Cyclist / Sailor / Author / Speaker
The email account that the contact page feeds has been down for several weeks, but is back up now. I think that anything that was sent there just fell off into the black hole of email – the Pit of Despair.
My apologies, but it’s back in business now!
Day 2 (Sat, July 10, 2010) – 138 Miles from Springfield, Colorado to Plains, Kansas
5:25 AM on Day 2 of the Prairie Ride v1, and Dave and I are standing at the c-store in Springfield, Colorado, wolfing down a banana and an orange, filling the water bottles with ice and Gatorade. The wind is up a bit out of the south already this morning, and we’re both hoping for a little more west in the wind as the day wears on. We’re filled with optimism and excitement over our upcoming ride for the day, hoping like crazy that we don’t have to face a headwind again. We will be disappointed on that count.
It’s 63 degrees, and the south wind blowing up a quiet and deserted Main Street has a lonely feel to it this early on a Saturday morning. The sun isn’t up yet as we pedal our way south along 287 to get back to 160. A couple of trucks pass us in that couple of miles, and we’re glad to turn east onto our lonely highway when we get there. We’re even more glad to feel just a touch of west in that wind, and we smile at the hope of tailwinds.
The sunrise this morning is beautiful, and I stop often to take pictures before settling in to a nice pace, listening to the morning birds, enjoying the sunrise ahead, reveling in a glass-smooth pavement, and basking in a slight tailwind. Life is truly good.
This morning Dave and I try a little drafting. Drafting isn’t something that Dave ever feels comfortable with, and I’m curious about whether he’ll get the hang of it and get comfortable with it on this trip. It’s a really smart way to ride on a trip like this, allowing the riders to conserve quite a bit of energy and make better time as a unit. Coming in to the ride, Dave was pretty sure that he wasn’t ever going to feel comfortable drafting someone else, but was fine if someone drafted him. Since Dave is considerably stronger than I am, this seemed like a pretty ideal arrangement to me. I could imagine myself hanging on to Dave’s wheel as he pulled me 700 miles across Colorado and Kansas, and this morning we were going to test whether we could work together going down the highway. Of course, I’d have been delighted to share the load and split the work so long as we rode at a pace that I could maintain, but Dave was just convinced that he wanted no part of riding so close behind someone else.
Drafting on a bicycle is a fun blend of art and science. The science part of it is that you have to be able to ride a straight line at a very steady pace. Wheels are sometimes only inches apart, and tiny little movements and speed changes can bring riders into unexpected and unwelcome intimate contact with the pavement below more quickly than you can imagine. The art part of it is that you have to develop a keen unspoken communication and “harmony†with the other rider(s) in order for things to work smoothly and comfortably. It’s a really neat left-brain / right-brain integration exercise.
When you’re riding in a paceline with a person or group and everyone’s in harmony, it’s really quite a wonderful experience. I liken it to working with bird dogs with whom you are closely in tune. It’s also a lot like singing accapella with a group of people when everyone is tightly in tune with each other. The difference is that in a paceline, you can never let your concentration and focus slip for even a second – you have to keep both sides of the brain tightly engaged.
So as Dave and I ride along, I find myself working on to his back wheel, looking for a way to fall into that harmony. I figure that if we can develop it with me behind, he might just eventually develop the comfort to share the work.
And I discover something about riding that I’ve never really experienced before – that people can have drastically different riding styles that make finding that harmony impossible. Since the wind is primarily from our right, blowing slightly from the rear, the sweet spot of the slip stream is behind Dave and to his left. I find that spot and settle into it, and it’s really the perfect spot because its far enough to his left that I’m not right behind him, and can see up ahead just fine as we ride. I find the right gear, and settle into a nice cadence. Dave is doing his typical “looking over his shoulder†at me, but I’m used to that now, and figure that as we settle into a rhythm, he’ll become more comfortable that he’s not leaving me behind, and concentrate on holding his pace and watching in front.
But just as I’m feeling like we’re settling in to a nice pace, Dave sits up and drops his speed. It’s not a problem, since I’m off to his left anyway, so I just ease up beside him and glance over at him. Clearly he’s not winded, and I don’t really think that he’s wanting me to do the pulling, so I just ride beside him until he seems to drop back down and start a steady pedaling again, at which time I ease in behind him on his left again, find that sweet spot in the draft, and settle in to a nice rhythm again.
And again, just as I’m feeling like we are finding that nice steady pace, Dave sits up again and drops a couple miles an hour. Again, I ease up beside him and we ride side by side for a while, and after a couple minutes he drops back down and we do the whole thing over again.
After 3 or 4 rounds of this, I decide to just keep the same pace when he sits up, and I ease around him on the left, and pull over for him to fall in behind me. While I can’t keep Dave’s pace up for a long time, I figure maybe I can hold it for 30 seconds at a time to his couple minutes, and we can develop a nice pattern that way.
But looking in my mirror, I see that Dave is not sitting in my draft. So I drop the pace back figuring he’ll pass. Eventually he does pass, and then I drop in behind him, and we start that whole yo-yo process again. We go through this pattern several times, as we turn northeast and have a really steady wind at our back, until we hit some new chip seal surface and we’re riding apart because of the bad surface.
At first, this is really frustrating to me, as I can’t figure out what it is that I’m doing that is making it hard for Dave to find that rhythm. Funny how our mind does that – it’s always trying to figure out why it is that the other person doesn’t think and act just like we do. By the time we crossed the Kansas state line, I’d come to grips with a really simple truth that I’d just never really given much consideration to before.
People take really different approaches to riding, and their approach is usually the one that works best for them.
In my case, I love to find a sweet spot of exertion and a gear where I can hold a steady cadence, and just go and go and go. I love that steady rhythm and that perfect spot where the heart-rate, respiration rate, and cadence seem in perfect tune, and once I find it, I feel like I can go for hours like that. To me, that’s nirvana on a bike.
