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Day 25
Highest Point in Kansas. Will this photo win the "Experience Kansas" photo contest? (The bad news is that 1st prize is a trip back to KS). Writing to you from the hometown of John Ashcroft and Brad Pitt... Springfield, Missouri!
When we last wrote, we were in Taos, NM for two days. On our second day off we battled through some amazing rapids on a rafting trip down the Rio Grande. Water was running at some of the highest levels they'd seen in 15 years- Our guides actually seemed a little scared, but we all lived and had a good time with everyone. (A guy on our trip named Andy owns affordableadobe.com. He, his son and nephews build houses out of mud and straw using backhoes for families -mostly native- who can't afford the rising cost of living in Taos. Using mud bricks, they construct 5-7 multi-level homes a year.) Fresh from the water, the mountains and pueblos looked as inviting as ever as we rolled back into town. We realized just how laid-back Taos is, as two of the guides who were driving the two of us back to our motel starting passing beers to us. The driver called out: "Beer down!" as a police car passed going the opposite direction.
The Perfect Storm: From Taos, we headed north into Colorado just as hordes of
Day 17
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a tiny ship...
Rafting the Rio Grande. motorcyclists were descending toward the town for an annual meeting. We deftly dodged some scary thunderstorms before climbing to our highest point in the trip: 9,400 ft. We used the downhill to our advantage and busted out 117 miles in the same day. Oh yeah, we thought we were big business... We were making bets on quickly we'd make it out of CO and into KS. Mother Nature threw in a wrench in the form of harsh Eastern winds (gusting up to 35 mph), endless rain systems, lightning and flooded streets. Our progress came to a crawl; 35 miles one day, then 20 the next. "Funny, it hadn't rained here for 2 years before yesterday". Um, not funny. When were were riding, it was with 5 layers on top and three on the bottom. We stapped shirts to our faces (awesome look) to get through the miles. The headwinds made it feel like we were pedaling through Saranwrap. We waited for John Denver to pop out from behind a drizlling tree and sing about the "Rocky Mountain High", but alas, nothing but howling wind, creaking chains, and squealing bike brakes.
One day,we finally found a motel where we would
Day 17
Battling a class IV (Forest is top right and Annie is in the blue baseball cap) watch the lightning and catch up on episodes of reality TV. But the weather wasn't done with us. We passed through areas that boasted of their "wind farming". We tried to explain to the woman at the Visitor's Bureau that we DIDN'T WANT wind- but she plied us with brochures on how we could visit yet more wind farms 30 miles away. Does everyone in this country drive a car? If we're not sweating as we pedal 5 mph into the ridiculous headwinds, we're ducking into a small town to wait out the lastest torrential flooding. Ridiculous. One of our last nights in Kansas, we had to stop biking mid-day because of a Tornado Warning. We had a good time that day eating hamburgers and pie (sometimes as cheap as $1.50 each), playing pool, and going to a movie. When we emerged from the movie, however, the teenagers who were running the theater, found us to tell us that a Tornado had just been sited on the Lake 2 miles away. "Yeah, right after you guys went in, the sky turned yellow and it got really crazy out here. There's a tornado warning on between 10pm and midnight". Since it
Day 18
Andy, our fellow rafter, builds traditional adobe homes in the Taos area- here's his! was only 5 minutes til 10pm, we decided that the best thing to do was to hop on our metal framed bikes and outride the Tornado. Genius. The good news is that the tornado seemed to have already passed on and we made it back to our seedy hotel to battle mold and shag carpet.
Which One of These Kids Don't Look like the other? Passing through KS, there was no mistaking it for any other place. Grain Silos, advertisements for "Beef Heritage Days", cattle feed ranches that you can smell for miles and MUCH suspicion of bike riders in tight clothing. We opened the door to a restaurant in Syracuse KS to have the entire town simultaneously swing their heads in our direction and practically drop their forks. If we had been wearing clown suits and dental masks, the locals might have been less shocked than by seeing a man in bike tights or a woman with a nose-ring. (Counterpoint: to us, a "Mexican" Restaurant is a strange place to see a donut bar and kitchy country decor, but we digress). In any case, after an hour of being glared at by 13 year old girls and men
Day 18
One of the thousands of bikers who participated in the Red River (N of Taos) Motorcycle Rally on Memorial Day. Less confident people might have felt like weenies on our mountainbikes as these monsters whizzed past us. under hunter ballcaps we took our full stomachs ("foodbabies") and left. Did I mention that I had to make a special request for Tabasco/ something spicy? Oh Kansas. Thank god we weren't people of color. That might have incited a riot. We kept ourselves amused though by trying to win the "Experience Kansas" Photo Contest and by trying to count the number of foreign cars we see each day. We have found people to be extremely kind. Now that we're in Missouri, we are seeing even more Ten Commandment signs in peoples yards and varied anti-abortion campaigns on the highway. We both have favorite signs by now. (We did ask, but apparently John Kerry DID show his face in both states during the election, but not for long).
