Thursday, July 22, 2010

An oven called Kansas

Today, we broke. Today, after riding in 24 mile per hour winds and a heat index of 109 and 58 miles with no service on the route and a flat tire . . . we got a hotel room. Nope! Not camping tonight.

We had planned on free camping at the town park, but after the town swimming pool employees told us that a bike had recently been stolen and that the town teenagers would be cruising by our “campsite” all night long and the wind was still blowing incredibly fast and the 7 p.m. sun still felt like it was burning us, we got a hotel room.

Actually, we thought about it for a while. We debated on either getting a hotel room every night while in the heat of Kansas, or renting a U-Haul and driving to Colorado. We actually walked to the U-Haul store, but it was closed, and so our fate was closed. Hotel room it is . . . until we get to a place where our insides don’t boil while we sleep and the wind doesn’t rip through our dreams at night.

Ooooohhhh, the wind. The wind is brutal. It’s unrelenting. It’s like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. Imagine leaning left into the wind while sitting on your bike for five to seven hours each day. And then imagine what it’s like when a semi truck goes by. The semi stops the wind for a second, so that your body automatically goes left, hard and fast, so that all you can do is react and push down with your right hand as hard as possible . . . and then the semi is gone . . . and the wind is back, so that you fly right, towards the ditch. Oh.The.Wind.

Brooke
More of these today.

Most of the trees look like this-- windblown.

This cute little guy gave us some entertainment for a while.

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