Dave, on the other hand, likes to change things up. He likes to vary his cadence, and his position, and his effort. He likes to vary them pretty often. This feels good to him, and allows him to maintain interest in the pedaling.
So as you can imagine, this difference in style would drive each of us nuts if we let it. What we settled on early on was that it works best if Dave gets ahead on the road, and varies his pace however he wants – just taking care to stay within sight when possible. I find a steady pace, and just hold it, knowing that Dave will yo-yo somewhere out in front of me, but will generally stay 100 or 200 yards ahead of me.
As we got a couple more days into the ride, I would discover that Dave’s style has an inherent advantage on multi-day rides like this, in that it seems to leave him less prone to saddle sores. My style has me spend a great deal of time in the same position, meaning that if, (and in my case on this trip when), saddle sores develop riding will become very uncomfortable, as my body has about 3 positions that it wants to sit in, and each of these positions has saddle sores intimately connected to it.
On this second morning of riding though, saddle sores are nowhere on my mind as I glide along a pavement that is generally glassy smooth with a wind at my back. The highway continues ENE as we make our way across western Kansas toward Johnson City. We’re feeling the wind shift a bit now, so that it is directly against our right shoulder as we continue down the road. We both know that this means once we angle back directly east, we’ll have a quartering headwind again – not something that we’re looking forward to.
By the time we roll into Johnson City, the wind has picked up to a steady 20+ mph. We stop at the only diner in town, and have a double cheeseburger for breakfast. We’ve put in 50 miles this morning before breakfast, and averaged 20 mph over that 50 miles. We’re feelin’ good right now, but we know we’re about to feel a lot worse once we start facing a piece of that wind.
I learned a lot about wind on this trip. Having grown up in Kansas, and ridden a lot in my younger days, I felt like I knew it pretty well, but I still had a lot to learn. For starters, a dead crosswind is a pain in the ass for sure, and certainly slows you down significantly, but the tiniest little slant to that wind into your face makes it a whole lot uglier. You can get down low into the drops, or onto aero bars if you have them, but that only cuts you through the forward wind – the profile you present to the crosswind stays the same. By the same token, a tiny little bend of a crosswind onto your back is way more help than you’d think it would be, but on this particular morning, that doesn’t happen to be the lesson that I’m re-learning…
By the time we hit the 75 mile mark for the day – in Ulysses – the wind is a pretty solid gale. I’m guessing a steady 25 – 30 mph, with gusts higher. When we ride into the wind shadow of the grain elevators coming into Ulysses, it feels like the weight of the world is lifted from my shoulders for just a second, as I can suddenly hear something other than the gale in my right ear, and can ride the bike upright again rather than leaning several degrees to the right. That shadow doesn’t last long though, and we’re back in the wind. We stop at McDonald’s in Ulysses for ice cream, and fill our water bottles with ice and liquid before leaving town. It’s worth noting here that this is the last real “food†that we take in during the day – this ice cream in Ulysses. We have many more hours to ride, but for some reason our brains just kick off here, and we forget to keep calories moving toward the engine room.
It’s hard to talk about western Kansas without talking about wheat. We started running into wheat country just west of Pritchett, CO. Back at the western edge of wheat country, the harvest was just getting underway, and most of the wheat had not yet been cut. At first, it was primarily dry-land wheat, but by the time we’re in Ulysses, it’s clear that most of the land is irrigated, and the combine crews have already been through the area.
There’s something magnificent about wheat. Maybe it’s because I come from Kansas, but I think it’s more than that. The graceful feel of a bright golden field of wheat when it’s ripe, rolling in waves under the wind, gives the world a feel that’s big and bright with soft edges. Even after it’s been cut, it has a warm feel to it. Riding through this part of Kansas during the wheat harvest would be an ideal time in many ways, letting the feel of the wheat and the harvest seep into you as you ride.
About 12 miles east of Ulysses, we turn due south for a bit, directly into the teeth of ferocious wind. It’s a 10 – 12 mph slog in a down position, but once you accept that you’re going to crawl along at this pace, it’s not that bad. At least it’s not that bad most of the time – every now and then you realize just how hard you’re working for those measly 10 – 12 mph, and it seems that bad… After a few miles, the road turns to the SE. For a couple miles, we have ripe corn on our right, and it is amazing just how much wind-break that corn gives us when it’s there.
I also begin to notice smells more. The smell of the ripe corn falling on us from the wind as it blows over the top of the field is strong and sweet, and if there were a couple more weeks of ripening on those plants, I might be tempted to pull an ear and enjoy it – even field corn is good if its fresh enough. The increased humidity as we work our way eastward across the state enhances the ability of the nose to pick up scents, and I begin here to notice the many rich smells that work their way through my nostrils as I ride.
Reaching Satanta, we’re grateful to have a very brief respite from the headwind as we follow US 56 for a mile or so through town toward the NE before turning straight south again into the wind. At this point in our ride, we’re feeling like Meade is our target for the day. It’s another 50 miles of riding, and we’re a little over 100 miles into the ride already. Although the wind is a bugger, we’re feeling good about another 50 miles. I know that I’ve been working fairly hard, but I’ve been watching my HR monitor, and I’ve been careful to keep myself far away from my lactate threshold. What the monitor has been telling me doesn’t measure up to the amount of work that I think I’ve been doing, but I just attribute that to the fact that I’m working now at about 2000 ft above sea level, and I live at 6000 ft above sea level – I must be able to generate a lot more power with a much lower heart rate.
A word about HR monitors. I thought about putting a new battery in mine before I left, but the one in there was less than 6 months old – I figured I was fine. (You can see already where this is probably going can’t you?) When the battery in most HR monitors starts to go, the symptom is that the HR that gets registered is something slightly less than the actual HR. As the battery winds down, the registered HR continues to drop. So, when I thought I was generating 135 bpm, I was generating something more than that – who knows what. This is what my body was telling me, but I was paying more attention to the HR monitor than I was to my body.
