Dodge City

Part 51 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

Excerpted from my journal. Another day in Kansas.

Monday, October 7th.

Dodge City was founded in 1872, 5 miles west of Fort Dodge. It quickly became a trade centre for travellers and buffalo hunters. In the same year the railroad reached Dodge City thus ensuring its continued existence and making it a major shipping point.

An estimated 850′000 buffalo hides were shipped from here in the years 1872 - 1874. The town thrived and its populace of buffalo hunters, railroad workers, soldiers, and drifters “settled their differences” in shoot-outs. Lawlessness reigned, creating the need for a burial place - Boot Hill Cemetery.

The above is a paraphrase of a “Come to Dodge City - relive a legend” brochure I picked up a few days ago. Actually looking at another brochure I see that Hays, Kansas has the site of the first cemetery in Kansas to be called “Boot Hill”.

By 1875 the buffalo were gone but the Longhorn cattle of Texas took their place. I cycled past the statue of a Longhorn called “El Capitan” earlier today. Those cattle are supposed to be descended from Spanish Cattle. It’s a bronze statue by Jasper D’ambrosi. I liked it and but for the thunderstorm raining down on us I would’ve photographed it.

From 1875 to 1876 over 5 million cattle were driven up the Western Trail from Texas to Dodge City. Cowboys from those cattle drives had an input into establishing Dodge City’s reputation as the wildest town on the western frontier. Notable lawmen as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp became legends in their time here.

The unceremonious cemetery of Boot Hill was gone by 1878. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and by 1886 the cattle drives had ended.

Today’s original plan was an early and easy 2 hour cycle into Dodge, spend a few hours looking around and then another easy 2 hours west to Cimarron, leaving me a 75 mile cycle into Liberal tomorrow. For the 3rd time in 5 days I failed to keep to the plan.

[The rest of this entry is below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #51 »

-Is that supposed to be that over there?

-Why don’t you put that tree in it?

-My daughter is a great artist.

-Did you mean to do that line there like that?

-I wish I could paint.

-Have you seen that guy who paints planets with car paints?

-It must be very relaxing to paint.

-It’s very detailed.

-My son is very good at drawing pictures.

-You’re very like Van Gogh.

-Why do you paint pictures like that?

-Can you do caricatures?

-Why don’t you paint nice pictures?

-I wish I had time to paint.

-Why don’t you put that dog in it?

-Have you heard of Bob Ross?

-I used to be very good at art.

-Why are you painting the sky brown?

-Just as a matter of interest, why are you not including that car in the painting?

-Can I ask you why you’re painting the street brown when it’s a blacktop?

-I wish you could see the pictures my wife paints?

-Does the smell of the paints not bother you?

-Do you mind if I ask you why you’re using that size brush now?

-Why don’t you paint real pictures?

-I like your work; I think you’d love my wife.

-Why are you painting outdoors when all you’re painting is shapes?

-Why are you painting that building when the pretty one is over there?

-Do you find it therapeutic to paint?

-Are you not putting any clouds in?

-Do you do portraits?

-You know what you should do?

-I want to commission you to do me a painting.
-Okay.
-I want it to be dark.
-Okay.
-Very dark.
-Okay.
-I want it to be black.
-I’m happy to do that for you but it would be a lot cheaper if you just painted it yourself.
-Well maybe a little bit of color as well as the black.

-Will you do a portrait of me with my husband? And could you put the kids in it too?
-Sure, but you do realize that the finished painting will be abstract.
-Cool! So we’ll all look colorful like those Van Gogh pictures, or have contorted facial features like our nose viewed from the side when our face is viewed from the front?
-No, you won’t have any facial features, you’ll be pure black, and you’ll look like a bunch of shapes like those Suprematism pictures.
-Oh.

-What are you painting?
-This.
-All I can see is brown.
-Well, when you think about it, isn’t everything brown?

Read: Things People Say (When They See You Painting) »

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]

Read: Cycling Across America #50 »

Tomorrow morning I head off to Galway for a housepainting job.

I’m leaving at 6:30am, as I came to know it in America, or half-six as it is here. In fact half-six on a Saturday morning, is a time that didn’t even exist in Dublin until recent years, being something brought in by former Taoiseach, the ever pragmatic, Berti Ahern.

The job is only for a couple of days so I won’t get up to too much damage over there, beyond imposing magnolia on Irish students, but the last time the client saw me they said I looked like an advert for Guinness. I should say that I was drinking a pint at the time, rather than performing some over-elaborate one-man history of civilisation, and I do quite fancy another audition.

Last Saturday I went down to Wexford to size up another housepainting job, and it was the hottest weather I’ve experience since leaving Kansas City. Of course I’ve no idea what the temperature actually was, but everybody said it was hot.

Wexford being the Sunny Southeast meant it looked beautiful. As the prospective client said to me, “If the weather was like this all the time, shur you’d never leave the place”. And then he went to Turkey for a holiday.

I would leave the place. I couldn’t see a thing with the blasted sunshine blasting in my eyes all day.

