The Long Flight Ahead

I am in the airport terminal playing "Who Will I Sit Next To" hoping that I get either the cute girl or the interesting old man.  I would much rather have the cute girl for a seat mate, but at least with the old man I would hear some good stories.  I am really hoping that I don't get the smelly foreign guy because then I would not even be able to converse with my odorific travel companion.  Travel by airplane when you are by yourself is like Russian Roullette.  Airlines have put me in some undesireable seating situations, but that is part of traveling.

I fly from beautiful Ontario, California to Stockholm, Sweden today, with a stop in Phoenix and Newark on the way.  Layovers suck but are a necessary evil of traveling in my budget range.  This portion of my trip I will joined by the inimitable Seth; friend, Stanford grad, saxophone player, and all around good guy.  We have no theme, agenda, or general sketch of what we wish to accomplish with our journey through eastern Europe, and I know this makes Seth uncomfortable.  We will document all the news thats fit to print here.

Well the plane has arrived and it is time to unvail the mystery passenger who will be occupying seat 16c nex to me.  Will it be obese guy?  Maybe Paisty twitchy guy?  Only time will tell...

Pictures From Yesterday

Here are the pictures of me getting the Van stuck. Today was my last day on the tour. My flight leaves at 5AM tomorrow so I am going to sleep. I will have more tomorrow but for right now I am going to try to squeeze 8 hours of sleep into 3.

Stuck In Kansas...Literally

Highway 50 is a quaint highway that will get you from one side of Kansas to the other with relative ease. The road has a smooth, paved surface, two lanes of opposing traffic with the occasional passing lane, and miles of farm land for visual stimulation. Yes, friends, the road through Kansas is a fine road. However, when one ventures off the road a pinch too far, one might find themselves unlucky. That someone today was driving a Ford Econoline Van towing a trailer filled with the luggage of 30 cyclists. That someone was me.

I turned off of highway 50 up a dirt road that had eighteen wheelers driving on it. I figured that if they could drive it, so could I. The road was not the problem, the fact that I needed to make a u-turn was. As I precariously steered a little off the dirt road I started to feel that uncomfortable skid that comes with the loss of traction. I feathered the gas ever so slightly hoping to to "float" my way out, but I did not have enough momentum and I started sinking in instead of heading out.

After exhausting the English language of all of it's four letter words I started to problem solve. I couldn't call a tow truck for two reasons: I am a man, and it's not my van. Not having a shovel, I started to dig. All I had to work with was a one foot cube of wood we use to prop the trailer up when it is unhooked from the van, so I needed to dig a good portion around the tire in order to fit the block under the tire to get some traction. I dug for twenty minutes or so and after placing the block under the tire I took a second to appreciate how much earth I had moved with my bare hands. Then I started the van, placed it in drive, gave it some gas, and watched the block fly out and the wheel sink deeper. Awesome. I quickly realized that there is creek in Kansas named Shit, and I was up Shit Creek, without a paddle.

I made the most painful phone call I have had to make this trip to the ride leader to let her know that I was stuck. She gave me the phone number of a local tow company and Glen came out and pulled me back on the road. I asked Glen, "so how many city boys do you pull out of the sand a day?" To which he replied,"enough to have been doing this for thirty years without missing a pay raise." I liked Glen.

Luckily I had "Miss Kittie's Wild West Variety Show" to look forward to over in the Boot Hill region of Dodge City when I finally got into town. Miss Kittie's is a comedy show set in an old wild west saloon with Chuck the bartender and Miss Kittie, who runs the house of ill repute, hosting the event. As one of the riders put it,"it is like watching a middle school play except your child is not in it." It was fairly bad, or at least the out of tune piano and off key singers were. We all had a great time, though, and it made for a nice way to break up the normal nightly routine. I used it as a great way to forget the fact that hours earlier I was lying on my belly under a van digging into the ground with my bare hands in the sweltering Kansas heat. I will not soon forget the intersection of highway 50 and Mennonite Rd. Ah, Kansas...

I have a crappy internet connection but I will post pics of the van stuck later.

Killing Time

When you are facing 100 degree temperatures, a headwind, and scenery that doesn't change for miles, you tend to find anything to do to pass the time. I remember reading an article written by a professional bicycle racer in which he was talking about what he and the other riders did to kill time during long races. He told a story about a scorching hot day riding through Spain and all of a sudden one of the riders got angry at a street sign and threw his water bottle at it. This sparked a competition among the other riders trying to hit roadside signs, fire hydrants, or any inanimate object. The novelty wore off once the participating riders had no water bottles left. The situation become a bit more frustrating and complicated when they all realized that it was over one hundred degrees and they were racing their bicycles, which requires drinking massive amounts of water.We did not partake in any games that were as consequential as the water bottle tossing, but there were games played to kill the time as we pushed through 100 more miles of Kansas farm territory. Kansas highways are littered with grasshoppers, so we played "Dodge the Grasshopper". The first one to crunch a grasshopper lost. Then we played "Guess What Song that Farmer is Humming". My guess was always "Ol' MacDonald". I'm guessing I was way off. My least favorite game was "Count the Hay Bails". That one killed the least time with the highest rate of boredom.

Highway 50 has plenty of historical markers dotting turnouts throughout the highway. I stopped at two and was fairly disappointed. I don't mean to be insulting, but I just can't see a historical marker being needed to mark a spot where cowboys would stop to water their cattle. I could figure that out on my own seeing as the only water around was the Arkansas River, but thank you for drawing me off the highway to tell me a rather obvious portion of rather meaningless history.

Tomorrow we arrive in the heart of cowboy country. We will be travelling to Dodge City, Kansas. Miss Kitty's Wild West Show is on the menu, which is basically a high school talent show, just without the talent. It should be fun. Oh, and I want to clear something up. My good friend Brit emailed me to educate me on toilet engineering. I made a comment about tall handicap toilets and Brit informed me that this is because it is easier for handicap persons to slide back into a standing position rather than working their way up from a lower position. Looks like we can close the case on that one.

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.