Now, had I known that I was working as hard as I was, I would have paid a lot more attention to taking in more calories. Since I thought that I was keeping my HR very low and controlled, I figured there was no way I was putting myself in calorie deficit. I had some gels in my bag for emergency, and could easily have been using those up to fill this deficit.
So, when we pulled in to a C-Store in Satanta, food wasn’t really high on my list of needs. I thought about some cookies, but since they didn’t have what I wanted, I just picked up a tube of chips for Dave and I to split. Really – that’s the extent of what we ate – split a little tube of chips. Liquid we were pretty diligent about – we were hot and thirsty so took in lots of water, but food just didn’t sound good to us…
The c-store was what I call the typical “rural†c-store, with a few tables to sit at. This is an interesting phenomenon that has developed in recent years – this evolution of the c-store in rural America. It’s evolved in parallel with the destruction of the small-town culture – the walmarting of America as I like to think of it. (notice that I don’t capitalize walmart here – I view it not as a proper noun referring to the actual company, but more a verb describing the trend that the company has been on the cutting edge of. Not flattering I know, but I think it’s a well-recognized trend in America.)
Back before walmarting, small business was the lifeblood of rural America. Every 20 miles or so of every highway in America, a small town existed that supported the needs of the folks there in town, as well as the rural folks living close to the town. There was always a diner, a “general storeâ€, a hardware store, and usually a few other small stores to support the population. These weren’t super-stores, but they carried the items that folks needed, and charged a fair price. Folks depended on one another, and supported one another. There was a web of interdependency and support that was the very fabric of rural America.
When the big-box superstores came into existence, they seemed to have targeted centers of rural activity – medium sized towns that could draw from a pretty good rural radius. They set up their stores, and marketed to the rural folks within their radius. Slowly but surely, folks stopped supporting their friends and neighbors in the small businesses in town, and started to support the super-store instead.
Nobody really gave this much thought, like sheep we just started doing what the advertisers told us we should want to do. Slowly but surely, the economies in the small towns in America shriveled up and lost the critical mass necessary to sustain themselves. Like a drug addiction that creeps into our life, slowly but surely taking hold of us, we became addicted to whatever it is that we find walking up and down the aisles of the super-store.
I’m not sure what it is that we find in those aisles. Sure, sometimes the prices are a bit better, but generally they’re not. In my life, I work hard to support the remaining small business people in my town, and I find that the big-box prices are really no better than the small business price. Sure I might save a few pennies on the items that are on the end-cap, but on all the other stuff I buy, I spend as much or more at the big-box.
I have a good friend who owned a hardware store in a small town for many years. He bought it from his dad when his dad wanted to retire. His was the sort of business that small towns were built on in the pre-walmarted America. He knew everyone who walked in the door, and knew their kids. He was an employer to folks in town, and knew his employees, and did right by them. He made money at his business, but he understood clearly that his business, his profit, and his future was tied to the prosperity of the town. While the prosperity of his business was important to him, it was only important within the context of the prosperity of the community. If the community went down, he went down with it.
My friend is retired now, and has sold his store to someone else. I don’t know the details, but I suspect that his kids could see the handwriting on the wall regarding the viability of a small business in a small town today, and maybe they didn’t have an interest in buying him out like he bought his dad out. Or maybe they just didn’t see a future for themselves generally in small-town America. The reasons aren’t important – what’s important is the result.
And the result is stark and sad.
Maybe in Satanta there’s a diner where a person can sit down and enjoy a conversation. Maybe there is a “lunch special†in Satanta, where the proprietor brings you the menu, fills your water glass, then goes back into the kitchen and helps the local kid who he’s given a job to grill the burger you ordered. If that diner is there, we didn’t see it – all we saw was the c-store, so that’s where we stopped. For the record, our preference was a diner, but we didn’t see that option. And also for the record, the c-store also employs a local kid, who stands behind the cash register and rings you up.
But in and around the town, like warning bells that just won’t shut off, are people who still long for the diner that they lost some time back. They still long for a place to sit and visit – to strengthen the ties that hold the community together. Their town was built years ago with these important places integrated into the fabric of the town, but now those places are locked and boarded.
But the people still long for this place – this place to sit and share.
All across rural America, c-stores have responded by adding a couple small tables or booths along the window in front – a place for people to sit and chat. I’m not sure whether the c-store adds those tables before the diner closes, or in response to the need. My gut tells me that adding the tables is actually something that contributes to the demise of the diner, making me wonder whether c-stores pump the same drug into their air that the walmarts pump into their air – addicting people to these aisles that destroy their town…
In Satanta, Kansas, the c-store was hoppin’ the day that we pulled up to the hitchin’ post and swung out of our saddles. It was full of folks who were older than us, (and that’s sayin’ something)! For the most part, these folks could have been our parents. They were gatherin’ at the place where they gather these days, and I’m sure that we became the talk of the town for several days following.
We chat with a couple of the old guys, learning about one fella’s brother who used to ride bikes, and somebody else’s nephew. They ask us about where we’re from and where we’re headed, and they have plenty of good advice about the road.
But most of all, the thing that strikes both Dave and I most is their concern – their genuine concern – for our safety and well-being. They ask lots of questions about whether we have plenty of ice in our water bottles, and if we’ve been drinking plenty of water.
This is a recurring theme that I’ll talk more about I think – this theme of genuine concern that people across Kansas and Colorado have for our well-being and safety. You grow accustomed to the way most metropolitan folks say the words of caring without the true underlying and deep concern. I do it myself – ask folks how they’re doing but I really don’t want any long answers, tell folks to take care but it’s just the polite thing to say.
