, so we stopped at a Kroger grocery store to stock up on supplies. We always shop in shifts so that someone can guard the bike, and when Kyle was in the store he got to talking with an employee all about the trip. By the time I took my turn word had spread throughout the store and I kept overhearing conversations about us. "That's amazing! Are they camping do you think? Did you see the bike?" A few of them found me in the energy bar aisle (I assume the spandex made me easy to identify) and I had a fun time answering all of their questions and feeling like a grocery store celebrity. Eventually I said goodbye to everyone and went outside to eat a pig shaped cookie for breakfast. It was a little hard for my taste, but it certainly looked cute.
Our day was full of such encouragement from strangers, including an older woman who reminded us that "life is too short to not take adventures." Well said.
We were following the historic National Road again today, and the ride was mostly more of the same: riding from gas station to gas station on country roads with moderate traffic. I've learned that cities in this part of the country are not like those on the east coast; they don't spread or sprawl, gradually shifting from urban to suburban to rural. Instead, a bustling city is quite often neighbored by a vast field and the line between them might as well be a country border. While waiting in a long bathroom line I asked the lady beside me if there were any other gas stations or restaurants nearby, but she told me "I have no idea what is in this area at all. I'm from Indy." We couldn't have been more than 15 miles out of the city. It was astounding.
We rode on and eventually stopped for lunch at the Cornerstone Bar & Grill. It was a nice little place, which is good since it was the only game in town. We had heaping portions of food and much more soda than was prudent considering how long we'd have to wait for the next bathroom.
Our final destination for the day was Terre Haute, and I was excited because it was enough of a city to have tourist attractions. I had a list of art and history museums that I wanted to visit, but as our ETA became later and later I had to cross them off until the only one left was the Swope Art Museum that was open until 5:00. Even that started to seem unattainable, but we kept pushing as hard as we could. I felt awful when Kyle, who had no interest in visiting the art museum, started having hamstring pain, and I had about given up when we finally saw signs for Terre Haute, proud home of Clabber Girl Baking Powder.
We raced into the center of town and found the museum just in time. Swope isn't an expansive museum -- two small floors of American painting and sculpture -- but that meant I could see all of it in the 20 minutes left before it closed. I discovered a new favorite artist in sculptor Richard Hunter, and the "Water Baby" garden sculptures by Terre Haute native Janet Scudder just made me grin. Most of all I loved having the rooms of art all to myself to wander through in relaxed silence. I wanted to support the museum by purchasing postcards, but sadly they didn't have what I wanted: portraits of disillusioned and unemployed youth who look pretty much the same a century later. Someone should tell those boys to hop on a bicycle, go see some art, and otherwise escape the depressing job search for the summer. It's certainly making me feel invigorated and accomplished...at the moment anyway.
We had one last stop to make before the Comfort Inn Suites: Fat Bikes. We were hoping that the local bike shop could fix our increasingly shaky handlebars. The owner was a bit bemused by our strange headset but hypothesized a crack and lost bearings -- not a good sign, and not something he was willing or able to fix. We'll just have to hope it holds together until we reach the next bike shop on our route, wherever that may be. ("Hear me, baby? Hold together!")
| posted at: 09:06 |
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
 |
| Stoker's Log Day Sixteen |
| 7/01/09 |
| From Richmond, IN |
| To Indianapolis, IN |
| 73.3 miles |
| 12.1 avg mph |
After our difficult discussion last night we needed an uplifting ride, which fortunately is exactly what we got. We started our day with an amusing bit of encouragement: enthusiastic fist pumps from a graying man carrying his groceries home. Better yet, my body was miraculously pain free all day. My legs felt fresh, my joints moved fluidly, and my feet were as cool as a cucumber.
We made our first stop of the day in Richmond's historic district. I started to photograph the old buildings but soon became more interested in the squirrel cavorting on a steam powered tractor.
