June 29, 2006
Day 28: Chanute, KS to Eureka, KS
67.58 Miles, 5:46:35 Ride Time, 11.98 Average Speed, 29.1 Maximum Speed
I was tired after my longest-day-ever yesterday, so it was a little hard to get going this morning. It was already hot and windy by the time I rode out; I had the sinking feeling that I had traded the hills of the previous four states for something I like even less - headwinds.
Chanute is a fairly large town (pop. 9,500), so of course it had a McDonalds, right on my route. I stopped and had a sandwich, and noticed that everyone else in the place was twice my age.
As I got a few miles out of town I passed some nice, but not exceptional scenery. I did notice one new thing in this section: large stacks of rocks along fence lines, wrapped in fence wire. I assume that it is the local custom to do this when clearing the fields of rocks. I don't recall seeing this anywhere else, and I saw it dozens of times today.
The first several miles today were on the fairly quiet "2000 Road." I met a couple of eastbound cyclists, Barb and Paula. They were from Bend, Oregon, and had a guy (husband of one of them, I assume) driving a van ahead. He wasn't riding a bike at all on the trip, and was staying only five or seven miles ahead of them. His role seemed kind of boring to me, and I didn't envy him. All three were very nice, and let me fill up my water bottle with cool water from their van.
After the ride on 2000 Road, I turned onto the much busier State Route 39. This section wasn't much fun - it was hot, with very few shade trees. I passed miles of corn fields before I saw nice tree where I stopped and rested for a few minutes.
Not long after my rest break, I turned onto a more rural road, toward Coyville. In a few miles I met Kyle French, one of the three college guys that I had been running into since the first week of the trip. It was Kyle's turn to drive the guys' Honda Civic to the day's destination, and then ride back to meet Mark and Ryan. We talked for a few minutes, then I road on toward Coyville. Coyville was a virtual ghost town - a few modest homes, and a small park was basically all that was there.
My map indicated that there were no services until Toronto, several miles away, so I was surprised to see, a few miles outside of Coyville, "Debbie's Barn & Grill." I stopped in and got a gatorade and a bag of peanut M&Ms. The lady there told me about a girl riding a unicycle who had been in recently. This was the second time I had heard about this unicycle person; the first time, in Everton, MO, I thought the local guys were kidding me. I had questions about the whole deal (does she carry a backpack? does she have a support vehicle? etc.), but all the woman remembered was that "the wheel is big."
There was a modest little hill just past the Barn & Grill, which the people at the place seemed proud of - "It's my little mountain", one of them said. A six year-old boy hanging around the place (grandson of one of the women, probably), gravely warned me to "be careful on the hill." I thanked him for his concern, and left. The hill, while certainly the steepest I had seen in Kansas, was no big deal. (But it would have been hard on a unicycle, I bet; I'm afraid that I was a little peeved that a woman riding a unicycle across the country [if indeed that was what she was doing] was making my trip look easy...)
I rode on to the small town of Toronto, only 24 hours away from its "Toronto Days" festivities, which (barring some sort of cataclysmic mechanical failure), I was destined to miss. I stopped at the tiny public library to check my email, and had to sign several forms (which I didn't read - does anyone even know what they're agreeing to when they sign these things?) to get access to the internet. I asked the lady if any other cyclists had been in recently (I was wondering how close I was to catching up to Johnny and Henny), when damned if she didn't mention seeing the unicyclist too!
Not too far out of Toronto I stopped at the famous "Lizard Lips Grill & Deli" for lunch. This was a cool place, with (of course) a big-time lizard theme. They gave me their cyclist log book to sign, and I noticed that the Dutch couple had been in just a few hours earlier - I assumed I would finally catch up to them when I arrived in Eureka a few hours later.
The ride to Eureka on the very busy US 54 (lots and lots of big trucks) was hot and windy, with some of the toughest grades I had seen in Kansas (nothing compared to the Ozarks, much less the Appalachians, of course). I wished I had started earlier in the day to avoid the furnace-like wind.
I decided to stay at the Blue Stem Motel in Eureka. This is the kind of old-style, family-run place where you're not supposed to receive telephone calls after 10:30 PM, presumably because someone in the lobby has to patch the call through to your room. The tired-looking young woman working at the desk was bottle-feeding a small baby, so I tried not to bother her with too many questions about the details of the "high speed wireless internet" that was advertised on the motel's sign.
The room was well-worn but clean, not bad at all for $38 including tax. (The wireless internet, however, only worked when I held my laptop near my door, and at an odd angle).
After I showered and changed into my one pair of off-bike clothes, I rode down to the city park to see if any other cyclists were camping there. I saw Johnny and Henny's tent, but they weren't there, probably having gone to dinner. I left a note, along with the newspaper article about them I had been carrying around, and then rode around checking out Eureka.
I had a milkshake and some junk food I bought at a supermarket in lieu of a real meal - it was so hot I didn't feel like eating anything cooked. Later, Henny called me on my cellphone, and thanked me for leaving the newspaper article. She took with seemingly good humor my joke that it must have been an awfully slow news day for that story to have made the front page...
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Today's ride: 68 miles (109 km)
Total: 1,795 miles (2,889 km)
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