Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Day 29: El Dorado KS, to Hutchinson, KS
Both Jillian and I were very excited about today's ride, as we'd hooking up with the Transamerica trail in Newton. Hopefully that meant we'd start seeing other touring cyclists.
We started today with a kind of sketchy ride through nowhere on our way out of town. The road turned to dirt fairly quickly and we rode along a lot of oil drilling equipment for a little while. At least one house was full of large, loud dogs that didn't seem the least bit friendly. But we eventually made our way to a pleasant ride along KS-196.
We stopped in the little town of Potwin, which had a service stop/convenience store. We took advantage of the opportunity to get some information about the nearby roads (avoid US-50 until west of Hutchinson!), and stock up on candy bars. Reeces Fast Break and Snickers bars might be the reason we hadn't lost much weight yet.
About 7 miles later we stopped again at the little town of Whitewater. After looking around the town a bit, we stopped at a Video Store/Convenience Store for ice cream.
There wasn't much west of Whitewater, not even much of a shoulder. The ride was actually starting to feel a little stressful, since traffic was moving fast and the rolling hills didn't give people much of an opportunity to see a our bike. But we made it ten miles and crossed I-135 without incident.
On the ride North to Newton we were hit by a freak storm. Rain just came out of nowhere at all. Fortunately we were able to make it under the US-50 bridge in time and stay mostly dry. We pushed on to a little Quiznos where we grabbed lunch. While there we had a lengthy conversation with the owner, who was a transplant from back east. On our way out of the Quiznos we ran into the most ridiculous woman ever. She'd also completed a couple of cross country rides, and had grown bored with those. So instead she rode the perimeter of the country clockwise, then took a different trip to do it counter clockwise. Here we were completely exhausted and we're talking to a woman three times our age who regularly does trips five times as long.
Further on in Newton we had our first encounter with touring cyclists. We met two college students who were doing the country west to east, and were waiting for friends at a Chinese restaurant. They invited us to join, but we felt that we had spent too much time in Newton already. After a stop at a Wendy's to use their bathrooms, we rode on in oppressive heat.
Several miles West of Hesston, Jillian started to feel the heat in a bad way. I started looking for a tree that we might take some shelter under. The only one we found was on someone's lawn, but we pulled over and laid down anyway. After a ten minute break, we pressed on, since we now knew we really needed to get out of the heat.
Our break came at Buhler. Buhler had a cute downtown area and a little restaurant. In order to get to the downtown you have to ride through a residential area, which gave us an opportunity to ride through a sprinkler or two and cool down.
At the restaurant, we both proceeded to drink tremendous lemonades and two slushes. Probably a half gallon of liquid each.
Although we were only at the restaurant for about twenty minutes, I knew something was wrong when we came out. The wind had picked up, and there were huge storms brewing to the west. A man stopped by to warn us about the weather and give us his card in case we needed anything, and then we hopped back on the bike and rode hard toward Medora, where we hoped there might be shelter if we needed to wait out the storm.
Unfortunately, Medora wasn't much of a town. The best we could come up with was a little overhang next to a closed antique store. I called home to get a weather report. According to Dad, there were tornado warnings south and west of Hutchinson, and that the storm was gradually moving toward us. He thought that if we rode hard we might be able to make Hutchinson before the storm got really bad.
Down the road a way you could just make out some flashing lights. Thinking that whomever was stopped there would have more accurate information than a weather report, we rode to where a Kansas State Trooper had pulled someone over. We waited while he finished writing a driver a ticket, then quizzed him on the weather. Like every other person we met in Kansas, he was incredibly helpful. He too agreed that if we rode really hard we might make Hutchinson before things got really bad. We rode on.
We started playing the shelter game. Every time we saw anything that looked like it might be shelter (an abandoned house, a large tree, a barn) Jillian would call out our mileage, so that we'd be able to figure out if it was better to press forward to Hutchinson through a storm, or better to turn back around to shelter. We had just made Hutchinson limits when the rain started to come down and the winds picked up. Knowing that the hotels were only a few miles away, we rode through it all, leaning the bike at a rather severe angle at all times in order to stay upright in the wind.
We found our way to a Comfort Inn before stopping and calling my parents again to get hotel information and let them know we'd made it to town safely. In fact, the weather was starting to look clear again. Since the weather was clearing up, rather that go to the first hotel we found (the Comfort Inn), we moved on to the Days Inn, which was a little cheaper. While checking in we had a long conversation with the hotel clerk's children, who were fascinated by our bike. After a conversation with the clerk and the owner, they were even able to find us a first floor room at a cheaper than usual rate, which we appreciated so much we decided to extend our stay to two nights. According to most reports, Hutchinson is the last town with a bike shop until Pueblo, CO 400 miles away. Our brakes were acting funny, and the bike had started making a clanging noise whenever we coasted.
We hiked out to find some food, then returned for a well deserved shower and rest. We were even planning on sleeping in until the tail end of breakfast.
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