Kansas: I Promised

I promised Ivan that I wouldn't use a title referring to the Wizard of Oz. He said it would be too cliche, but what can be said about Kansas that isn't a cliche? So we didn't come across Toto, there was no twister, and Dorothy didn't sing a song about a yellow brick road. But everything was so flat; if that isn't a cliche, I do not know what is. Isn't that why Dorothy ran away in the first place: lack of changeable scenery? Okay maybe her aunt had something to do with it, but I am sure the flatness didn't help. So here is how Kansas broke down (and as with every other post like this I will blog about the people we stayed with separately--everyone has been so wonderful they deserve their own blog post!).

July 29th: Sedelia, Mo to Kansas City, Ks. 91.05 miles. 90 miles. It felt good to do a significant distance. It was still depressing to think that a car could do what we did in a day in under an hour and a half. But I try not to think like that-I would never get anywhere. It was beautiful country, with long rolling hills. The state line was unmarked. It was a bit of a let down to not have a sign welcoming us to our fifth state, but four states down none the less. Across the border, Ivan's cousin Carla picked us up and took us to her house. It was already pretty late, but we were greeted with dinner none the less.

July 30th: Kansas City, Ks to Overbrook, Ks. 56 miles. Carla rode with us for the firs 12 miles and then she had to head for home. I like it when other people join us, no matter how long or short. The day was filled with rolling hills--no flat Kansas yet. I love hills. I am rather slow, but give me a hill over a flat any day. The sign welcoming us into Overbrook said "Don't Overlook Overbrook." It took a little fumbling around to try and find a place to stay. We rode around town, first to the police station, which was closed, and then we wondered aimlessly for a bit. Turns out our best bet was to just to go to the local gas station and ask. The lady behind the counter called the sheriff, who directed us to the local fairgrounds for camping. It was a nice night, briefly interrupted by some rambunctious men, but they left us alone.

July 31st: Overbrook, Ks to Council Grove, Ks. 52.55 miles. This was another day of beautiful rolling hills as we entered the Flint Hills of Kansas. True to form, Kansas was hot. This day more than most. I fell asleep on the side of the road under the only tree for miles around. I think I only slept for about 30 minutes, but it was enough time that Ivan managed to get significantly ahead of me. I had just started biking again when a car stopped ahead of me. The driver slowly got out of the car and moved towards me as I crested the hill and shouted to me, "WarmShowers?" This was my first introduction to Gregg who turned out to be our host in Council Grove, Ks.

August 1st: Council Grove, Ks to Hillsboro, Ks. 59 miles. Another hot day without much shade. Even just driving through Kansas has to be eye opening to how much space there is in this country. Granted a good chunk of it is not really habitable. Anyway to escape the heat we stopped at a small convenience store about half way through the day. We were deciding whether or not we should push on or just stay put, when I happened to glance at the front page of the local news paper. The very first ariticle was information on how to keep your cattle from dieing in the heat. One of the biggest tips was that if you were having a hard time keeping your cattle from over heating then you could call the local fire department to have them come out and hose down your herd. We decided to stay put, but after about an hour the air conditioning broke. We spent about 20 minutes helping the owners pack up all the chocolate merchindice and put it into the coolers. Even without the air, we stayed until about 5 or 6. Then we biked the rest of the way to Hillsboro where we stayed with another Warmshowers couple: Charles and Ellie.

August 2nd: Rest day in Hillsboro. We stayed another day with Charles and Ellie as the high for the day was 112 degrees. It hit 100 by ten in the morning!

August 3rd: Hillsboro, Ks to Nickerson, Ks. 59.34 miles. This day felt pretty short. The heat wasn't as bad, though we were up and moving around 4 in the morning. I love biking at night/early morning. Everything is so still and the sky turns a dark purple. In front of us, about 30 miles, there was a lightening storm. the whole sky would turn white every minute or so and then it would fade back to that dark purple. We were supposed to stay at the Nickerson Senior Center, but their airconditioning broke. So a local couple took us in. Jim and June Gladden run have hosted something like 50 foreign exchange students over the years.

August 4th: Nickerson, Ks to Great Bend, Ks. 51.24 miles. What can I say about Great Bend?? It was a cute town, lots of brick buildings, and they had a wonderful Methodist Church that took us in and let us sleep in their basement. Yay for the Methodists! It was also the first night that I got to cook in a long time. I fried a potato and a green bell pepper along with some cheep beef. It was wonderful.

August 5th: Great Bend, Ks to Bazine, Ks. 51.67 miles. More flat Kansas--not much changes. We stayed at the Bike Oasis in Bazine. There is not much to Bazine besides 6 churches. We didn't even have to leave the highway as the Bike Oasis was right on the side of it.

