Day 27, we're almost not in Kansas anymore Toto

Forgive me the obvious subtitle, but I think I've either earned it or Kansas and the heat have melted any archness from my brain.

It's 105 degrees here. I'm at the pool in Tribune. I'm sweating in the shade. I'm in Mountain Time. I was reading my Twain book.

Woke up early today so that we could wake up early tomorrow. We rode for about 50 miles today (perhaps my shortest day yet) in anticipation of 120 miles tomorrow (perhaps my longest). We got into town early and had an early lunch at the Chatterbox Cafe.

Sometimes places live up to their names. Everyone was talking at the Cafe. People were shouting to us from across the room. "Where you from?" "Hot enough for you?" "Where you heading?"

A gentleman with a respirator wished us well. His wife offered us the local newspaper, The Hutchinson Post. A sweet, round couple who wore their pants very high told me about their daughter's trip to my hometown. She worked as a nanny for the man who built our soccer stadium. She flew in first. Apparently, she drinks scotch as a habit; on the flight, she had two 20 year old glasses of Chivas.

"That's not even a single malt," he said.

I told him I've never understood why those are so expensive.

"Because somebody's willing to pay for it!"

Quite wise. I went to the library, sat in a BarcaLounger, cracked open a copy of Adventure Kansas, rested it across my face and went to sleep. I woke up at closing, we to City Hall, looked at some neat old photos and a barbed wire collection, and then I hit the pool.

That brings us to now with one big omission. I no longer eat beef. There are hundreds of reasons to avoid eating another animal. I have three of the least noble: I'm sick of looking at them, or them looking at me; I hate the machines they use to move them around; and I have driven by a feedlot.

Now I think it is completely fine to remain willfully naive about some things. You can't feel bad about every decision. If you love the taste of a good hamburger -- as I do -- ignore my last paragraph and head to Shake Shack.

When the prairie cow turns 3 he is fattened up before death (humans follow this arc somewhat). What does a 3-year-old grass fed cow eat? Cow! Not, perhaps, what you and I might recognize as cow unless you are particularly fond of hoof, horn, bone, anus, and intestine. This swollen cow is then killed, subdivided, and sometimes sold to you as grass-fed wondercow.

I just don't think this sounds healthy. And the bloody trucks they use.

Day 26

Kansas is subtly different today. Imagine her from yesterday, but less rain and flatter land has made her paler and short. I'll be honest, some of her beauty might be fading away too.

The grass is shorter in this part of the High Plains. Well I'll take it. The grass keeps everything down. Remember, this was once the Dustbowl. Best not to rip up the topsoil to grow potatoes here.

I had a minor depression today. The wind just would not get off my case. When it wasn't directly in my face, it decided to blow hard into the left side of my bike and body. To keep from riding into the shoulder (and up to Nebraska), I had to lean my entire body's weight on the right side on my handlebars. Fine. Then, settled, a Mack truck filled with cattle would come flying down the opposite lane and send a horrible gust of wind into your chest. It was like leaning into a punch or being sprayed by shrapnel made of cowshit.

This began to wear thin. I should never have drank a gallon of soy milk at breakfast. Elaine made the best granola and, after giving me a CD ROM of some kind of rapture inspired videogame, Dan played us one last song. "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" is the perfect song for a Kansas sunrise and sweet goodbyes.

We walked outside and briefly met the 80-year-old man who farmed last night's sweet corn. As a teenager, he and his Sunday school class built a large sign outside of town that is visible from an airplane. It says: Jesus Pilot Me. Is it asking or saying in broken English? The man is a spry 80, and he says this is because he never drank or smoke or did anything but love the Lord. We took photos of him holding a rock with the sign carved into it. He sells them for 30 bucks.

But back to me being in a bad mood. Good feelings wear with the wind, and after three hours of cowshit shrapnel punches, I was about ready to stop my bike, run into a cornfield, grab an ear and shout a violent obscenity in one of the few parts of the country where that might still matter. It made me mad.

Compounding this all, the electric motor I've been using to power my bike died. It's Korean. It uses 37 hearing aid batteries every 70 miles. I hate buying new batteries because some teenagers slip them behind their eyelids to get high. You should see the dirty looks I get at the pharmacy. I broke a sweat just worrying about it.

Scott City couldn't have come fast enough. Towns pop up from about 10 miles out here. You can see a town's grain elevator take over the sky like the Emerald City itself. We made our battered way to a Mexican restaurant, ate modestly, and then hit the Athleticlub.

