Good bye Kansas, Finally

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Last night as we were sitting around we heard a gun shot echo around the RV Park. Well, it was actually Jeff's back tyre exploding off the rim. There was discussion as to if it was caused by a poor job of patching (done by Tom) or a poor job of fitting the tyre (done by Jeff). The important thing here was not who's fault it was, but that Jeff has leapt to second spot on the Puncture/Mechanical count and is looking to close in on Tom.
We had to make an important decision this morning (well last night actually). I started to feel a bit of a calf strain yesterday which slowed me down a bit so we discussed having a day off for a rest. In the end the consensus was to sleep in til 7am (unanimous), have breakfast and be in town by 9am so I could get some tape to strap my leg and Tommy could get a haircut. By 10am we should be ready to ride a section of 100kms and would be finished by 3:30pm for the day. So what actually happened was we slept in til 7am and got out of bed at 7:15. We took our time getting ready, especially Dave (Anne, you know what I mean), although he did make us a very drinkable coffee with the $30 coffee machine we bought from Walmart. We then drove into town and had to visit two pharmacies to find sports tape and then we went to Jimmy's Egg for a leisurely breakfast. Actually is was enough for breakfast for the rest of the week.We got talking to the waitress, she works for $2.30 an hour plus tips. We made sure she got a good tip. The working poor are all over the place in America. After breakfast we then drove to the next Time Station to make up time we lost in the morning. By the time we started riding it was 11:30am. Ah well, we needed a bit of a rest. The ride for the day was only 100km all up and pretty uneventful. No flat tyres, no hitch hiking, no getting lost, and the land has started to be a little more interesting with some rolling undulations. We arrived at the town of Fort Scott at about 4:30pm. I said we (the cyclists) didn't get lost, but Tom was driving the RV. We phoned him our location and he came by.We had stopped at the Tourist Information building which was just in front of the historic actual Fort Scott. It included a number of the original buildings as well as some reconstructed ones on the original foundations. The place had just been closed up as we got there but Jason the National Parks Ranger took us on a private guided tour of a few of the buildings. We felt quite privileged. Thanks Ranger Jason. After our tour we walked over to a market and started talking to some locals. The normal conversation followed, everyone is very impressed with the feat we are undertaking. We chat for about 30 minutes about what we've seen on the journey and how far we have to go. I gain another couple of Facebook friends so they can follow the blog. We find a camping ground and RV park in Gunn Park, which has a magnificent lake in the middle and lots of trees, it really is the best spot we have been able to set up at and it's quite isolated from other campers as well. A couple of boys who were camping here said they'd catch us some fish for dinner from the lake and Jeff accepted the offer. We decided we should have a back up plan so went and did some shopping at Walmart. It was the quickest shop we had done ( we left Dave behind at the RV Park). When we got back to the Camping ground we had 5 catfish waiting for us. We had chicken soup for entree, tortellini with meat sauce for main, and double chocolate chip ice cream for dessert. Gee it's tough roughing it in the RV. We're having catfish for dinner tomorrow night apparently. Tomorrow morning we leave Kansas for the state of Missouri. Footnote #1: Puncture Count/MechanicalsTom: 5 puncturesJeff: 1 puncture, 1 blowout and a rear tyre replacementDave: 2 puncturesMark: 0 Footnote #2: Aussie AccentsApparently, Aussie accents are sexy here in the US. Twice this morning we had comments about how great our accents were. Apparently, Aussie accents are sexy here in the US. Twice this morning we had comments about how great our accents were.

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