On that hot and windy afternoon in Satanta, Kansas, there was a group of old folks gathered at the c-store, and they really cared about how Dave and I were doing, and where we’d been, and where we were going. And they were truly concerned for our safety and well-being.
And I felt very good about that.
We swing out of town and head straight south again into the wind for a few miles, then back to the east, then south again along US 83 for several miles. The wind has shifted just a bit, and is mostly straight south now, with an occasional leaning slightly west or slightly east. We pause before heading east again as we leave US 83, Dave eating a granola bar and taking liquid, me taking liquid and eating… nothing at all…
17 miles later, I notice what feels like bonk storming down on my system like a horde of emptiness. I’m glad when Dave pulls over for a quick drink, and I eat a couple crackers I have in my bag. Did I mention that I had some gel in there too? Notice that I don’t take that in here though…
Dave’s feeling it too I think, but not as bad. We’re only a couple of miles from Plains, and we both agree that if there’s a motel in town, we’ll stop here for the night rather than pushing on the next dozen or so miles to Meade.
If you’ve never discovered the joys of bonking, congratulations. If you’re a runner, you might know this as “hitting the wallâ€. In either case, it’s a really sad place to be. It’s happened to me twice now, and I’ll do all I can to avoid it in the future.
The short story of what “bonking†means is this, (note that this is my synopsis, and might or might not be exactly accurate…): Your body uses this thing called glycogen for two things – making your brain work and delivering high-octane anaerobic fuel to your muscles when they are pushed to that point called the lactic threshold. (Lactic threshold is that point of exertion where your muscles start to burn – the lactic acid that makes them burn is the byproduct of the high-octane “combustion†that is occurring with the glycogen.) You’re body stores about 2000 calories worth of this glycogen – evolution having determined I suppose that this is plenty to fuel the brain and allow for the average bursts of high energy required to throw spears or run from bears. If you’re riding a bike for 8 hours, it’s likely you’ll burn several thousand calories. If you are spending any significant amount of those 8 hours exerting heavily, you’re probably dipping further and further into that 2000 calorie glycogen tank. When the tank’s empty, then shut-down mode commences, and it feels like self-destruct mode.
Remember when I said that the brain runs on glycogen? I guess that this is the one and only fuel that the brain can run on. When the glycogen tank runs out, the brain is out of fuel. It’s bad enough that your body is shutting down on you, but it’s even worse that you seem to have no ability to think. You really, really, shut down.
The good news is that if you can stop working and start taking in calories, your body starts to fill the glycogen tank right away. An hours’ worth of rest and food, and your brain is powering back up.
I’ve often wondered about the glycogen equation. I mean, guys like me who seem averse to using our brain on a regular basis, (remember I had a double cheeseburger and ice cream cone today – that’s all), should have more glycogen to use for riding, right? And since we seem to be able to operate with so little of our brain engaged, it seems that we wouldn’t notice much difference when the brain runs out of gas. But I’m here to tell ya’, it’s just not a pretty site when that tank runs out.
So, riding into Plains, Kansas late on a hot afternoon, my body is shutting down, and my brain doesn’t even know how to wonder why it’s suddenly so stupid. Downtown is deserted. We stop on a corner to get out our little cheat-sheet with all the hotel numbers in all the little towns written down. We must look way worse than we feel, (which says a lot right now), because a lady goes out of her way to drive up to us and ask us if we need anything. She points us to the motel (a block away – if our brains were working we would have seen it…), and tells us the one and only place to eat in town. (It’s a good thing it’s Saturday night, because that’s the only night that the local bar serves steaks in addition to the regular bar food – and the local bar is the only place in town to eat.)
We ride to the hotel, and as I apply the brakes and come to a stop, I notice that my arms are shaking uncontrollably, and my vision is getting pretty squirrely. I sit in the chair, and am delighted that Dave has the presence of mind to go in and get us booked.
A shower, some steak, potatoes, and beer, and lots of liquid transform the rest of the day into quite a pleasant evening. It didn’t hurt that the waitress at the bar was quite easy on the eyes – that seems to help significantly when the brain is recovering.
That’s my theory anyway.
For weeks before the ride started, I had dreams of my first 200 mile day. The first 200 miles of the route had a net elevation loss of perhaps 2000 feet, and the route went pretty much east through a high prairie with winds that generally prevailed from some flavor of west in the summer. While 2000 feet in 200 miles isn’t much – hardly noticeable in fact – it was one more tiny piece of advantage that I hoped would help us make that double-century mark.
But alas, as the day neared when we would begin our ride, the winds shifted to the east as a cold front settled in on top of the area. While this brought welcome cooler temperatures, it also brought a demon east wind that would make 200 miles into a very long (if even attainable) day.
We began in Trinidad, Colorado on July 9. Hoping to roll out of the B&B where we spent the night at something like 5:15, we were faced with our first flat of the trip before we even rolled our bikes out of the house. We quickly changed the flat, took a couple of perfunctory pictures together before we left, and headed east out of town.
The first couple of hours were quite nice, with very cool temperatures and a tiny little movement of air from the west. US160 fulfilled its promise of very low traffic volume, as we rode side by side, falling into single file only a couple of times as cars passed. We were also dropping in elevation, which you could feel slightly as well.
Somewhere in the second hour, the first hints of contrary air movement started to make itself felt on our face and in our ears. Slowly, the volume of air movement increased until you could clearly call it a headwind, coming directly into our right ear. By the time we were into our third hour and began 50 miles or so of gentle climbing, we had a steady 15 – 20 mph quartering headwind out of the SE. This wind stayed with us for the next several days, varying only slightly as we continued to move east at a pace that was definitely slower than we had hoped.