August 6th: Bazine, Ks to Scott City, Ks. 65.13 miles. And more Flat. That's right--Flat, with a capitol F. You cannot get any flatter than that. We stayed at the local athletic club where we got to shower and swim and watch TV. I got to watch fried green tomatos before falling asleep reading on the cot that they gave me. Ivan had to get up in the middle of the night and turn of the light. I felt a little bad.

August 7th: Scott City, Ks to Sheridan Lake, Co. 74.46 miles. Our last day in Kansas, and our of sheer boredom I figured out how to read a book while riding. BEFORE you all freak out let me just say again that Kansas is flat. You can see any car coming for about 10 miles and you can hear it from about a mile away. There are also no turns. Seriously, once we were out of Kansas City we turned maybe all of five times, which includes any curving of the road. So it was completely safe. Well as safe as reading a book while riding a bike can be. Do not ask me what the book was. It is too embarrasing. Let's just say that if I had died while riding and reading that book it would not have been worth it. Moby Dick? Sure, kill me now. The Moonstone? Well worth dieing for. What I was reading was trash, but that's how bored I was in Kansas. I did put the book away when we got the state line. I felt that it would be wrong to not look around for the beginning of Colorado. Let me tell you, eastern Colorado looks a lot like western Kansas. Who knew?

Meet Virginia

The beginning of our travels! Finally Blogged! I know you never thought it would happen. I have not been very good at blogging, but I am trying. My plan for the next couple of blogs is to do a short profile on each person we have stayed with: how the visit went, what we did, what the people were like, etc. So this will be just the bare bones of what we did each day--from the beginning until Kentucky.

June 21st: Richmond, Va to Charles City, Va. 34 miles. First of all the name, Charles City, is grossly misleading. There is nothing City about it. There is a court house, a post office, a convenience store that doubles as the grocery, and a BBQ stand. The word, City, implies at least a stop sign or two. Anyway, it was a shock to my body to be riding. We had been sitting on a train for a couple of days, and the two weeks before that I had been, on and off, bed ridden due to sickness. My body rejected the idea of movement, hence only traveling 34 miles. Around mile 30 we started looking for a campground, which was pictured on our map, but we were unable to locate it. So we stopped in at some sort of environmental management office. They told us that the campground no longer existed and allowed us to set up tents on their property. In the morning we were let into the offices to shower. The lady at the front desk handed us each a sachet of lavender cookies for our journey. This was also the first time that Ivan was referred to as my husband.

June 22nd: Charles City, Va to Chikahominy, Va. 22 miles. We stayed at the state park at Chikahominy, which was right on the river. It was beautiful. This is where I met Suzie. She was dyeing her hair in the bathroom when we got to talking. She invited us over to her campsite that night for her family cookout. We had a great time. We met her daughter Victoria, her daughter's husband Jeff, who invited us to stay with them on our way back through Richmond.

June 23rd: Chikahominy, Va to Newport News, Va. 43 Miles. It was a wonderful thing to see the water when we pulled into Yorktown. That was our original plan, to stay in Yorktown. But it is a rather touristy town; everything there was out of our budget so we biked the 7 miles or so to Newport News and stayed in a campground there. The camp ground was beautiful, sitting right on a lake. Our site had a small hill running through it, with a sign asking you not to climb onto it because it happened to be an old civil war earthwork. Ivan was more skeptical than me. I thought it was good fun to imagine that the hill functioned as a barricade during some battle or another. Considering there were two that ran parallel to each other, in what I would assume would be rifle range, it wasn't that hard to imagine. I pitched my tent next to the hill and fell asleep to images of men crawling and kneeling behind it. For about five minutes I was a little concerned about ghosts, but then I fell in love with the romance of it all and fell asleep.

June 24th: Rest Day in Newport News. We decided to take a rest day considering our bodies were still adjusting to the idea of moving all day--everyday.

June 25th: Newport News, Va to Chikahominy, Va. 38 miles. It felt like heading home, even though we did not end up with the same campsite. This is where the squirrel ate through my bob bag, though I think this happened the first night we stayed at Chikahominy rather than the second.

June 26th: Chikahominy, Va to Richmond Va. 48 miles. This was the day of the crash. Yay! I will always remember the way the trailer swayed precariously behind me as I tried to stay on all two wheels. Jeff and Victoria were wonderful, sharing their home and their lives. (I will give them a whole blog unto themselves later!)

June 27th: Richmond, Va to Ashland, Va. 23 miles. It was a short day, I know. Jeff made us breakfast and they were so much fun we never wanted to leave. So we didn't, until about noon or so that is. So we just went 23 miles to a small KOA outside of Richmond. It is weird to consider that Ashland is really just the Gresham of Portland, distance wise.

