Well, I have been grounded in Kansas.

A few days ago I noticed the start of a saddle sore. They're not that uncommon and usually they go away. This one, though, persisted and in one day grew to a lump the thickness of my little finger and as long as my little finger from the big knuckle to the tip.

By chance, we have a doctor on this trip. Bob is a lovely man who retired from medicine the day before the ride began. He diagnosed something with a medical name which sounded a lot worse than it was. In effect, it was that I had something akin to a blister, a great dense area of fluid which couldn't escape because - unlike a blister - the skin across it was too dense.

The only way to burst it was by a visit to hospital. And so, arranging a lift to Wichita in a pick-up driven by a man called Jason, I took my first and doubtless expensive step into the American health system.

Well, it was more plumbing than surgery. I was cut and pummeled and drained and plugged and sent back out among the healthy. A couple of enjoyable free days followed with my friend Erie, who was kind enough to stay with me as my guardian angel... and then the bump came back.

I had had in any case to arrange for a doctor to see the wound to make sure all was well. When he saw it, the diagnosis was that the plug had dropped out before the draining had finished and that I had healed too fast. This, of course, is a tribute to British pluck and fortitude and my brimming youthful good health.

The bad news is that the doctor's opening words as he laid his fingers on the affected area were: "I'm going to hurt you."

The good news is that he is himself a cyclist - the frieze below the ceiling of his surgery is of cyclists in glorious action - and so unlikely to be one of those medics who simply want to tell bikies to keep off their bikes for another month.

By chance, his name was also Tom Simpson. As I told him, the last time I had met a Tom Simpson, he had died a month later in the Tour de France. Tom 2 said it was unlikely he would get to ride the Tour de France but that he had always dreamed of riding across America. Therefore he would get me on the road as quickly as he could.

To this end, he put not just a wimpy little strand of gauze into the wound, as the hospital had, but what he estimated as "between a foot and 15 inches." I have become half-man, half-cuddly-toy.

In 50 minutes from now, and across the road from here, I shall see him again and he'll pull out all that gauze in the way a conjuror pulls a string of flags out of his sleeve. Tom's prediction is that I may be able to start riding again tomorrow.

If I can, and if I can ride around 20 miles further each day than the group has been doing, I should be able to catch them in five or six days' time, just before the Rockies. But it all depends on what happens in what is now just 48 minutes' time...

Wish me well.