The Athleticlub let's cyclists sleep on the floor, use the showers, and, most importantly, use their jacuzzi. They also have a diving board. The room I am lying in now has little girl's gymnastics lockers, a series of trophies, a large fan, and a couple of framed photographs of George Bush and Regan on a white horse. Oddly (or not), this is the exact same trope used on my rapture CD-ROM.

And that is a full day. We have an easy one tomorrow to Tribune (named for the New York Tribune) and we're going to try and wake up at 5 and bang it out. I'll be in bed soon, but I want to leave the day with breakfast because what we were talking about (and that we were talking about it) was all quite interesting.

We talked about organic food, mad cow's disease, other wasting diseases, agribusinesses that don't allow you to keep last year's seeds, and agricultural talk radio. Dan is a sometimes phone in caller. One farmer called in and wanted to know why hormone free organic milk lasts longer. The host had no answer.

An angry farmer called in to say that all this organic talk is rubbish and we should just go back to doing it like we used to, like our grandparents did. He meant using pesticides and hormones like our grandparents did. Even if his family were prodigious breeders, I should have liked to have had the chance to correct him. Dan was in his harvester at the time, but he wanted to give the man hell.

Day 25, late evening

Elaine's was a treat.

While her Easy Veronica with meatballs cooked, Elaine took us to Mitch's to see his miniature artwork.

Mitch makes small scenes and people out of sculpey and in eggs, gourds, or plain old dioramas. Some of his scenes included a saloon, an artist at work in his studio ("If you look you'll see the plugs all plug in," noted Elaine), a lighthouse off of Cape Cod, Eskimos on ice, and a Scotland scene. The last one was going to go inside an emu's egg.

"I was looking at the egg and it wasn't quite right. Then it tipped over onto its side and I thought [*snap*] sideways!"

Mitch paints some and he also makes statuettes. He's got a Valkyrie, a gypsy girl, a barbarian with sword, and a female preacher with Tibetan lambswool for hair.

His house smells of old cigarette smoke. Everything was low down so he could reach it from his wheelchair. Once, when he was at a fair, a heavy wind started to blow his tarp away. He grabbed his tarp to stop it from going, it kited up and started to roll him down the street. He stopped it in time, but he couldn't feel his feet drag a harbor scene gourd crashing to the ground. He was alone at the time.

Each scene takes him about 10 months to make. I mentioned that I loved the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in New York and he told me that that's where he wanted to get his stuff. He asked me to flag down the curator if I ever see him, and, if I ever do, I will. Perhaps for someone in Bazine (pop. 435), meeting one person in New York (pop. 9 million?) might seem easy.

Dinner was fantastic. Elaine told us that if we're short of water we can cool off by jumping into cowbaths at the base of windmills. Dan, her husband, told me a little bit about his many jobs rolling hay or alfalfa, raising cattle for feed, raising feed for cattle, his positive thoughts on organic produce, his negative thoughts on Barack Obama (it was my fault for bringing it up, and my fault for lingering on it). His ears really pricked up when we talked music.

In 1964, Dan and his family were on vacation in Colorado. He and his brother were listening to the AM when they heard that there were tickets still available for the Beatles concert at Red Rocks Natural Amphitheater. With luck and $6.60, Dan saw the Beatles at their loudest.

Dan has seen all kinds of bands over the years. My ears pricked up when he said he broke through the ropes to see The Band play at Harvard. When I told him that I'd been recreating The Band by The Band all throughout Virginia and Kentucky, Dan returned with a copy of that LP and Music from the Big Pink.

We put it on the machine, I sat back and listened to the first scrap of music I've actively listened to in months. Dan apologized profusely for the fact that only one speaker worked and then he took the dogs out for a run alongside his pickup.

One speaker is fine and plenty. A parting lyric from Rocking Chair that I remember misremembering in the Appalachians:

"Oh to be home again,
Down in old Virginie,
With my very best friend,
They call him Ragtime Willy...
This hill's too steep to climb,
And the days that remain ain't worth a dime..."

I am halfway across the country.

Day 25

I have everything I need, here, in Bazine, Kansas.

I have my feet elevated in a hammock. I have my book and my notepad. I have a sharpened pencil. I have some almonds within reach. I have showered. I have no more riding to do.

It's 100 out, but I am in the shade. We woke up early, checked for dead ducks (there were none; or do duck eat duck?), grabbed a quick chocolate milk, and were heading west by 8. After a little while we made a right turn and headed north for 19 miles.

