Mood:  a-ok

Today's ride to Tribune, KS, would be 58 miles, and relatively flat.  It looked for all the world like this would be a relatively easy day, if the weather cooperated.  The only potential tricky part is that there would be no services at all between Eads and Tribune.  I still had some food, including one of Joan Mikkelsen's super duper PB&J sandwiches.

To put the odds in my favor, I was packed and ready to go by 6:30 AM, which is the time the cafe opened next door.  A large breakfast later, I set out on the road.  Things were going fine, decent speeds, little traffic. 

Two bicyclers, a father and son team, caught up with me and we chatted, while pedalling.  They were on their way to Delaware.  The son would pedal until dark, typically 120 miles.  The dad would quit at 100, and mom would pick him up.  More power to them, but it didn't sound like much fun.

Two bicyclers (the first of five separate twosomes that day) going in the opposite direction pulled over to talk a bit. They were from Indianapolis.  The next two were from Belgium.  Then Chicago.  The husband of this group competed on the show "The Biggest Loser" and was now a high demand motivational speaker.  He is one of the few cyclists who admitted that riding cross country is difficult.

At any rate, after all of these social stops, the wind had started to pick up, and, unfortunately, it developed into a moderate headwind.  This not only resulted in a reduced speed, averaging 8 mph, but I had to pedal harder than normal just to maintain that pace.  It was terribly fatiguing.

But I am now in Kansas, the home state of my parents, and numerous relatives!  I love Kansas!

After checking into another one my quality motels, I needed food.  A burger, fries and shake later, I headed for the library to update this journal.  It was closed.  Oh, look.  There is a museum!  I love museums, so I went to it.  It was closed. 

The grocery store was open, however.  This was my first real opportunity to fix some high calorie snack foods.  I bought tortilla shells, peanut butter and jelly.  This would become my foil towards the weight reduction that I had been experiencing.  In addition, I bought a cold orange and a 1 1/2 liter bottle of green tea.  The orange was delicious, and I re-hydrated with the tea.

Still hadn't showered yet, but took the time to call Karen.  Afterward, I fell into a deep sleep, waking around 5:30 PM.   The town of Tribune, I'm sure, would have thrown me out if I didn't shower, so shower I did.

This was a somewhat dis-spiriting day because of the slow tiring pace.  Tomorrow, however is another day (where have I heard that before?).  It had better be.  It was a 70 mile ride, ending in a town called Dighton.  Just in case, I decided to leave early.  So I packed everything up and filled all the water containers.  I wanted to be at the cafe at 6 AM tomorrow morning.

Will McMahan