June 28th: Ashland, Va to Mineral, Va. 45 miles. Things started to get a little hillier now. We were coming into more rolling hills, and probably what could be called the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Old Appalachians. (Looking back, now that we are in Kansas, I miss those hills.) I already blogged about our stay at Mineral--if you haven't read it I refer you to that blog (Mineral is in the name).

June 29th: Mineral, Va to Charlottesville, Va. 48.6 miles. We found a lovely KOA outside of Charlottesville. They had wonderful hot showers and a nice big pool. I cooked the best dinner that night. At a small grocery I had bought a small squash earlier that day and an onion. I chopped them up and sauteed them into some macaroni and cheese. Boy, was I happy.

June 30th: Rest Day in Charlottesville. I spent the day at the pool, reading Anne of Green Gables. It was lovely. Towards the end of the pool hours, around five or so a family showed up. There were four children and a mom and dad. Two of the children were obviously adopted from Africa--their names were beautiful and I can't help but wonder if they meant something. Though I will never find out because I can't remember what they were. The other two children were of their parents, so to speak, seeing as they had the same white skin and red hair of their mother and father. The family just didn't make sense. It had nothing to do with skin color or adoption. It was the dynamics of the children and how they interacted with their parents. I can't put my finger on what was weird, or off, but something was. I think it had something to do with how the mother was mothering. I feel like she had read a parenting book, and was acting from it verbatum. She was very formulaic.

July 1st: Charlottesville, Va to Afton, Va. 20 miles. A short day, but a long day, ending with two miles of the steepest climb of the trip...so they say (or so they could say, if they could talk, and had identical opinions to my own). We stayed with the Cookie Lady, or rather in her cycling museum. She was in the hospital when we arrived. She is in her 90's after all; we were told that her mind was starting to go and that it was unlikely that she would be coming home.

July 2nd: Afton, Va to Vesuvius, Va. 32.71 miles. The day started with a climb of about two miles, from the Cookie Lady's house to the left turn onto the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway. We got to coast for about 50 feet before we started climbing again. It was a long day with only about two remarkable downhills. Ivan told me later that this day, these 32 miles, are the breaking point for a lot of people. Apparently a lot of people finish the descent into Vesuvius and pack it in. Ivan has already blogged about the hill into Vesuvius. Let me just say that it was intense. That hill should be closed off. Whoever decided to put a road there was out of their mind. Anyway, we rolled into town, had dinner at the BBQ shop we would camp behind, and changed the flat tire that I got riding my breaks down that darn hill.

July 3rd: Vesuvius, Va to Lexington, Va. 21 miles. The beautiful scenery continues, as does rolling past historical marker after historical marker. We stayed in a hotel here. Not all that remarkable. We did order pizza and watch some Lord of the Rings. It was pretty epic.

July 4th: Lexington, Va to Troutville, Va. 44.83 miles. Fourth of July, and yet it was just another day for us. We biked this day just like we had the day before. We got caught in a rather impressive storm. We tried biking through it for a while, but after awhile the rain began to get a little cooler and the wind a little stronger. Thankfully we were close to our destination for the day, so we took refuge at the local elementary school. We hunkered down in one of the door ways and read until the storm passed. Then when the sun came back out and the puddles began to glow butter yellow, we rode the last five miles to the Troutville Town Park. The park manager, Cecil, set us up. He showed us the fire station where we could shower, told us about the route for the next couple of days, and let us sign his log book. Cecil was amazing.

July 5th: Troutville, Va to Blacksburg, Va. 44.11 miles. It was a beautiful day of riding, with winding roads over some smaller mountains, through a couple valleys, finally landing us in Blacksburg. This is the day that Ivan's trunk rack finally died. He had been stopping every now and then to add zip ties and duct tape to the rack, in the hopes that it would hold together. But ten miles outside of town the rack decided it had had enough. We made on last ditch effort to fix it, which included using sticks as splints. It looked ridiculous by the time we rolled into town. This was the first night that we stayed with someone that we found off of Warmshowers.org, a website like couch surfing, but catered to the touring community. We stayed with Micheal and Jane Abraham. They were wonderful, which I explain in full detail later.

July 6th: Rest Day in Blacksburg.

July 7th: Blacksburg, Va to Draper, Va. 35 miles. Another day of riding through rain, although it was oddly liberating this day. Oddly enough when the rain hit, I was able to move faster even up the hills. It felt good even though my shoes made my feet feel like sunken ships. We pulled into Draper around 5 in the evening. We had heard a rumor about a farmer in the area who was taking in cyclists. We stopped into the Draper Mercantile to see if they knew of the man. Turns out they didn't, but Kate (the shop girl) let us set up camp out back. It was fantastic.

July 8th: Draper, Va to Marian, Va. 48.09 miles. We made camp outside of a Baptist church in Marian. I managed a sink shower at the local sonic and spent the night reading. The man who let showed us where to camp at the church was nice, but he had a wondering eye if you know what I mean. I am not sure he looked at my face once, and he lost his train of thought often. I mean I get that I am wearing spandex, but isn't there a commandment that goes something like "thou shalt not leer at young women"?

