Day 30 : It Finally Happened...

From Rush Center, KS to Dighton, KS - ~63 miles


Story [in numbers]:

Unfortunately we don’t have the exact numbers for today…we had a little bit more trouble with the computer…the good news is that we got it back up and working by the end of the day.


Story [in words]:

With our late night of riding last night, it was a little bit tough to get up this morning. By the time we got up and got everything packed up and got on the road, it was about 8:30 am. It was another really great day for riding…not quite what yesterday was, but still awfully nice for riding.

We rode about 30 miles to ness city where we had planned to get a late lunch…however, due to our late start, it ended up being an early lunch. The place that we stopped to eat was at the recommendation of the lady that we had talked to the night before at the sports bar (they actually live right by ness city). We found the restaurant, and it looked a little shady to say the least…but we thought, what the heck. Then our server came and it got worse…she seemed like she was having the worst day in the world. I wish that I would have been able to think of some way to bring some joy into her life…she just seemed so incredibly closed off. Just to give a little glimpse of what the service was like…as we walked in the front door, there was a hand-written sign that said, “no smoking after 7 am”. While we were sitting at our table, our waitress spent more time smoking cigarettes and watching Days of Our Lives, instead of taking care of us.

Despite the poor service, and the fact that our orders weren’t quite correct…the food was actually pretty good. The bright spot of our time there, however, was that as we were sitting there waiting for our food, the lady from the sports bar walked in (we later found out that her name was sandy). She said that she had seen us riding a little while ago and that she was on her way back to work and wanted to stop in to say hi and give us something. She proceeded to give us two bottles…one with vegetable supplements and one with fruit supplements. She said, “I figured that you don’t get enough of these types of things on the trail.” She was just a super sweet lady to say the least.

After a much longer stop than we had planned on…largely due to the poor service…we got back on the road. And before long…it finally happened. We were cycling along, and cailyn said, “do I have a flat tire?”…to which I responded, “no, it doesn’t look like it.” But then, a couple of seconds later, she stopped and we could hear the air coming out of the tire. As I looked at the tire a little more closely, it became quite apparent that there was a thorn sticking straight out of the tire. We removed the thorn and then got the tire off and made a quick tube change. (conveniently, it was a front tire, which made it much easier) in about 15 minutes were all set and ready to get back on the road.

We had hoped to make it past Dighton, but with the slow lunch stop, the flat tire, and slightly tired legs from yesterdays long ride, we decided that we would just stay for the night. As we cycled into town, we found a dairy stand which seemed like a great place to grab some food and hang out for a while. While we tried to hydrate ourselves, we sat and looked at the maps for a little while. It is crazy, because we are getting to the point where we are able to predict fairly closely what the rest of our trip will look like. Here’s a snapshot of a few of the big things…we plan to be in pueblo, co on Saturday…we will go to the bike shop and get some tune-ups there. We should go up and over hoosier pass (the highest point on the route – 11,400 ft) on Tuesday. And we hope to make it to Yellowstone by Friday the 16th to meet our aunt and uncle who just happen to be vacationing in Yellowstone. It is getting really exciting because the colors are changing on our maps (which means that we are going up in elevation)…we are getting excited to see the mountains!!

While we were sitting at the dairy bar, a woman pulled in with her 5 children…we heard her say to one of the kids that dad would be joining them shortly. The woman was pretty interested in our trip and what we were doing, so we talked with her for a while. Turns out that her husband owns a fleet of combines that travels across the country harvesting as crops come ready. They said that they start in may and usually don’t finish until sometime around November. They said that they basically live out of a camper for the whole summer…seems like a crazy lifestyle…but they seem to do a great job with it. They were a great family though for sure. (colli – in case you are curious, we found out they are a green fleet)