For the first 75 miles of this route – from Trinidad to Kim – there are no services at all. Not a C-Store of any kind, and few ranch-houses close to the road that you could use for water. In our case, we brought about 100 oz of water apiece over this section, and it turned out to be plenty. However, the high that day only reached 86. I can imagine that if the high would have been a more seasonable 100 or so, our 100 oz apiece may have left us a bit dry before we reached Kim. If I had it to do again, I’d carry a bit more water I think.
The only crash of the trip occurred early on that first morning as well. I’d like to make up some fun and elaborate story about a spectacular crash that left my leg with a little road rash, but Dave knows the true story and would rat me out I’m sure. Fact is that the first time I stopped the bike to, well, let’s say take pictures, it simply fell over, with me still clipped on one side. You become accustomed to the feel and the weight of a bike when you ride it a lot. You know how it leans against your leg when you stop, and you can predict what it’s going to do while you stand over it. Add 30 pounds of water and stuff, and it acts differently. So there I was, standing over my bike, uh, taking pictures lets say, with only one foot unclipped, and shazam – over the bike goes with me attached. Nothing pretty, elegant, or exciting about it – just plain clumsy.
With that little acrobatic out of the way, and our first flat tire behind us, we pushed on through a slightly evil wind, enjoying still the low light and the coolness of the high prairie, as well as the distant peaks to our right as they slowly disappeared behind us.
On some maps, there’s a little spot called Ward’s Corner that shows up along US160 about halfway between Trinidad and Kim. Most likely, back when travel along the roads went at a much more civilized pace, there was actually some sort of town here. Now, all that remains is a single structure that appears to be inhabited. Signs in the window indicated that there might be times when someone was there and business occurs, but it wasn’t open when we came spinning past. It’s not really a café – I suspect it’s a gallery of sorts, though a person might find a cup of coffee or something if it were open – I’m just not sure. We didn’t stop – it looked too much like a private residence of some sort.
But we did pick up a friend who traveled with us for a few miles.
Dave was riding a bit ahead of me. (Did I mention that this was generally the case – something that I got used to on this ride?) I watched as a big black dog galloped out from the place that might be a business, cast his head up to catch Dave’s scent as he rolled past just a couple of feet away, then stopped in the middle of the highway and watched Dave riding along. Then he heard me coming, and turned to watch me pass, sniffing at me as I passed. We must have passed some sort of test, because the big ‘ol dog decided that we and he were kindred spirits, and he wanted to run with us for a while. So he did – for several miles. Remember that there was essentially no traffic on the road, and we had a nice enough headwind at that point that we were only rolling along at 11 or 12 mph.
Here we were, 2 guys on bikes and a big black dog, loping along down the middle of the highway together. The speed we were traveling was a perfect loping pace for the dog. He had a look of pure joy on his face as he galloped along beside us, moving easily from one side of the road to the other, sometimes running in the ditch on one side, then bounding up across the road and over to the other side. He had found a pack to run with, and the pack was out running.
We worried about our friend, and just how long he might run with us. We worried that a car would come along eventually, and would be know to get out of the way? We worried a bit about him, but we also shared in his joy as we all made our way down the road as a new-formed pack. One of us had his tongue hanging out over the side of his lower jaw as he ran, soaking in every little molecule of this wonderful moment when we came together as a pack. I don’t remember which one of us it was…
Eventually, the wind shifted a bit for a few minutes, so it was only a cross wind and not quartering to us, and maybe we had a little downhill too. I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember that our speed started to pick up a bit. I was surprised as our friend hung with us for quite a while at 15 or 17 mph, but eventually he decided that this was just faster than he wanted to run on a summer day. I felt sad as I turned and watched him watch us roll away from him and his little universe there along the lonely highway.
It was sometime before the 75 mile mark and Kim that I’m sure we both realized that our 200 mile day was just not going to happen today. I think we both still help out hopes for a 175 mile day to Johnson City, but we also knew that we wouldn’t be able to make that call until we approached the 125 mile point of no return in Springfield, CO. By the time we turned north and headed into Kim, we were more than ready for our first stop of the day.
The Kim Outpost in Kim is the picture of an old Mercantile. Over on one half of the store is what appears to be the town library, including videos to borrow. You can buy limited groceries, and they’ll fix you whatever sort of sandwich you might want. Playing on the TV is live coverage of the livestock auction. Now, if you think that live coverage of a livestock auction would be the definition of boring, you wouldn’t be able to prove it by the local ranchers who would watch it for a few minutes when they came in, and then banter back and forth a bit about whether the prices were good or bad, and how could you possible make money with a $28 spread?
We made friends with some bikers (the kind that make noise and go fast when you twist the grip) out in front, and participated in some good-natured jabbing about the sanity of anyone riding their bicycles across this kind of desolate country. We asked them to throw us a rope when they passed us and help us along. A good time was has by all, and we headed on up the road. When the bikers passed us in 10 or 15 minutes, they whopped and hollered just a little, and gave us smiles and waves.
I’ve got to say that over the 8 days of this trip, it was neat to see the kindred spirit kindle with the bikers that we passed and that we met. I think they saw us as little brothers of sorts, and almost always gave us that dropped-hand wave that they give each other. Once, a guy that we’d met at a truck stop back the road slowed down and chided and chatted for a few seconds while we rode side-by-side, but then he took off before I could grab the back of his seat…
In eastern Colorado – about 20 miles or so west of Springfield – is a little dot on the map called Pritchett. It’s an old prairie town that was obviously wiped out in the 30’s when most of the little prairie towns were wiped out. Based on what I could see ahead of time, I didn’t expect to find anything there in Pritchett. So as we were rolling through what appeared to be the old deserted downtown square, I was surprised when Dave pulled over at a storefront. There was one old truck in front of the building, but nothing else anywhere downtown. Dave said that it looked like they had ice cream, so I pulled in, tied up to the hitching post, and headed in.