Squinting of course makes you thirsty, so I took care of that with some magnificent pints of stout. Aahhhh. And a traditional Irish grill of onion rings, chicken goujons, spring-rolls, somosas, cocktail sausages, and chips.

I mention this because I may be heading back down to rural Wexford for a couple of weeks to do that job, and it may well be necessary for me to seek out such magnificent pints purely so I can get myself online to serve the loyal Irish KC readers.

But until then, Galway will be a nice dry run, though hopefully not too dry. And through the magic of technology I’ll keep posting today and through the weekend. You know, all those posts I’ve been talking about for weeks.

We’ll worry about the Irish countryside next week.

Read: Housepainting Around Ireland »

Somewhere in the Middle of West Kansas

Part 49 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

4 weeks after entering Kansas for the first time (in the southeast corner from Oklahoma) I was now back in the Sunflower State, having entered it this time from the north, from Nebraska.

I was now somewhere out in the middle of West Kansas.

Saturday, 5th October

Almost like going through the motions at this stage. Take away the wind and the days are deliriously perfect.

Plainville was probably the town I liked least of all I’d passed through in Kansas so I just wanted to leave and get some miles under my belt rather than hang around and have breakfast. A gamble though, as I would need food to be available at Zurich, 8 miles away, or Palco, a further 7 miles away because then it was 25 miles on before more life.

Cycling west wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Although the wind was definitely from the south, it was now SSW instead of SSE and that kept me down at 10mph.

Everybody waved on this road. Zurich was small with one shop and no main street. The shop was closed. If Palco was the same I’d have some thinking to do.

3 miles from Palco a stream of cars headed towards me and turned into the cemetery across the road. I guess about 200 cars. I slowed and looked down but the wind was pulling me all over the road and when I looked up the people in the nearest car were waving.

Passing so many people attending a funeral I felt very lucky with my lot, and then I started worrying that perhaps there was nobody left in Palco to serve me food.

[The rest of this entry is below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #49 »

I know Raymond Crotty meant well but I’m not convinced that we should have entire treaties thrown at us in referenda.

A paragraph addressing the elements of the Lisbon Treaty that might be unconstitutional if applied to Ireland, would be a lot cleaner and no less democratic - though I wouldn’t wish to go against an interpretation by the Supreme Court.

The polls have been open for hours and I still haven’t decided. Although I’ve voted in favour of every other European treaty, this time I’ve failed to be persuaded.

And to change the Constitution I need to be persuaded.

There’s time yet.

Read: I Don’t Know »

Kansas Again

Part 48 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

The next section of the journal is taped and transcribed but as both tape and transcript are inaccessible in storage here is a brief outline of that day from memory, and from excerpts of the journal that was handwritten, a more detailed account of the following day.

Thursday, 3rd October.
A short grey day. Dominated by Harlan County Lake.

I had cycled through the town in the night so was staying on the edge which meant I avoided having to cycle past the Piggly-Wiggly and other wonderfully named American box chains in the morning.

Due south on US 183 for 23 miles took me to the small town of Alma just 7 miles short of the state of Kansas. And then there it was, Harlan County Lake. Or there it wasn’t, to be more exact.

There was no water.

Harlan County Lake is on the Republican River. It’s a big name for a big river, but there was nothing for me to see. And I love seeing nothing.

The road crosses the western end of the lake where it meets the river, but for me there was a beautiful silent mass of lifeless leafless trees growing in the remains of a dried up river and lake. For a mile I cycled in this graveyard of grey.

Harlan county Lake is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ project and, with over 13,000 acres of water surface, is Nebraska’s 2nd largest lake. east of me it stretched for 9 miles.

Halfway across I got off the bike just to stand there. On the fence beside me was a praying mantis perfectly coloured for a weathered Nebraskan fence under a grey sky.

And then it was back cycling south. Once over the ridge on the far side it was maybe 5 miles to the state line. I was entering the state of Kansas for the 2nd time on the trip. This was bleak and big though, in contrast to the sunny green hills of southeast Kansas all those weeks ago.

This was what I imagined most people thought of when they thought of Kansas. I passed the “Welcome to Kansas” sign with fields of milo on one side of the road and corn on the other. Big fields.

It’s not like cycling anywhere else in the world, with one day being just one road, straight and in one direction. Luckily for sanity US 183 did a kink where it headed east for a mile or so before resuming its direction due south for another 20 miles.

In Phillipsburg I’m not sure why I decided to cycle past the motel in a town that clearly wouldn’t have many. But on the outskirts of town on the far side I saw another motel. Kind of. It was still being built.

But I could see an office so I went in. Before I spoke the women at the desk told me who I was and that I wasn’t supposed to be there. This was a surprise.

-Where am I supposed to be?
-In the other motel in town; they’re expecting you.
-Oh. Well I’d like to stay here if I can.

They said they weren’t really open because they were building but I said please and they said I could stay for reduced rates.

So I did. Seems phonecalls from Kansas City had been made by people guessing what towns I’d end up in. Sometimes you don’t want to go where people are expecting you.

[An account of the next day in Kansas constitutes the rest of this entry and it’s below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #48 »