Cycling Across America #50
Kansas is a Big State
Part 50 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)
More from my journal. At the end of another day on the bicycle in Kansas, I was catching up on local and national news.
Sunday, October 6th
The presidential debate in Connecticut has just finished. I watched portions of it including the last 10 minutes. It was actually entertaining, the edginess, the interaction between them and the humour. Don’t really care for the spins they put on different policies but trying to see beyond their rehearsed lines was fairly interesting. And now their wives are continuing to add to their respective spins. “The very good reasons why it was classy may be why it’s not memorable”.
On the Weather Channel they’re still forecasting that Tropical Depression Ten will become Tropical Storm Josephine within hours. They were saying that yesterday.
All the names of the storms/hurricanes are picked for the year in advance. As the depressions get upgraded they just pick the next name off the list. The list has alternate male and female names. As for me I’m not going to be affected by it directly as when it finally moved from South Texas it went east, so Florida is going to get hammered with rain.
That said, after being promised a week of sun I’m now looking at a 30% chance of rain. Drizzle they say. I won’t mind that if I’m away from traffic but tomorrow I wanted to go in and out of Dodge City which involves potentially busy US Routes. I’ll worry about that tomorrow.
In Dodge City this evening a 14-year-old boy has been arrested in relation to a drive-by shooting in the Boot Hill car park. Maybe I can cycle there tomorrow lunch time.
In Wichita a mother suspected her husband of having an affair so slashed lots of car tyres, set fire to a house or two, shot her 12-year-old daughter in the head and committed suicide by the statue of The Keeper of The Plains in the centre of town. I like the look of the statue.
[The rest of this entry is below the fold]
The 5-day forecast has me in the mid-80’s next Thursday and Friday. If I stay an extra night at Liberal that puts me on the bike right in the middle of high summer again. Tomorrow’s chance of rain should be gone by the afternoon.
Good news - the winds are supposed to be out of the North. Maybe 10 to 20mph. I’m more interested in the winds for Tuesday when I plan to travel 75 to 80 miles from Cimarron South to Liberal. That will be the biggest trip so far of Phase 2 of the cycle where I’ve failed to reach even 70 yet in a single day. That’s as much down to the options of towns to lodge in as it is to the winds and me starting the days late. In the last couple of days I could certainly have broken 80 miles instead of the 63 and 66 I did, but that wouldn’t have left me at a town either day.
This morning I woke up to a hazy blue sky and a wind died to at worst 5mph although still from the South. There would be nothing for 40 miles so I had to have breakfast. Chose the Wheel Restaurant next door again.
At 11 O’clock I was the last person to have breakfast. This, an hour after the maid knocks on my door for the umpteenth morning on the trot. Ham and Eggs, Hash Browns, toast and grape jelly, a cinnamon roll drenched in icing, and 2 cups of tea. That’s what I call a 40 mile breakfast, although I left all the icing behind and had to use one of my own tea-bags for the 2nd cup.
The waitress was odd - when she spoke to me it was like I was a baby, yet talking to her colleagues it was all bitchy stuff. I’ll have to learn how not to be pampered. To be manly is the next stage in the assertiveness course. That might also stop drunken haggard mothers of 5 and similarly weathered strippers telling me what a sweetie and a baby I am as they stroke my limbs.
US 283 South. No shoulder but with an average of 1 vehicle every mile that was just fine. Passed within 2 miles of Cedar Bluff reservoir but actual access to it would’ve meant a 15 mile detour. I suspect this was the destination of a lot of the traffic I saw today. Speed boats, catamarans, jet-ski’s - all being towed.
What was I looking at? Mostly grassed slopes. Short sunburnt grass for miles. Occasionally they would quietly and instantly change into broad fields of turned soil. I suspected they once had wheat there - it had to be somewhere, this was once called The Wheat State and I haven’t seen any yet. Already in the fresh soil there were rows and rows of green chutes sprouting up. And then back to grass forever and the fields of soil were out of sight.
Kansas is not a flat carpet. Sections of it are carpet-like, but they’re not joined at the same level. It’s like a series of plateaus. Where they join you have a ridge or a series of rocky hillocks. Such stony hills were what I climbed through 20 miles South of WaKeeney.
The yellow limestone showed through the grass at many points and I could see back the same road I travelled for 15 miles from the highest point. I was able to see the Lutheran church I’d passed earlier. I found myself guessing how far the visible high point on the horizon was. It ranged from 2 to 10 miles typically and my guess usually ended up being accurate to within one 10th of a mile.
