Crossing into Colorado

Kansas Prarie Scenes
Big Cloud over Kansas
Todd
Yes, that's right, Colorado already. In a month we've been able to get to Colorado from Virginia on a bicycle loaded with gear. It's pretty incredible. Mind-bottling [sic] even. So what happened to Kansas you may ask... Kansas flew by. We had a tail wind pretty much the entire way, only one pretty hot day, and even a few showers and a pool session or two. Kansas was the most dreaded part of the trip. From other people's journals, and books I'd had three preconceptions about Kansas. It's super hot, the wind is killer, and the scenery is god-awful boring. Well, in my experience, it worked out so none of the above three were true. It was really only hot one day, as mentioned. The wind was always blowing us forward, and the scenery was actually pretty awesome. I mean, to look out and be able to see miles and miles to the horizon is pretty cool. I never really got bored with it. Not to mention, the people in Kansas are, in general, really really nice. I can't say that I thought that was true the first few days as we met a girl who had her bicycle trailer stolen and saw an episode of Jerry Springer at a state park. A whole group of dumb rednecks were drinking heavily lakeside on a Sunday night, you know, the beginning of a recipe for a nice family outing. Well, I guess calling a friend of yours a sissy when he's on the last beer of a thirty rack calls for a fight. Maybe not so much a fight as a brouhaha. the guy got sucker punched, and kicked in the face karate style about 4 times...that is once per occasion on four separate occasions. Ahh...Kansas. Welcome to the state with the nicest people you'll meet along the trail... Well, a few days later it redeemed itself. I broke a spoke on my bike in Buhler KS. So Jake, Bonnie (the girl we temporarily adopted on account of a stolen trailer) and I at lunch and tried to fix it with this temporary spoke I had. It broke immediately, maybe because we're dumb, but I think it was just too old. So I talked to the girl working at the diner and asked her if she could maybe give me a ride to the next town over with a bike shop. She called her dad, a pastor/cyclist/mobile bike mechanic, and within 15 minutes he was there with a bike stand, about 60 spokes, and all the tools necessary. He had me back on the road in about 45 minutes and didn't so much as ask for a thanks. I felt like I was in a movie, and Todd (the pastor/mobile bike mechanic) was like batman for down and out bike mechanics..."what?!? a cyclist is in trouble....I'll be RIGHT there!!" With an immediacy I was up and running, armed with two spare spokes that are the highest quality spokes on the market all gratis. THEN...he offered Bonnie an old rack and set of panniers (bike bags) that he had laying around, he gave her a cookset and a new seat too. All for free...all she has to do is send them back to him whenever she's finished w/ them. So...Kansas has some nice people after all.
Eastern Colorado ended up being more like how I imagined Kansas than Kansas was. They actually had more sunflowers in Colorado than were in Kansas...and Kansas has roadsigns with sunflowers around the highway numbers. Silly Kansas. But, other than that, eastern Colorado is barren. There's lots of grasslands sure...but that's it. We were hard pressed to find a tree on the horizon for about two days. It was pretty amazing actually. It really was like being in the middle of the ocean, except there's land everywhere instead of water. We stayed last night in Ordway CO at a lady named Gillian's house. She was awesome, and we got showers for the first time in a day or two. She just leaves her house open for bikers, and leaves them notes with instructions etc. She took us to breakfast with a group of about 15 other cyclists going from NY to San Diego. They're all Illini...so Rob and I let them know we were going to school at UNC in 2005. They took it well I suppose. Anyways, we're on the threshold of the Rockies and were sitting at about 4700 feet elevation. We're all giddy with excitement and I imagine our day off will be met with ambivalence...although its much needed. We have done about 650 miles in the last 7 days, and for a few days before that we were doing about 80 or so a day. So yeah, rest day...