We then passed through commercial districts with some of the most unfortunate business names I've ever encountered. Raper's Rentals and the Butcher Chapel of a funeral parlor topped the list, though Mr. Faultless the lawyer was also amusing.
We actually spent a great deal of today laughing; the isolated and exhausted are easy to entertain. At one point I suddenly felt the bike's resistance disappear and yelled out "Oh Blimey!" I thought Kyle was laughing at my British exclamation but it turns out he was laughing because the chain was off but for some reason I was still spinning the pedals as quickly as possible. We almost tipped over because Kyle couldn't extricate his feet while I was still pedaling, and then we almost fell over again because we were laughing so hard. Also whenever Kyle sang or hummed an old television theme song that I didn't recognize (which was often since I was never a fan of cartoons) I would chime in with the line "Saviour of the Universe!" from Flash Gordon at the top of my lungs. It may not seem hilarious, but I'm pretty sure it will amuse us for days.
We also revisited the more serious topics from our discussion last night. It was depressing to talk about the daunting challenges of the west but hopefully if we keep going over the problems we'll come up with a solution. As we talked I got the germ of an idea that just might work: maybe we could have a friend fly out west to drive a rented truck or UHaul as our support vehicle. That way we would have someone to carry supplies and to rescue us if we became stranded or just needed to be driven to the nearest bathroom, and if we couldn't make it to the next hotel by nightfall we could always sleep in the back. We're not sure if we can afford it and we're also not sure who would be willing to sacrifice two weeks of their summer to camp out and drive a rented vehicle very slowly across the west, but it's something to look into, and something to give us a bit of hope.
Another realization we made as we dissected our trip was that we wanted to spend more time talking to locals and really getting to know each region through its people. So this morning we were excited to chat with David, who pulled over to check out our bike, as well as the delightful owner of Cinnamon Spice Bakery.
We stopped there for a delicious breakfast just before reentering rural nothingess. I had to diverge from my usual bakery plan when I found out that all of the croissants were both glazed and fried (welcome to the midwest) but Kyle was a very happy man with his two giant donuts.
Cinnamon Spice was not only a bakery; it also sold every decorative concrete entity you could imagine: lions, guard dogs, gnomes, those creepy fishing boys that seem to haunt every pond we pass... When an Animal Control truck pulled up behind a line of concrete carnivores I couldn't contain myself. Unfortunately the driver didn't get the joke and was very suspicious of my photograph.
For the next several hours we rode through farmland and small towns, ducking under trees or into buildings whenever the light but persistent rain decided to intensify. At one of our gas station stops we met an energetic man in overalls with a very important message for us:
"My wife and I tried a tandem once and only once. We rode to her parents' house a good distance away and when we finished she felt horribly sick for days and it took a while for us to figure out what was wrong. This taught us a very important lesson: tandems can get you pregnant."
Good to know.
This week I also discovered a business that was entirely new to me: drive-thru and drive-in alcohol stores. Some are super snazzy and some are glorified garages with shelves of beer on the walls. They could never exist in PA because of the state's liquor laws, but I swear I've never seen them anywhere before. Here they seem to be everywhere.
About halfway through our ride today the nearly empty country roads were suddenly replaced by heavily trafficked roads with little or no shoulder. Kyle's stress level shot through the roof as he danced the bike on the white line or skidded through gravel. It was a nightmare for a while but finally we hit better roads and flew through the rest of the ride. We arrived just outside of Indianapolis in good time and checked into the La Quinta, which instantly became our favorite hotel ever. Even if it hadn't been the least expensive hotel in the area we would have fallen in love with the plush bedding and the perfect shower. It even had guest laundry, which we sorely needed, and next door was a restaurant with ample servings of delicious food and a wonderful waitress named Shelly who was really excited to talk about our trip. It was the perfect evening after an overall great ride, and we couldn't stop smiling. Yesterday half of me wanted to go home... today, maybe 10% tops.
| posted at: 09:06 |
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