Cycling Across America #41
Kansas City, Halfway Rest?
Part 41 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)
When I started the cycle I had no doubts that I would make it successfully all the way across; the only doubts I had were about what route I would take.
Being knocked down after 8 days changed all that. I no longer had the belief that I would now make it all the way, nor if I even wanted to.
Having made it to Kansas City for my intended halfway rest, I now had a week of limping around to decide if my chosen route for the 2nd half was feasible.
Tuesday 17th September 1996, Kansas City, MO
Having personal mail, letters and card, short stories, even a tape, waiting for me and then actually reading it so soon after getting off the bike, before I showered and changed even, is something I can’t explain. The first 24 hours here was so emotional. Very comforting to hear from the friends I think of every day on the bike.
It’s a week now since I arrived in KC and I still find it hard to believe I’m here. Life is so normal, so far removed from everything that is the cycle.
Gradually acknowledged that I would stay a second week. Equally gradually decided that I’d go ahead with the original planned route for the rest of the trip : north through Missouri, Northwest through Iowa and Nebraska, West through South Dakota, Southwest through Wyoming, and into Utah. North to South, detouring somewhat to take in a contact in utah. And then Southwest through Arizona into Southern California where going West would take me to the ocean.
Whenever I announced I was going ahead with the plan though, I always stated that I reserved the right to change my mind.
[As this is a long post I’ll put the rest of this entry below the fold]
It’s the weather that has me concerned. The cold.Seems I arrived here on the last day of Summer and now it’s Fall. First noticed it at the ball game. Fairly exposed up there off the Interstate at the stadium and everyone else had watched the news - it was necessary to wear jackets. I, no longer cycling, was freed from the necessity of watching the Weather Channel and so came in shorts and a T-shirt. A young girl’s blanket was used to rescue me and then some other girl’s sweatshirt until the comfort of the pub, the drinks, the sweating smoking drinking companions, and the music.
Since then, it’s rained a bit. Just like home. Cold. Wearing another blanket on another porch I had to admit to still not watching the local weather but really it’s down the road I was thinking of. As far as the Black Hills in South Dakota I knew I’d make it fine, but the roads in Wyoming if covered in snow could be lethal or just unpassable - even closed.
Anyway last night 6 to 12 inches of snow hit Utah and Wyoming with more coming tonight. It’s a head and heart thing. Using common sense, or any kind of sense, there’s no way on earth I can go ahead. But, but but - I so want to cycle through Utah. And South Dakota. What to do ? More and more people who have an inkling of the weather over there are saying no - it would be mad, and I know they’re right but I’m stubbornly saying it’s 50-50 between the Northern original option and the Southern option - Plan B - back through Kansas, maybe Oklahoma again, Texas, New Mexico, and into Arizona that way. I have a few more days, I’ll dwell on it but a month from the centre of Utah it looks like I’ll have to give up the original route - very, very reluctantly. Maybe there’s a Plan C I haven’t conceived of yet.
Left the bike into a local shop here, to a man who proclaims himself the best wheel builder in some geographical entity (perhaps even all of the States). He’s never seen spokes break spontaneously at the nipple - ever. So I’m spending $50 to replace all spokes and maybe more if the hub is shot. He’ll ring me tomorrow.
Does my heart have to let go of South Dakota - the Black Hills, the Badlands, and Lakota country, and of Wyoming and it’s lack of population under enormous skies, and of Utah and its landscapes like nowhere on this planet?
I might never have the emotional strength again to want to do anything like it, let alone the money, the time, or the physical strength.
This is it. One chance. North or South? Head or Heart?
4 Days later I was reflecting on the trip to date.
21st September
Over one of several wonderful dinners I had it confirmed that that large insect I was scared of was actually called a “Walking Stick” and my American friends used to play with them as children. I was shown a photograph of one from the Missouri Conservationist and lent several back issues so I could learn about the nature and wildlife in these parts as I so wanted.
It was insisted I take both of William Least-Heat Moon’s books to just browse through and I’ve done that. I can see the wholeness and the sense of the big picture of his trip in “Blue Highways”, whilst relating so easy to the people and history he comes across on the local level. “Prery Erth” appeals to me. Perhaps because I’d just come through South East Kansas and it left an impression on me even stronger now after this break than then when it was so fresh. Reading of the Kaw/Kansa Indians and their legal plight with the US government, of race relations in general, fascinates me everywhere I go here in this country as probably the single most important social and political issue in the country.