Inside Kathi fixed us some ice cream, and we sat and chatted with her and her husband Steve for quite a while about their diner and their business. They’re new to the area, and have been pleasantly surprised by the friendly reception that they’ve gotten in town, and how well the local folks support their diner. They open for breakfast and lunch, then on Friday nights they open for dinner. Sitting at the table, chatting with Steve and Kathi and soaking in the AC while eating a nice dish of ice cream, I sincerely hoped that they would be successful in the long run here in this little town.
I’m not sure what it is that draws some folks to played-out old towns like Pritchett, and makes them want to make a go of it. If you sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper, I just can’t imagine that you could make a viable business plan that would justify pulling up roots and moving yourself out onto the desolate high plains. But in the case of Steve and Kathi Service, that’s just exactly what they’ve done. They raised a family on traditional jobs in more traditional cities, then decided it was time to pick up and start over again in the tiny little town of Pritchett, Colorado. They have a little diner called the Pritchett Café, and Kathi sells antiques and other little stuff in the shop next door called the Blue Willow Trading Company. They also own an old house in town that they’re renovating and will run as a B&B in the near future.
I admire what Steve and Kathi have done. I think that our country and our culture would be greatly improved if more of us had the courage and the vision to make the kind of move that they’ve made. But I have to say that I just can’t make sense of it. I wish that I could. In many ways, their spirit is exactly the spirit that brought the first white folks into that town over 100 years ago. There was no sense to it back then either, but folks were willing to try and make a go of it.
There’s an allure that seems to hide in the high prairie. Not everyone hears it I think, but for those who do hear it, it’s a powerful song. There’s no logical reason to expect success out there in the desolation and the wind, but there’s a powerful draw that some folks simply can’t resist. I know that song, and I feel that draw – I think it’s part of what drew us to this ride in the first place. I don’t yet know how to wrap words around this allure that give it adequate description, but I know that I feel it, and I recognize it in others now and then – folks like Steve and Kathi Service.
I sincerely hope that the local folks will continue to support a local diner, and I sincerely hope that enough folks will be willing to spend a couple nights at a B&B in Pritchett that they can make money at that venture as well. Steve and Kathi seem to be good, hard-working folks who will add value to their community, and my fondest hopes for success go out their way.
Making our way into the town of Springfield, Colorado after 125 miles of riding – mostly with a quartering headwind – Dave and I are both pretty beat up. While the mind would love to go on another 50 miles, the body is just plain tired. Once we agree that we’ll stop for the night, I can almost feel a warm shower to wash the grime off, I can almost taste a good dinner, and I’ really looking forward to some serious rest in a good bed. We ride up into town, and both see a little downtown hotel that looks really nice. Unfortunately the “No Vacancy†light is on, so we keep riding to the north end of town where a couple of motels are. We stop at the first one, and are informed that not only are they booked, but every motel in town probably is, due to a rodeo and several other activities going on in town over the weekend. The guy at the desk calls the other motels, and confirms no availability.
Bummer. Double bummer really. Now I’ve let myself start looking forward to a shower, food, and time out of the saddle, and I’m told that I need to keep riding for another 3 or 4 hours. Ugg and double ugg.
So we buck up and get back on the bikes. As we’re riding back through downtown, I say to Dave, “Let’s just stop in the downtown hotel and see if maybe they’ve had a cancellationâ€. Dave’s thinking the same thing. So we pull up to the old hitching post (really) at the Stage Stop Hotel in downtown Springfield, and dismount once again – with much less vigor than earlier in the day. We drag ourselves up the steps and open the front door. “Hiâ€, we start up, “we know you say you don’t have any vacancy, but we were wondering if you…â€
Cherry Gonser – the owner – smiled and cut us off before we could finish. “I’ve got a room with 2 beds, and it’s waiting for youâ€.
The weight of the world lifts from my shoulders, and I sit down in the shade of the front porch while Dave signs us in. When he’s done, we sit there on that front porch, soaking in how good it feels to have a place to stop for the night. It’ss the first of many very sweet moments on our ride, and I want to savor every little morsel of it.
We have a nice evening in Springfield, enjoy a decent steak for supper, and start our habit of watching the weather channel to see what the winds are supposed to do the following day. Cherry had said to Dave that she thought that G-d had brought us together. Dave figures that she might just be really picky about who she rents to, and keeps the No Vacancy sign on, sizing up potential tenants before deciding to rent them a room. It could also be that she really did just get a cancellation before we walked in the door.
It doesn’t much matter to me either way – I find tremendous joy in our ability to stop for the night, relax and clean up, enjoy a great dinner for the night, and allow our bodies to recover for the next day. If you believe that G-d’s hand is present in everything that happens, then one way or another Her hand helped us find lodging that night. If you don’t believe this happens, then maybe it’s as simple as dumb luck, and the fact that Cherry decided Dave and I looked like upstanding enough citizens that she was willing to rent to us.
Go figure.
In July, Dave and I found adventure on our bicycles riding across Colorado and Kansas. We started in Trinidad, Colorado and rode east along US-160 to Winfield, Kansas, then north through the Flint Hills, and back west again to Hoisington, Kansas, where our vacation time ran out. We enjoyed 7 days of wonderful riding, wrapped around a truly enjoyable rest day in the heart of the Flint Hills. The individual posts for each day of our ride can be found at these links:
Day 1 – Trinidad to Springfield (Colorado) – Runnin’ With The Big Dog and Pritchett, Colorado
Day 2 – Springfield, CO to Plains, KS – Pace-line Harmony and a Pool of Bonk in Plains, Kansas
Day 3 – Plains, KS to Coldwater, KS – Comanche Rollers and 109 Degrees
Day 4 – Coldwater, KS to Wellington, KS – The Medicine Hills
Day 5 – Wellington, KS to Cottonwood Falls, KS – Through the Fog and Into The Flint Hills
Day 6 – Pie and Cottonwood Falls
Day 7 – Cottonwood Falls, KS to Lindsborg, KS
Day 8 – Lindsborg, KS to Hoisington, KS
Our approach to the ride was one of ultra-minimalism, each of us carrying only about 20# total, plus water. While we surpassed our “threshold†mileage goal, the winds didn’t allow us to threaten our more aggressive mileage goals. We discovered quite a few unexpected things along the way, some perhaps a bit more pleasant than others. For example:
In terms of overall results, our “threshold goal†of 600 miles assumed no help from the wind, and we got very little such help in the end. With neutral winds, reasonable weather, and no physical ailments, we hoped we might hit 800 miles. With excellent tailwinds, we thought we might even be able to push toward 1000 miles. In the end, we rode 718 miles of a 770 mile route. (There was one day that we got a ride in a truck past what we feared would be heavily trafficked roads – we had enjoyed the route so much that we didn’t want to create a bad taste with nasty urban highway traffic.)
