Kansas

The bicycling crew has had two ~90 mile days in a row now. Lots of straight Kansas roads. Last night was spent in Rush Center, a tiny town with only 170 people and no gas station to get food at. Dan had some wheel trouble and decided to take it apart, only to lose some ball bearings from it. He got in late last night after fixing it. Tonight the crew is in Scott City, KS. The town is bigger and pretty close to the Colorado border. They should get into Colorado tomorrow or the day after and hopefully arrive in Denver on the 4th, in time to stay at my mom's house and see some fireworks!

Today Michael saw a dust devil with birds riding the thermal above it. They had a pretty good crosswind so he could watch as the dust devil and birds moved relative to the earth's surface. Cool! They also had lots of trucks passing by today and one blew out a tyre right beside Michael. He was not hurt or anything, but I imagine it was quite a shock! Combines for harvesting also were a common sight and a bit scary to pass by on the road.

In Nickerson, KS, about three nights back, the group ran into a group of 5 other guys who are also going west on the TransAmerica route. They spent last night and tonight together as well and Michael rode 33 miles with them today. Different company and riding styles must have been an interesting spice.

Slideshow of Pictures

The third installment of pictures from Michael's trip! For good measure I've uploaded the other two picture installments in slideshow form as well. If you click on the pictures it should take you to the online album where you can read Michael's comments and any captions for the pictures.

Halfway!- changes

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As of Friday Michael was at ~1720 miles on his bicycle and about halfway across the country (as the fingers measure on a computer screen ;) . Tonight they are in Hutchinson, staying with Trevor's uncle. Today is a long day because they are riding a stretch where there are no towns or anywhere that the group can stop to sleep. I should be able to post more pictures soon too! Keep checking.

The crew took a half day and split up to go play around with the day off. Dan went and bought a backpacking guitar so he could play music for the rest of the trip; in fact, he was playing it as Michael and I talked. Claire and Calum decided to go play at a waterpark in Wichita. Trevor's uncle picked him up so they could have family time before the whole crew arrived. Stavros, Nathan, and Michael set out together from Wichita to ride to Hutchinson.

For lunch they stopped at Anne's Variety store in Mt. Hope, KS. The place was being renovated, so the owners didn't have their health inspection certificate yet. As a result, the food was pretty cheap and the boys had to cook their own food that they bought at the store. The owner (maybe Anne??) helped them out with this and regaled them with her opinions about goat breeding. The woman was a serious goat breeder for a hobby and even got out her magazines of goat stock (males?) to breed. They got to hear how she liked the coloring and size of this one or that one, but perhaps the ears were too long and reached the mouth, a serious no-no in goats! I wonder if they have a Westminster type show for goats or if they are just at the state fairs and perhaps other events like that.

Hutchinson is home to underground salt mines, one of a handful like this in the world and one of the 8 wonders of Kansas! Salt, along with wheat, other crops, and fossil fuels, was important in establishing the wealth of Kansas because when the mines were founded salt was still very difficult to obtain. In addition to tours of the salt mine, places that have already been mined are now used as storage facilities for things from Hollywood movies to business records so that there are backups of information stored there. These vaults are somewhere around 350 feet below ground.

Now, what I want to know is why there? The website was sort of helpful here, but not very detailed. Of course, underground storage will remain at pretty constant temperatures year round and if there are no rivers nearby then it wouldn't be too humid. Kansas is pretty much right between the New Madrid fault and the Rio Grande Rift valley, so I suppose it is not super tectonically active. (I don't think most people know there is a very active and potentially dangerous fault in the middle of the country.)

However, I wanted geologic information on how salt came to be in Kansas. I didn't find much online so I'm speculating here. If you read this before it has changed because I've consulted my mom (she's a geologist). During the Cretaceous (and various other geologic periods) there has been a large inland sea in the midwest US. See below:


As you can see, in the area where Kansas is it may have been quite shallow. As the continent closed up and the sea evaporated it could have left a lot of salt deposits behind. My mom suggested that another support for the sea theory was that the limestone in Kansas is not very pure and has lots of sandy bits. This suggests that the area was a transition area: somewhere shallow where salt could collect, but this isn't necessarily on the coast. In contrast, the limestone in Missouri and Kentucky is fairly pure meaning they were out farther and deeper in the sea. The limestone forms the famous caves in this area.

Wichita, KS

First on the agenda tonight, pictures from Kansas.

The requisite state entrance sign:




Crops next to one of the straight Kansas roads:


Moooo! Wow, look at that big sky!


Today the gang is in Wichita, KS for the evening. Tonight they are staying at a home found via couchsurfing. Michael reports that the residents are classical musicians and had a record collection of classical music that he really envied. He wished he could listen to it all, but that alone would take several days.

Today was another day of mostly long, straight roads. Michael said that the days of riding here go something like this: ride 30 miles west, turn right and ride 10 miles north, turn left and ride 15 miles west, turn north and ride 3 miles north, turn left, etc etc etc. The constant tempo without much gear changing has made them pretty tired because going at the same pace and in the same position all day leads to cramps and aches.

