Kansas: telephone pole, cow, telephone, cow...

My the days have flown by, the miles have not. I'll try and catch up from the week with highlights. I'm not even sure exactly where we have been each night (other than on the gym floor of a different small town's high school), but can say for sure that the wind in Kansas does not blow in our favor.

Highlights:
1) We are over half-way! Tomorrow we reach Kansas City, Missouri! Kansas has been more scenic than expected, yet the weather has not completely befriended us. Most days we have been riding in 50 degree weather into a fierce headwind/crosswind which have caused our 100 mile days to be painfully long (averaging 10-12mph with unfavorable winds vs. 18-20mph with no wind). In the past 3 days, I have ridden 293 miles. Thankfully today, there was minimal wind and I was perched on my new saddle (which comfortably feels like a block of wood), otherwise I would not have made it. The scenery today turned greener and was surprisingly Irish-esque, with overcast skies, bare rock interspersed among the rolling hills, and various livestock to exchange glances with throughout the miles. Don't look for anything specific in this landscape pic- just typical Kansas, mile after mile. One of the T-shirts at a lunch stop town we saw said "On my drive through Kansas, I saw a cow, then a telephone pole, then a cow, then a telephone pole..." Truly stated, only slowed down 10x on bike.

2) Rachael ran over a dog!- The puppy lived, so did Rachael. We have had quite a few pups eager to speed us away from their property in the last couple of days. The majority back off with just yelling at them. Second line attempt is squirting water at them. Third line is throwing the water bottle. Rachael said this puppy was overly excited about running with her, tried lapping up the water being squirted at it, then darted in front of her front tire. She did an acrobatic flip over her handle bars, hit her head, and got a little scrapped, but not too bad. The dog ran off just fine, hopefully a little wiser.

3) Civilization- Kansas does have more readily accessible convenience food stores so we have been taking advantages of non-Powerbar food sources at our rest stops. Here is a pic of the world health beard-off contestants outside a Dairy Queen (Steven, Jeff, and myself) half way through our journey.


Lowlights

1) Ulnar Parathesias- I realized today after I got done riding that I had lost sensation of my fourth and fifth fingers on my left hand- a condition called ulnar parathesia that has affected a couple of us during the trip. It is much like carpal tunnel syndrome and is caused by compression of the nerve in palm from pressure on the handlebars. Hopefully, and likely, it is temporary (just as long as the other parts of my nervous system remain functional. Note to self: don't ever bike this much again).

2) Swine flu- By happenstance, the van who went into Herrington early for the lecture walked around town a bit and ran into the local physician. He joined us for dinner at his old high school (built in 1960) where we were staying and was telling us a little about rural medicine. His county was the one where two people were diagnosed with the swine flu after traveling from Mexico. He was not the treating physician, but quickly had his staff recheck their hazardous exposure safety mask status. On a separate note (hopefully), one of our vans has pretty much become a traveling infirmary as several of our riders have been battling (swine) flu like symptoms.

Smelliest town ever award: Ordeway, Kansas. Good God. As soon as we road into town, it was like someone had dumped every latrine in the country on this poor, small town. I'm not sure of the high school's mascot, but it should be the Crowly County Cowpiles. It was real bad, the kind of smell that we could actually taste as a gritty substance between your teeth while we dry heaved our way into the somewhat protected walls of the wrestling room. The stench was courtesy of the huge cattle ranch just a few miles upwind. We passed it the next day and there were hundreds if not thousands of cattle just standing shoulder to shoulder in their small holding troughs (expelling methane constantly presumably). Before we headed out the next day, I delivered the lecture to the high school. The best question from the students was "Why tha heck are y'all comin' through Crowly County?" as they all stared at us like we were crazy (not sure if it was because of our bike trip, the fact that I was wearing spandex tights, or our actual stop in Crowly County).

THANKS EVERYONE FOR FOLLOWING MY BLOG AND FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARD THE RIDE. I'll continue to make my best efforts to keep you updated and entertained.