We saw deer, antelope, fox, a few bajillion head of cattle, some really nice dogs and cats, Scissortail Flycatchers (along with eastern and western Kingbirds), Grasshopper Sparrows, Red Headed Woodpeckers, and lots of other birds too common to mention. We saw Red-tailed and Broad Winged Hawks – including a nice rodeo act with a Red-Winged Blackbird riding a Broad-Winged like a bronc. We saw lots of Marsh Hawks and more Peregrine Falcons than I would have expected.
Sure we endured some heat and cussed at some wind. I felt open saddle sores on the parts of me that were most intimate with my saddle for a couple weeks after the ride ended. But those were the tiny little inconveniences of a ride that was – overall and all-in-all – one of the most pleasant rides I’ve ever done.
I’ve been chronicaling the ride in a number of epic blog posts. While they’re not complete yet, they’re getting close. Below are the links to the blog posts as I get them done. My objective is to consolidate and edit these posts into a book that I’ll publish, so what you have in these posts is the raw material from which a book will eventually emerge.
Thanks for reading!
Day 1 – Trinidad to Springfield (Colorado) – Runnin’ With The Big Dog and Pritchett, Colorado
Day 2 – Springfield, CO to Plains, KS – Pace-line Harmony and a Pool of Bonk in Plains, Kansas
Day 3 – Plains, KS to Coldwater, KS – Comanche Rollers and 109 Degrees
Day 4 – Coldwater, KS to Wellington, KS – The Medicine Hills
Day 5 – Wellington, KS to Cottonwood Falls, KS – Through the Fog and Into The Flint Hills
Day 6 – Pie and Cottonwood Falls
Day 7 – Cottonwood Falls, KS to Lindsborg, KS
Day 8 – Lindsborg, KS to Hoisington, KS
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My enduring hopes for a 200 mile day on day one of the DANROPES ride are fading fast. Though the wind blows from some version of the west 80%+ of the time in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, the forecast for the next several days is for some version of an east wind.
I’d been having wonderful dreams of clipping along with a nice tailwind at 20+ mph for the first few hundred miles, and I’m watching those dreams blow away I think. Looks like our first couple of days out we’ll be battling a headwind, so making 100 miles a day is going to be work I think. Those training days in the wind will pay off after all.
But you never know – the wind’s like that isn’t it? There’s nothing personal in it – just the random chance and whim of weather patterns. It’s so easy to think of it personally – that the wind is doing something to me – when in fact I’m dropping myself onto a piece of ground that has weather happening around it, and the weather doesn’t care one little twit about me and which way I point my bike.
It’s fun to see this little thing build in my tiny little brain – this reshaping of the universe around me riding my bike over the next 8 or 9 days. I find my little brain having fun talking about the “wind godsâ€, and what the wind is going to do to me. As we have for thousands of years, I am this little human that suddenly wants to define the cosmos and the gods around myself, rather than letting myself move through the moments that the cosmos lays in front of me.
So mile by mile over the next 8 or 9 days, I’ll listen closely to the wind, and see what I hear.
I hope it whispers quietly from behind my ear, and doesn’t blast into the front of my ear.
But of course, I’ll continue to wonder what I did to piss the wind gods off…
Dave always starts rides off at a higher pace than I do. I blame it on the few extra years that I have on him, and my body’s need to ease gently into the pace of the ride. Makes me feel better to think this is true. But I don’t really think it is. I’ll keep on thinking it though, and will ignore the fact that Dave is consistently more strong and fit than I am, because I’m sure that can’t have much to do with the fact that he seems always ready to crank it up to 75% effort or more at a moments notice.
On Saturday, we did a nice training ride – something just short of 100 miles with about 5k of climbing overall. As usual, he cranked it right up and was soon 300 yards ahead of me, seemingly oblivious to the growing distance between us. But unlike most mornings, the distance never seemed to close much. Oh, he’d pull over for a minute and wait for me at a light now and again, but as soon as the light turned green, he’d dance up the road and be off to the edge of site rapidly. Because this morning, Dave had new stuff on his bike. Heck, his whole bike was darned near brand-new with the exception of the frame!
It’s amazing how new bling on the bike will make a person feel strong and feisty. In this case, there was good cause for Dave to feel strong and feisty – he had upgraded all of the components on his bike from the “not quite bottom of the line but still super-cheap†grade to essentially DuraAce from front to back. The wheels weren’t DuraAce, but were still Bontrager RaceLites – a vast improvement over his old iron-clad wooden variety (maybe I exaggerate…) So with the same level of effort of a week ago, Dave was flying down the road at a significantly improved pace.
Now, the bikers among you are surely asking why I didn’t just grab Dave’s wheel at those points when he waited for me, and suck it down the road. Nice idea in theory, but it just doesn’t work that often. Dave, you see, is still working on the whole drafting concept. To those of us who are mere mortals, the idea of drafting is a neat little magic trick, allowing us to cover the same ground with about a third less effort. But to Dave, I think this feels a little like cheating or something. He just can’t seem to bring himself to lock into that draft and ride.
