Day 23

Mileage: 125
Total mileage: 1971

When you catch hold of a tailwind in Kansas, you hang on tightly till it dies!

Last night around midnight, a racer rolled into the pavilion where I was sleeping and asked to use one of the other picnic tables as a bed. He was an older gentleman named Joe and was essentially riding the race for completion, which requires you to finish in 40 days. I thought it was really cool what he was doing, but he must have been a little self conscious about his place in the pack, because he kept giving excuses as to why he didn't get more mileage during the day, why he had to get up a bit later, etc. He finally settled down to sleep with a promise to be gone by 4:30. I figured that meant he would be out by 6.

Sure enough, I heard movement this morning, starting at about 5:30. I continued to snooze until 6, when my alarm went off and then I was packed up and clipped into my bike by 6:08, just to show this guy up a little bit. Breakfast this morning was at a convenience store, which is less than desirable, but there's nothing open in these small towns on a Sunday morning and I didn't have a lot of options down the road. While I was eating, Steve from a few days ago showed up from Hutchinson, where he stayed last night! I polished off my food quickly and rode out with him.

The day started with a segment that was marked on my map as 'no services, 58 miles.' I was quite happy to be with Steve because we chatted as we rode and it made the long road seem shorter. As a rule, touring cyclists almost never pass other cyclists on the road. A small 10 minute head start will put you miles ahead of someone else, which can take hours to make up, since the difference between easy pedalling and heroic effort is only a few mph. Regardless, we passed a whopping two(!) Sets of tourists on the road today, going the same direction. It was good riding, gorgeous empty land, traffic free and fairly flat without wind. You can see in one of my pictures of the trees, which direction the wind usually blows from.

40 miles in, Steve noticed a thunderstorm on the horizon. I normally would have eyeballed the storm, the wind and our location and figured we were getting wet, but I had Steve with me and that's not the way he does things. He checked the Doppler on his phone, got his wife to look online for extreme weather warnings and used a site to track the local weather systems. He concluded that we were going to get wet.

Regardless, we did the manly thing and tried to outrun it. The storm was coming up from the south, and if we could get far enough ahead of it, it would crash into the road behind us. We started pacelining, one person pulling hard against the new wind while the other rode tightly in the draft zone, switching off every minute so that each person got a break. After a half hour if hard racing, it came right down to the wire, but we managed to get ahead of the clouds, just as they started to hit the roads behind us.

Immediately in front of us came another storm and we got soaked.

Several discrete storms roam the plains out here like Pac-Man ghosts, I think you can see two in a photo I included. Absolutely sopping, we rolled into Larned, where Steve was stopping for the day. This was one of his slow days and he had a friend to meet in town. I dripped into a local Mexican restaurant for lunch and planned the rest of my day. I decided to go 30 more miles into Rush Center to make an even 90 after yesterday's long ride.

As soon as I got on the bike though, my plans changed. I was rolling west, when I suddenly noticed a strange sensation. There wasn't wind in my face. It wasn't even gusting in from the side. Sure enough, I looked at the wheat by the side of the road and my suspicions were confirmed. I had stumbled across the mythical tailwind! And suddenly my plan was decided! When you catch a tailwind in Kansas, you don't let go, and I was ready to hold on all night if it lasted.

With a long haul in mind, I tried to do some calling with the minimal service I have out here. After a few failed calls to my brother to wish him happy birthday, I had some success getting through to Hannah and Brittany from back in Virginia. Talking on the phone is the most battery intensive pastime I have out here, but it's so nice when it works out. I had a great time chatting with them and it made over 30 miles go by like a heartbeat.

Around 5 in the evening, the wind started to peter out, and I was left sitting with another 120 mile day, which is fine by me. I got more Mexican food and tried to find ice cream, with no luck. After checking in at the police station to make sure I don't get moved tonight, I headed to city park to camp. It was still hot out, so I dropped my pack on some concrete that was shaded, and slept for three hours until the sun went down before getting back up to write this.

I've been thinking a lot over the past couple days about my decision to do this trip alone. The downside is an obvious lack of familiar company to spend time with. Encounters with the locals tend to follow a routine and the novelty of being a novelty wears off after a while. The other thing I miss is someone to share accomplishments with. It's one thing to cross the Mississippi solo, it would be a whole different experience sharing that with someone.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying the flexibility of being solo and the ability to operate pretty close to my physical and mental limits. Whenever I've been backpacking in large groups, I've always admired that lone solo hiker who puts in mile 20 of the day past your camp as you're still eating breakfast. I think of how I could do that and chafe at the idea of another slow plodding day with a group.

I realized this evening that on this trip, I'm finally that guy. Tonight in the park there are three guys traveling together, going west as well. They're each on heavily loaded bikes and as I was laying my stuff out to dry, they were setting up tents. I saw myself in one of the guys who was eyeballing my bare bike and light pack and asking about my mileage. He kept repeating how cool he thought it was that I was doing the trip this way, light, fast, with a backpack and still camping. I now know how it feels to be on the other side of the fence, where I thought the grass was so much greener, because all I was thinking of was how lucky he is to have a cool group of guys to hang out with every night.

At least now I know the trade-off. I've got no idea where I'm headed tomorrow, no clue what the wind will be like and no prediction for how my legs will feel in the morning, so I suppose I'm just gonna go to bed now. G'night!