News flash. We have the 10th Tropical Storm of the season and Josephine is her name.
Again today I saw a lot of dead snakes. They ranged in length from 8 inches to four foot. Some were olive green, others were bronze, most were black and grey although the longest one was brown and off yellow with orange spots. None were alive. a couple of dead skunks and another dead coyote or some such other creature from the dog world. He had a nasty-looking face but then being dead he’d not much to be pleased about.
Every few miles there would be a dozen or two dozen cattle. They would just look at me for about 30 seconds and then 1 of them would run. It didn’t seem to matter which direction. And then they all ran, and nothing I said would stop them.
Sometimes the plain grassed canvas was punctuated by oil pumps but mostly you just waited for settlements for colour. Near a town would be a field of milo or a field of haystacks wound up all on a bed of brilliant luminous luscious green, very very different from the paled grasses that stretch for miles with only darker green and red-ish bushes to break up their monotony.
For 15 feet or so at the sides of the roads there was much colour as here you had the many many native grasses and various different plants. Late in the day I finally came across the limestone pillars I’d read of - they use them for holding up the barbed wire. The mural I’d photographed back in Stockton celebrated them and there’s a barbed wire museum in Lacrosse, about 30 miles east of my road today. It was on one of my original routes. I tried to photograph one with the giant magic carpet that is Kansas in the background. However I got wary of stepping on a snake that wasn’t dead and anyway Kansas wouldn’t fit, so I settled instead for a photograph of a large black and yellow spider in the centre of his web in the grass.
Ness City was where I ate. A tidy main street again paved with red bricks and a beautiful limestone building that was a bank from the 1880’s on a corner. Aside from the main street the buildings were also limestone, or limestone plastered over and painted white, or modern brick and dark stained woods.
A pizza place was open and I ate alone. Their small pizzas are 10 inches but I ate it all anyway. Deep-pan, and with 3 glasses of Mountain “Doo”. Would’ve liked a 4th but assertiveness not that high yet.
There was a museum there but being Sunday it was closed. In the window were children’s presentations on all 50 states. I wasn’t disappointed it was closed.
Despite the heat I chose to go the last 26 miles without carrying any drink. Training for the desert, I decided. I had a 2 or 3 foot shoulder although on the other side of the road it was only 1 foot - I even went over to check.
A hawk landed on a telegraph pole. I stopped and made noises to it. It then made noises too but I can’t confirm it was a conversation. When a car came I moved on. Another improvement in assertiveness needed.
A lot of insects today. The forever grasshoppers and crickets and also now other grasshoppers with wings and they seem to be able to use them. Often I would get a strange pain or sensation in my leg and when I looked down there was a large insect sucking or injecting. All day I was combing my hairy arms and legs for tiny and large insects that kept attaching. For the first time since the Carolinas my eyes were getting peppered with them. I haven’t worn shades since back then and decided to continue without them for the time being.
On the bike I finished the 3rd verse of “My Skin has Broken” before completing the 2nd. I sing it to the tune of “Morning Has Broken”:
“My skin has broken
I swear I’m not jokin’
In places unspoken
there’s blisters so large
I ran out of ointment
got terribly frightened
so I looked in the fridge and
resorted to marge
Praise for the margarine
I can’t believe it’s not Vaseline
though the smell of toast lingers
if ya know what I mean”This is the Jetmore Motel (”We Sell Sleep”), the only motel in town.
It’s a nice small little town which I dropped down into (grain storage elevator and water tower did not break horizon as I descended) so have to climb out of tomorrow. There’s a square here with the County House in the centre. It’s an unusual building for these parts with no dome or tower. It has green on it in places - copper I think.
Settled on a sub sandwich from the gas station for dinner as everywhere else is closed.
Soon it will be time to focus on Texas. Once there in Lubbock I can come up with a plan for New Mexico. Overall end date? Nov 20th?
Read the Next Entry (#51) in My Bicycle Trip Across America
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Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Most excellent song, Eolai!
But, if I might ask an indelicate question, how do you manage with peeing out there on the open road? I know it’s easier for chaps and that, but still, there can’t always have been a convenient bush to duck behind.
Thank you on the song, Ms ChildBride. Isn’t it nice to think I really used all those hours alone in a landscape?
As for your indelicate question - well, for one I often don’t go even in a pub so the problem is a lot less likely for myself than others I suspect. Sweating helps too, but yes eventually there comes a time when matters aren’t convenient, and if you keep reading you’ll get a very specific answer as to what I did if I recall correctly.