Day 29 : A Great Day for Riding...

From Hutchinson, KS to Rush Center, KS - 97.6 miles

Story [in numbers]:

Time on bike: 8:17:57
Average Speed: 11.8 mph
Max Speed: 28.6 mph


Story [in words]:

the toughest part about today was getting out of bed and on the road. the hostel that we stayed at last night was just so nice. we laid in bed until about 8 am trying to decide if we were going to take the day off and hang out at the hostel or if we were going to cycle. then we looked at the weather on my phone and as it turns out, the temps were supposed to be a little lower and the winds were supposed to be light and from the east. and so we decided that we would ride...and as long as we were going to ride, we thought we would try to get close to a century ride.

it was almost 9:30 before we were loaded and on the road, but it was just a great day for riding. easily the best riding conditions of the whole trip! we rode into the first town of the day, and as we cycled in, we looked to our right, and there on the cross road was Jerry, the 70 year old riding the recumbent with the adventure cycling association group. we shared a little conversation with him, cycled to the gas station to fill our waters and headed back out.

shortly after leaving that town, we headed off our mapped route onto highway 96, at the recommendation of an eastbound cyclist that we crossed paths with a couple of days ago. we were pretty sure that we could cut out about 13-14 miles by going this route...and since we were already in the mindset of covering as many miles as we could, we thought that we would take the shortcut. as we cycled along on 96, in some really beautiful weather, we heard what sounded like a fairly large plane (which is a little out of the ordinary along these roads because we aren't close to many large airports)...as the sound got closer, we looked straight above us to hear a B-2 bomber. which for most people would be just a really cool sight...but for us it was a nice piece of home, because all of the B-2's are stationed at whiteman air force base which is just 8 miles east of warrensburg.

as we continued on, we stopped at a subway for a late lunch...and looked at a map and discovered that we had about 62 miles to go to finish our day. so we quickly hopped back on the bikes and rode 31 more miles to great bend...where we stopped at walmart to stock up on a couple of things. while we were there, we ran into two middle-aged guys that seemed very interested in what we were doing. turns out, they were both cycling enthusiasts.

we got back on the road from walmart at about 5:30 pm with about 31 miles left to get to our destination. it was really just a beautiful evening to ride. actually a little bit cool...it was one of the first times that i found myself just sitting back and taking in all the fields surrounding us. (it is a little bit easier to do that here in kansas because there really isn't a ton to have to think or worry about). there are fields of all kinds of different things everywhere...wheat, hay, beans, corn...and huge fields at that...they seem to go on forever. at one point, we came upon a hay field with square bales just sitting waiting to be picked up (Johnny - it made me think of our mission trip to Cookson Hills, Oklahoma...which seems like it was forever ago).

when we got to rush center, we found the 4-h park, which was just a tiny little "park" right on the route. there was a little sports bar just a block from the park and so we decided to stop in there to see if we could get a couple of sodas. as we walked up to the bar, there was a really nice older couple sitting there eating and they started talking to us about our trip. we ended up having some really good conversation with them...turns out that they moved to kansas from the los angeles area about 11 years ago to get away from the chaos. instead, they decided to build a roughly 160 acre farm from scratch.

after finishing talking to them, we headed back over to the park...set up our tent, ate the food that we had bought at walmart earlier in the day, and then headed into the tent to get some sleep. and finally it was a much cooler and much less humid day for us to get some sleep.