How do you preserve a tribe and its living history when there are only six full-bloods ? Somehow when they’re mixed with peoples of European colonial descent it strikes me as easier than when they’re mixed with Cherokee, Choctaw and Osage. I suspect that’s a failing on my part.
So many nights getting introduced to so many people that in the end either through the drink or the repetition of it all, that the way people were told of the trip was by me almost systematically like a ritual dance showing off my tan-lines, the helmet straps, the back of the hands, the arms, the legs. Somebody tried for ages to get me up on stage. I know how to say No. I explained that singing “the auld triangle” to an audience of corn, cattle, dead Armadillos, and chasing dogs, is not like an audience in a pub.
Getting to revisit Elsmore by car the 120 miles after cycling from there was both odd and wonderful.
I saw the people I stayed with, ate roast pig, watched turtle races (including a turtle with a pig glued to its back - it lost), bought tickets for the Chicken Drop game, talked more of hunting for arrow-heads in the area, ate Blackberry Pie - delicious, if not as moist as the Peach or Apple.There was a parade which included dogs smoking pipes and an Egyptian band. It was great to see the local faces, and all the colour of the town on its big day of the year. On a mostly grey day the sun broke through briefly, and the wind blew the smoke and flames from under the dozen cauldrons of beans, as I worked up a sweat tossing horseshoes for over an hour. Good-bye felt premature but I couldn’t stay forever in Elsmore no matter how much I liked it.
Back in Kansas City I got to step into a home where a painting of mine was framed on the wall. It was like being back in Dublin where I painted it. Very removed from cycling in Alabama.
And finally it’s time to end my rest:
23 Sep KC, MO 1.30 am Sunday night/ Monday morning
A night so different from all the others here in KC, MO. The last night. It begins again. The apprehension. The focusing on the roads ahead, the visualisation and the projection of the landscape and the weather. The nervous visits to the bathroom. The thoughts of friends and family at home. The loss of the perfect dream of my original route, and the reluctant acceptance of the new dream, of revisiting the majestic state of Kansas, of the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, and of the excitement offered by New Mexico.
Yes I am tired and need to sleep but my mind needs to leave the comfort and warmth of friends and think of the lonely road north through Missouri to Iowa and Nebraska.
This is different. I leave friends not for other friends but for native grasses and fields of corn, for a 30% chance of showers tomorrow and a chance of thunderstorms on Tuesday, for the wind in my face that’s been waiting for me for nearly three thousand miles, for the renewed daily application of vaseline and anti-septic ointment, for the singing of songs and the laughter that is so indistinguishable from tears, for the regard for telephones and answering machines and the phone signals across half a continent and all of an ocean, for the opportunity to tell not a human soul of the enjoyment of this halfway holiday.
I was brought to the Renaissance Festival in Banner Springs, Kansas. Fearful of my accent being noticed, only once during the day did I risk walking around alone. A a woman asked me did I want to indulge in some astrology or Tarot cards. Saying no I proffered the excuse that it was “scary”. She smiled knowledgeably and softly disagreed saying that it’s not scary at all. Then she added something much scarier to somebody about to try and travel to the coast on a bicycle, “go on the highway - that’s scary”.
Read the Next Entry in My Bicycle Trip Across America
Read more from my Cycle Across America
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
The Badlands and the Black Hills are special, no doubt about it. To cycle them would have been something else.
It must have been hard to time this trip right though. If you were doing it this year, in early summer you’d have no doubt been blown to your death in one of the 93 tornadoes the midwest has had so far this year. It’s been astonishing. 93 is the number you’d expect by the end of August apparently but it’s only mid May.
I think it’s testament to your writing that I’m still worried about you getting knocked over and killed by a semi on this road trip, despite the fact that I know you made it perfectly all right and are off to Italy today.
Sam,
The original plan was for the trip to be done in 3 and a half months. When you bear in mind that the plan also included starting in the north, going to the deep south, then up to the north again before dropping to the south - it was impossible to time it so that you avoided extreme heat, heavy snows, hurricane systems and tornado season.
By starting at the beginning of August I did avoid the tornado system but a lot of the first half of the cycle was spent cycling between different Hurricanes or Tropical Depressions. As for the 2nd half - read on.
Maybe there’s a plot twist where I die and somebody else becomes me and heads to Italy today. Be worried.
Now let me go and post the next stage.
Hi Eolai, just wanted to say hello And that I always enjoy reading what you’ve written.