Day 25

Mileage: 119
Total Mileage: 2192

Goodbye Kansas! I'm going to miss you!

This morning started nice and late at 8am, which is even later once you realize I crossed into Mountain Time last night, and it's effectively 9. But I've been in no hurry these days, in contrast to most of the cyclists I've been meeting, and I think I've figured out why. More on that later.

My ride this morning started out with one of those 60 mile stretches of nothing, that used to be intimidating, and are now the norm. 15 miles in, I crossed the border into Colorado. The cyclists I stayed with two nights ago, in Ness City were there taking pictures and they happily snapped one of me as well. I tend to play leapfrog with groups like this, seeing them at least one or two times before I finally pull away.

As I was crossing the border, I entered a small settlement called Towner (pop 22). There was one of those 10 story grain elevators/silos and I noticed a rickety emergency ladder running up to the top. I pulled over and got off my bike to see if I could climb to the top for a good view of the country side, but there was an attendant overseeing the loading of some trucks and he told me I couldn't climb it. He did give me a heads up though that there was an abandoned elevator about 20 miles down the road, and that no one was likely to stop me if I tried to climb it. 

So, an hour later, in the small town of Brandon (pop 21) I found the abandoned elevator and climbed up it. The ascent up the rusty old ladder was a bit sketchy and I winced at every creak, but I eventually made it up to the top without falling to my death. The view from the top was phenomenal, but I feel the phone camera still doesn't quite capture the breadth of these flatlands. 

I technically climbed the silo. The grain elevator was across this rickety, rusted out walkway which I chose not to cross. The wind was fierce up here and you can see that the ladder doesn't quite go to the top of the elevator anyways. If I could have gotten on top, I think I would have tried to cross this thing.

There's so much wheat around here that it grows wild around the silos. I got my farmer on for a few miles until the gusting wind finally blew it out of my mouth.

You'll notice that yesterday I crossed the 2000 mile mark, but didn't make big fuss about it. That's because today there was a much bigger milestone coming up today in Eades. I officially crossed the halfway mark this afternoon! I'm well over halfway across the country in the East-West direction, but I've got a lot of northward miles to put on before I make that last Westward pull into Oregon. I'm going all the way up into Montana!

I got a little nervous this afternoon, because I knew I had some climbing coming up. I'm not talking about the mountains either. Pueblo, my lunch stop for tomorrow, is at about 4700 feet elevation. I remember when I was riding with Steve a few days ago, he made a comment about us being at "1700 feet already." However, the last few days I had been riding through flat terrain and during much of this morning, I felt like I was actually going downhill. Apparently I was going to be in for a big long climb once I got near Pueblo. 

You can imagine my surprise then, when I rode into Eades at lunch and saw the sign saying "Elevation 4513" Apparently I'd been climbing on these 120 mile days, and not even realizing it!! It's like someone slipping medicine into a bowl of yogurt to make it go down easier. I climbed 3000 feet without even tasting it!

Tonight I aimed for a little town called Ordway (pop 1000). The wind was blowing hard out of the southeast all afternoon, which was wonderful when I was going west, but miserable during one stretch when I turned hard south out of Haswell. As the road slowly curved back around facing west, I could feel the wind slowly aligning at my back and I couldn't help but open it up. 15 miles outside of Ordway, I started my stopwatch at mile marker 121 and just started cranking. I wanted to see if I could stay near 20 mph the whole time. 38 minutes later, I rocketed into Ordway, with an average speed around 22 mph. My legs were on fire, but it was exhilarating!

As I rode through the main street, I saw a gaggle of loaded bicycles leaned up against the outside of the diner. Always a good sign! As I leaned my bike alongside theirs, a saucy lady with a New Zealand accent leaned out the door and yelled "Get out of here! You're no cyclist, with a backpack like that you've gotta be a hiker!"

Enter Gillian. I went into the restaurant for some pie and met Gillian, a local, two more Kiwis, a guy named Glenn, a lady named Cheryl and Liam Neeson. The last guy is actually a southern gentleman named Jim, but he's the spitting image of Liam Neeson, so that's become his nickname. Unmentioned on my maps, Gillian operates a cyclists only hostel of sorts. She doesn't charge anything, but has cyclists do a few chores around her animal farm or in the community to earn their board. After dinner, we all rode over to the house of an elderly lady in the community and pulled up all the dead larkspur from her yard, before continuing on to Gillians'. She's got goats, chickens and some huge dogs! Two of them are Akita-Wolf mixes, and needless to say, they're enormous.

Here in Ordway, we're only about 60 miles away from Pueblo, which is nestled in the Rockies, so all afternoon I was straining to get a glimpse of the mountains on the horizon. I knew I should be able to see Pike's peak, but I couldn't differentiate the low clouds from the thin line I assumed was the mountains. Tonight, as I rode over to Gillian's, I went past a large open field just as the sun was setting. There was heavy cloud cover smothering the entire horizon, except in one expanded window, just over Pike's peak, where the sun was setting. After crossing the entirety of the Great Plains, my first glimpse of these huge mountains was in the context of a fiery sunset, sinking below one of their highest peaks. My camera was dead, hence the description instead of a picture, but I just stood and stared for a good 15 minutes until the light finally faded away, burning the scene into my mind. A couple of the other cyclists might have gotten a good picture of it. If I run into any of them tomorrow, I'll ask them to text it to me so I can share on here.

Gillian bullied some of us into playing a few rounds of dominoes before heading to bed, so I'm getting to sleep late, but I want to include one last thing; the reason I've been getting up late and riding, instead of knocking out the miles early like everyone else I've encountered.

At the beginning of this trip, and for several hundred miles afterwards, I was still unsure of my ability to complete the ride each day. I wasn't sure how many miles I could get, whether I could stand the heat, if I could climb all the hills or stay on pace. The afternoons were hot, and I felt better about my ability to survive the day if I got my miles in early. Each day's ride was an obstacle, something to get out of the way before I could stop for the night. Here on the plains, something has changed. Part of it is the weather. It gets up to about 100 degrees in the afternoon, but it's a dry heat and I'm not dehydrating like I used to. A second facet is my confidence in my ability to put in miles. I know I can easily crank out 100 miles now and an extra 20 here or there is really no big deal. But I think the biggest change has been a lack of destinations. I know that every day, I'm going to ride until it starts to get dark, and every night I'm going to find some tiny little town and sleep on a park bench or picnic table. There's no real goal. Nothing ahead of me is any bit more exciting than what's behind me or even where I'm at right now. As a result, I've been able to get away from "enduring" my day's mileage, or "conquering" it. Without a destination to look forward to, I've started to finally enjoy the riding part of the journey in a whole new way. It also helps that my butt doesn't hurt anymore. =)

Tonight I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor. It's been a looooooong time since I've had a mattress and right now it feels good! Tomorrow I start the Rockies, so I'd better get my sleep. G'night!