Michael had a dinner of falafel and cheese after which he took a walk and could see storms in the distance. Below is the radar for tonight in Wichita thanks to NCAR weather. Wichita is the point in the center of the light blue. The red, yellow, and green all around is a squall line of thunderstorms. Fortunately Michael and company are not in the serious rainfall areas, so Michael was just enjoying watching the clouds and lightning on his evening walk, but this storm is no joke. Much of Kansas is currently under flash flood warnings and these storms can produce the tornadoes that Kansas and the rest of "tornado alley" are famous for.



Fortunately tomorrow will be a half rest day, so hopefully they'll get to stretch some too! Michael hopes to visit an aviation museum tomorrow in the town they're riding to. But it seems that the planes are very present in Kansas; he told me "I was definitely on the sky all today." There were lots of general aviation planes and biplanes up and about as they rode into town, so he enjoyed that. I read online that Wichita is home to Boeing, Cessna, Learjet and Ratheon, so it is no surprise that the city has also been nicknamed the "Air Capital of the World." He also got really (and yes, I mean so excited it hurt my ear to listen on the phone) excited about a twin-rotor helicopter flew overhead at a really low altitude (thanks to Dr. Howard here!).

But there aren't just airplanes around Wichita. Michael and crew rode through El Dorado, KS, home to the state maximum security prison. At a gas station in town they ran into a guard who, along with many people, found it amazing and unbelievable that these kids are riding all the way across the country on bicycles. I find it pretty unbelievable that she can work with the serial killers in prison. To each their own, I suppose. I think I'll stick to the climate modeling though.

Random notes: Michael has apparently acquired a new riding nickname: M-bot (or variations of that ilk). The group has decided that he is THE authority for knowing how to fix bicycles, knowing about planes, knowing about the clouds and storms they always see, and also predicting the weather. So he'll go for a walk or to the grocery store and come back and be bombarded with requests to fix the chain on this bike, or maybe adjust the derailleur on another bike, etc etc. I think he likes being the group mechanic/bike authority and I certainly look forward to his help on tuning up my bicycles!

Michael is thinking about possibly taking the Western Express route from Colorado to San Francisco instead of riding north through Wyoming to Oregon. I think he's going to bring it up with some of the kids sometime soonish. Maybe they'll wait till they get to Colorado and take a bit of a longer break. They're hoping to get to CO by the 4 July so they can see fireworks and celebrate because there aren't many sizable towns between where they are and Denver. If they miss the 4th they can always make Bastille day though! ;)

That's all for tonight, but I'm wishing them good weather, good winds, and speedy travels.

Chanute- a brief history

Michael has reached Kansas and the long, flatish road that accompanies it. He rode about 60 miles today with a headwind that made the whole day a bit more of a slog than anything. But tonight will be spent in Chanute, KS. At Michael's request I'm writing about that.

He said he rode into the town and saw pictures of gliders and airplanes on the welcome board. I think he poked around and found out that the town was named after Octave Chanute, an aviation pioneer who helped the Wright brothers with their ideas and who graces our presence in the photo above. You can read more at this link, but he sounds like a cool guy.

Tomorrow holds more of the same in terms of riding. I will continue updating the map of where the group is, so it will be available for viewing as well!

Missouri

This picture is one that Michael took this evening of the clouds near Ash Grove, MO. The top of the cumulus cloud is lit up by the sun, but this one isn't a thunderstorm yet.

He said today wasn't that great a day and seemed pretty off his normal self on the phone. The hills were steeper than they expected, they took long breaks and didn't get in as many miles as they wanted. A pack of dogs ran after them at one point and one bit Claire's shoe. She was pretty shaken up about that and it took a bit to recover.

Highlights were that he saw a scissor tail out flying around. Also, while Michael was waiting for the rest of the crew to get to a rest stop some guys drove up to get some beer. They asked Mike where he was going and he said "Oregon" and they said "no way". They asked where he was from and he said "North Carolina" and they just told him that he must be bullshitting them. Then they insisted that they shake his hand if he was really doing that. To cap it all off, as they drove away one yelled out the window: "If that doesn't get you laid, I don't know what will." Interesting...

They're hoping to get to Colorado by the fourth of July. I did some calculations for them and that meant 70 mile days from tomorrow on. Well, in Kansas maybe it won't be such a problem. The maps for Kansas (you can see them on the Adventure Cycling association link, to the left) have very straight lines with none of the curviness we've seen so far. They're hoping to get out early, so tonight was an early to bed night as well.

Popeye

"The biking gang went through Chester, IL--- home of the creator of Popeye! The TV show Good Eats filmed there recently otherwise we wouldn't have known either. Michael said there were references to Popeye all over town. Hope they had some spinach while they were there!"

Thanks to Marsha!