Now he’s perfectly fine with the idea of letting me (or anyone really) draft him. Go ahead – try it – I dare ya’. It’s a comedic routine running down the road, trying to stay on Dave’s wheel. Just when you find that sweet spot, he glances over his shoulder and sees you there, and thinks that he must be going to slow, because you’re right on his wheel. So he speeds up. And you try and stay on his wheel, and just when you think you’re going to be able to hang with him, he looks over his shoulder, and sees you again, and jumps up the pace another couple miles an hour (because you must want him to go faster or you wouldn’t be crowding him like that, right?)
I can usually hold on until that second round of acceleration, then Dave is just a rapidly diminishing flash somewhere up ahead of me. If you’re really strong, maybe you can hold on up to the third round. I’ve never seen anyone last much longer.
I’ve laughed at this routine unfolding in the past, and wondered just what it is that makes the drafting concept so hard for Dave. The concept of measuring the level of effort that it takes to pull and draft in a particular line, and just focusing on that level of effort as you rotate through, is one that I know Dave understands. But I’ve come to the conclusion that 2 things make it hard for Dave to execute. First, he’s just so much stronger than I am, (and it’s not as though I’m a fitness slouch myself), that it’s hard for him to crank it down and maintain the level of effort that is comfortable to me and that I can keep up over many hours. Second, I really do think that the whole concept of “this is cheating†plays into the equation to Dave’s highly overdeveloped sense of fairness. I could be way off, but that’s my story for now.
Bottom line – I rarely even try to stay on his wheel anymore – I just watch him fly on down the road somewhere ahead of me, knowing that he’ll stop now and then and wait for me to catch up. And of course, as the day wears on, his rocket runs up the road tend to slow down, and sometimes I’m even lulled into thinking that maybe I’m actually sort of keeping up with him. I think that the one tiny little advantage that I might have is my ability to endure hours in the saddle and measure out my effort to make it last a long time.
We’ll see if this little fantasy of mine holds true on our upcoming DANROPES ride. (Dave And Neil’s Ride Of Pain and Enduring Suffering) We’re going to ride across Colorado and Kansas this month, and I’m looking forward to learning how I can hold up to 100+ mile days one after another. It might be that Dave’s supernatural abilities extend beyond the ability to ride really fast and strong for 50 – 100 miles, and he also has supernatural stamina as the miles pile on in the hundreds. Or it might be that things equal out a bit between us.
Either way I’m good with it – I gave up a long time ago on trying to match his fitness and strength – he’ll either continue to wait for me on up the road, or we’ll ride closer together. But just in case, I’m shorting myself on space as I pack for this minimalist trip of ours, and will make sure that when we’re standing there ready to take off, and I don’t have enough space for all my stuff, I pack the tools and spare chain in Dave’s pack – along with a few chunks of good Colorado granite. Maybe if I can add an extra 15 pounds to his bike it’ll make up for those slick new components that he’s gotten…
My son Jesse and I have been reading the Stephen King Dark Tower Series over the last couple of months. Series of 7 books that starts off with one called The Gunslinger.
The first book was not really easy to get through. It was written fairly early in his career – in fact I think I read that parts of it were written as far back as 1970. It’s not a great book, but it lays the groundwork for the characters, and the further I’ve read into the series, the more I appreciate the first one. These are not short books – many are well over 1000 pages – but I’m really enjoying them! I think that the author looks at this series as his favorite group of writings, and they span from about 1980 or so for The Gunslinger, to the final (seventh) book which I think might have just been released this year.
I’ve never read anything by Stephen King before – I’ve always associated him with slasher stuff and the more macabre – but I have to say that these books are evolving into really first rate storytelling. You can see him develop and improve as a storyteller throughout the series. We’re on the 5th in the series now – The Wolves of Calla – and they continue to improve with each in the series.
Bottom line – I’d recommend this series to anyone who likes to read and loves good storytelling. For the casual reader it might not be a good choice – there’s just too much material to wade through at 7 books with many 700 pages+. And since the first book is only so-so standing on it’s own, it’s hard to recommend that as a single volume to read. Any of the subsequent books would just not be much fun (at least I don’t think) if you weren’t already wrapped up in the story and characters as they are evolving.
UPDATE (August, 2010): Jesse and I finished the series. I’m not going to spoil anything here, but have to say that we were both WAY disappointed with the way King ended the series. It was great storytelling, and he does a great job of building things up. There were probably many ways he could have ended it, and the way that he ended it was just a real disappointment…
I guess I’d still recommend the books for folks who love to read, but not nearly as highly as I would have had it not ended so poorly.
10 days, and I’ll be headed across the desert grasslands of Colorado and Kansas with my buddy Dave on our bicycles. Exact route TBD as we go, but we’ll try for something more than 800 miles in 8 days. I’m really looking forward to some quiet and close time with this land that was once the northern reaches of the great Comanche nation – a land rich with a magic of place through many stretches.
The first day we’re hoping to do our first double century (200 miles), assuming the wind gods are kind to us. That day we’ll travel close to (and cross many times) the old middle route of the Santa Fe trail. I’ve hunted birds in that country in the fall before, and am looking forward to the time there during the peak of summer. That day we have 75 miles between civilization in a couple stretches, so we’ll be packin’ enough water for 75 miles in blistering heat.
More on day 2 and beyond later.
Riding the MS150 this weekend in Colorado. Good ride for a good cause, and will be my only back-to-back long days prior to the bid DANROPES ride in July. Collaborating on some route options with Dave for the DANROPES ride – I’m trying to make each draft option about 800 miles – I guess I must have 800 miles in 8 days settling in as a stretch goal for this trip…
So, this coming Saturday, I think Dave and I will do our one and only joint training ride before the big ride in July. We’ll probably shoot for something around 6 hours.