July 9th: Marian, Va to Honaker, Va. 50.63 miles. So if staying behind a church and showering in a fast food restaurant's sink, and drying off with brown paper towels didn't make me feel hobo enough staying at Slate's campground sure did me in. Mr. Slate set up a donation based campground along the river that runs through his property. As a result he has several trailers parked along the river with rather permanent residents. If you ever wanted to live outside the law, this would be the way to do it. I felt like a vagabond.

July 10th: Honaker, Va to Breaks, Va. 38.85 miles. This is the day we met Don. Don is a 62 year old man doing the same thing we are. He started after we did, in a different place, but he is headed towards Oregon like us. After we met him we started climbing Big A Mountain. That is actually the mountains name, but anyway I took my time and Don passed me pretty easily. He is riding the Surly Long Haul Trucker, which has lower gears than mine. We met up with him at night again at Breaks Interstate Camp Ground. That's right: INTERSTATE. As in between Virginia and Kentucky. This was our last night in Virginia, finally.

July 11th: Breaks, Va to Booneville, Ky. 62.80 miles. Our longest day yet, finishing off our first state. Virginia seemed to stretch on forever--granted we took our time about it. I can honestly say that there was a pack of stray dogs waiting for us at the border. So begins the state of dogs and coal trucks, where poor miners and rich mine managers live side by side in their respective trailers and mansions. Good bye to the rich rolling hills of Virginia, good bye to the plantations and the white picket fences. Hello to back roads, to outside showers, moonshine, and fried catfish. Oh yeah this is the night we met Chris Xia, who would ride with us until Missouri.

Dear Missouri

Traveling through Missouri took less time than I thought it would. Traveling through Virginia took forever, Kentucky just seemed like Virginia with a different name (for the most part), and Illinois was Illinois. We spent six days total in Missouri, only four of which were biking days. Here is the break down:

July 24th: St. Louis, Mo to Marthasville, Mo. 55.07 miles. We left the lovely Rhonda's house, in St. Louis, while she was still asleep. We spent a good part of the morning traveling through the outskirts of the city, until we finally made it to the KATY trail, which we planned on following for the next day or so. The trail was beautiful, flat, easy, covering what used to be an old railroad bed. We spent about 60 miles of our day on this trail. We took an afternoon break at a small brewery, and then we pushed on, traveling the last ten miles until Marthasville. We camped out under the covered patio at the community baseball field. The field, when we got there, was being used by a family for their reunion. We were greeted warmly by one of the family members and given free beer, as we explained what we were doing and how we were doing it.

July 25th: Marthasville, Mo to Jefferson City, Mo. 66.64 miles. We had planned to pull close to our first century this day, but we got a later start than we intended, and by the time we got to Jefferson City Ivan had gotten a flat. So we just had Ivan's uncle, Steve, meet us there. He picked us up and drove us the hour to his house in Centrailia. He is so bright and happy. He greeted us both with huge hugs that exuded such exuberance; I immediately felt right at home with him. When we finally made it to Centrailia, we were greeted with a wonderful home-cooked meal, a hot shower, and a steaming hot tub. Pure bliss. We then spent the next two days with Uncle Steve, his wife Bonnie, and their daughter Alicia. (I will blog about our actual visit with them in greater detail, later).

July 28th: Uncle Steve's. Mo to Sedelia, Mo. 53.58 miles. It was sad to leave Uncle Steve's, but though we left the house behind we didn't leave the people! Alicia rode with us for the first 40 miles of our day. It was so nice to have her along. Then we stopped in a small town and had a picnic lunch with Steve, Bonnie, and Alicia. After lunch it was rather hot; we didn't want to leave so upon trying to find a restroom in that small town, Steve found us a salon that let us sit on their couches for several hours during the worst of the heat. We parted ways at the door of the salon. Hugs all the way around. After resting, we filled up our water and headed out. We only made it to Sedelia another 15 miles or so. But Steve called ahead to some people he knew and, like magic, we were let into a church for the night. We even got to have showers!

July 29th: Sedelia, Mo to Kansas City, Ks. 91.05 miles. Our longest day yet, and it went pretty well. The day was long, and we covered beautiful rolling-hilled country. There was no state line sign, but we ended the day by riding on State Line Drive (or a street name to that effect). We stayed the night with Ivan's cousin Carla, her husband Jeff, and their small son Bridger. They made us a wonderful, late night, spaghetti dinner. In the morning we had a lovely breakfast, and then Carla joined us for the first 12 miles of our journey. Staying with them was the perfect way to end one state and begin another.

See what I mean? Missouri went by fast.