It's the Little Things

When you are crossing a vast area at a slow speed you observe your surroundings in much greater detail than traveling via automobile. Of course when you are in a car you usually don't have sweat drop in your eyes, bugs fly in your mouth, flat tires from cactus, or the exposure to the elements. It is easy to argue that a car is the more efficient way to cover ground, but bicycle travel gives you a much richer experience.

We typically get rolling between 6 and 6:30 each morning, which is waaaay too early, but I have come to appreciate the sun rising. As we are heading east across America we generally start with the sun directly on our face, and this has been a spectacular sight in itself each morning. Each day I like to take in my surroundings and today as we trudged through 120 miles of Colorado's flat eastern countryside I took notice of the little things. Most of us made fun of the fact that we hit Kansas early because we had entered the land of pancake flat landscape, miles of corn fields, and of gun toting locals. I pulled into a gas station to get a soda and I would like everyone know that the second amendment is alive and well in La Junta, Colorado, where a bearded gentlemen got off of his motorcycle and turned to pump his gas, revealing his 9 millimeter semi-auto attached to his hip, with the hammer cocked back, mind you. I had to open my mouth, so I said," nice gun sir, do you always keep it cocked?" To which he smiled,"with one on the chamber." I know that it was impossible to hide my facial expression, so I turned and put my brightly colored, spandex ass back on my bike and pedaled away.

Ok, so, back to the little things. After passing farm after farm I started to look past the hay bails and corn fields. Farms are an interesting part of Americana. I had no idea that there was a tractor that drives through fields bailing hay. The farmer drives it through the field over the hay fields and every few yards or so a perfectly manicured hay bail pops out the back of it. I found it quite interesting. In the morning we got buzzed by a few crop dusting airplanes, which was kind of fun. We passed a sheep farm, that had a llama thrown in for good measure. We also passed miles and miles of cow farms, which meant that we passed even more miles of cow farm scented air.

As a bonified city boy I find the farm land very charming. As I passed a horse pasture I spied a horse rolling around in the dirt. At first I thought that something was wrong, but then one of the guys told me that the horse was scratching it's back. I was reminded of how lucky I was to have opposable thumbs and flexible joints. I also found out that if clouds are rolling in then you should look to see if cows are laying down. Apparently if cows are laying down "there is goin' ta be weather" as the locals say (this would have come in handy yesterday).

I can't remember every little detail, but it is not so much each individual detail, but the fact that each detail is the part of a bigger experience. Crossing this section of the country can seem monotonous and repetitive, but if you look harder and notice the small nuances, it is easy to appreciate the beauty of the vast farmland that we have in America. Oh, I forgot to mention that we crossed paths with a woman crossing the country, well, running across the country. She was running for heart research and was running this section with a man who had a heart transplant a while back. She was amazing.