We managed to hop on the Trans America Bike Route. Several cross-country bicycle routes have been mapped out and are popular, so we've begun running into other bike tourists regularly as we crossed KS. It seems that just about everyone is going from East to West. All of them were happy to be out of the hilly Ozarks in Missouri.
Now we're in Springfield, MO, having visited with Forest's former
colleague who's now a professor here. (By the way, we would have loved to have stayed with our people in CO- but we were just too far South). We got to see the world's largest hunting and fishing store. We contemplated buying camoflage sofas for our new place in NC, but there are too many hunters there and we wouldn't want to get shot in our new home. Well, after some time with Jay's family, we realize again, that we are totally incompentent of doing anything adult-like, so we will again jump on our bikes and head further into MO, then S.Illinois, then KY.
Thanks for your emailed love (and suggestions)- and a Happy 30th birthday to Michael Warner Kallus!!
For our fellow bike tourists:
Day 18
Taos, NM - east of Fort Garland, CO
64,522,159,160
Good roads and shoulders with light to moderate traffic
Slept: Side of road 6 miles east of Fort Garland
Miles: 93
Day 19
east of Fort Garland - La Junta
160, 10
Good roads, small shoulders, light traffic on 160 and almost none on 10
Slept: (Pentecostal) KOA in La Junta
Miles: 117
Highest point: 9,414ft. - highest point Day 18
Barely staying ahead of a storm in Southern Colorado. on trip
Day 20
La Junta - Hasty
109, 194, 50
No shoulder, but very light traffic on 109 & 194; wide shoulder and moderate traffic on 50
Slept: Campground near John Martin Reservoir (in the manager's own tent)
Miles: 35
Day 21
Hasty - Lamar
50
Wide shoulder and moderate traffic
Slept: $35 motel
Miles: 20
Day 22
Lamar, CO - Golden City, KS
50, local rd from Holcomb to Golden City
Wide shoulder and moderate traffic
Slept: Best Western
Miles: 102
Day 23
Golden City - Hanston
156
Light traffic, no shoulder
Slept: Behind old gas station in Hanston
Miles: 65
Day 24
Hanston - Nickerson
156 to Larned to 19
Traffic picked up near Larned on 156; 19 was quiet with no shoulder
Slept: On farmer's property just west of Nickerson
Miles: 71
Day 25
Nickerson - Newton
19, old 81
No shoulder, light traffic
Slept: First Interstate Inn
Miles: 50
Day 26
Newton - El Dorado
Rural Rd past Elbing, rural rd toward Potwin, then rural rd to 77 & to El Dorado
No shoulder, little traffic
Slept: El Dorado Motel
Miles: 45
Day 27
El Dorado -
Day 18
Bring on the Rockies! Chanute
54, 105, 39
Small shoulder on 54 & 39 with light taffic; No shoulder on 105, but had almost no taffic
Slept: Santa Fe Park in Chanute
Miles: 89
Day 28
Chanute, KS - Golden City, MO
Rd south to 146, 7, 160, 126
No shoulders, but light traffic
Slept: city park in Golden City
Miles: 100
Day 29
Golden City - Springfield
37, A, 39, 174, local rds in Springfield
No shoulder until parts of 174; traffic was terrible in Springfield
Slept: Jay & EJ's house
Miles: 75
Day 30
Day off in Springfield, MO
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non-member comment
I Met Anne's Other Boyfriend (FORE-do not read)
Anne- I met Ronnie Lott. Isn't he your other boyfriend or is it some other football dude? He's friends with my CEO and they're in some club that met in the office yesterday and I made him coffee, because not only am I a HR Generalist, I'm also an admin (they haven't figured out I'm not detail oriented and a bad hostess). Anyway, a very nice man and quite hunky. Sorry FORE. KJ - KJ