What's this? I can hear? I'm not bleeding out of my eardrums? Pedaling is easy again? I'm riding uphill at 20 miles an hour?

Finally, after a long four days journey into wind, a little bit of it at our backs. I apologize if the ratio of chat about how hard cycling is vs how joyful it can be is 87 to 13. In the interest of fixing my numbers, imagine this: you're spinning your feet through air while America at her most dramatic (yet) passes you by. The prairie is green in parts, golden in parts; the sky is whiteblue near the horizon and thick blue right above you. Most farm equipment is primary colored -- red, yellow, blue. The sun washes everything so that it blends nicely. The road remains black and yellow. There are a couple of clouds to keep things interesting.

I guess everything was so pleasant because I knew I'd be at Elaine's Bicycle Oasis by 1. This is where I am now.

Elaine is a lovely, softspoken woman whose idea of tourism is traveling to El Salvador for church volunteer work and getting guns pulled on her. She and her husband raise cattle but she has clearly driven miles out of her way to find soy milk for vegan cyclists. She likes us, despite whispers in the small town, because we are the kind of people who spend our holidays fighting our way across the country, people in transition, from college to retirement. Most of all, we are an appreciative lot. I thanked her three times for letting me use her shower.

We are driving in her truck to her friend Mich's house. Mick is disabled and paints miniatures and then glues them inside egg shells.

Day 24

I left the bike store at 3. The gentleman who fixed my spokes offered to sell me a wheel that -- his words -- was just as bad as mine. I told him I'd have to pass. Two spokes and a wheel true came to 22 dollars (2 little ducks -- quack quack). The gentleman threw in bending my fender for free. Baruch Spinoza managed to remain composed in the hardest of situations. Must remain Spinozalike.

I flew up northwards. The wind was at my back and I was at Nickerson in short time. Good. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get off the road before the sun was at face level and the Larned public pool closed. At the expense of much suspense, I will tell you flat out that this did not happen.

Between Nickerson and Larend is 58 miles of prairie, my first sunflower field, a waterfowl preserve, and no drinkable water. Naturally, I stocked up.

About 10 miles down the road I managed to pour the contents of one of my precious waterbottles on my legs (it did feel good) and I discovered that the gentleman at the bike shop had kindly emptied my other one for me. I would have to breathe through my nose.

In the distance, large rolling sprinklers sprayed gallons of water on the grassfields. I closed my eyes. Spinoza's philosophy is quite interesting (and awfully boring to read) because it makes philosophical arguments as geological proofs.

Allow me to attempt a geographical argument using geometry. Kansas' flatland cannot stop the wind from moving across it. The wind cools. Ergo, the people have to remain warm to each other. Otherwise, they would just blow away.

Breakfast at Joey's Diner was a lovely experience. Old men is various plaids and ladies in two pieces all approached us and asked us where we were going. They demanded we have a bigger table for all the food we were eating. They wished us well.

Larned has the only hill in the area. While writing to you from my tent, a group of teenagers stoned a duck to death in the pond next to my campsite. 20 minutes on and the ducks are still crying.

Larned reminds me a bit of the town in The Magnificent Ambersons. At the top of the hill is a mansion that predates the rest of the homes. It is a bit Georgian and seems to have been built with the idea that the hill around it would remain sparsely populated. This was not to be. You can see other large homes from the following decades -- none as nice -- and as times grew tougher, lots were divided and divided and flimsier homes were jammed in the cracks.

At the end of the estate is a nice Mexican restaurant. I had a Jarritos mandarin, ice-cream and churros, a quesadilla, a burrito, chimmichangas, chips and salsa. I had everything at the same time. In the background, a waitress tried to explain to a farmer why Mexican Coke is better than American Coke.

"Well, for starters, they don't use corn."

Day 24, a quick correction

They actually have shark in Kansas! This used to be a vast ocean and in Oakley you can see fossils of horrifyingly large shark. Fortunately, I'm past it.

Day 24, Stuck in Hutch

I am in Hutchinson. My faithful bicycle is being repaired and I will have to wait. So I went to the space museum.

The Hutchinson Cosmosphere was voted one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas. I wonder why anyone would pay money to see a simulacra of the sky when any Kansan can get the real deal for free (good and clear and with a thick orange harvest moon). I didn't feel like paying for it either, so I stuck to the gift shop, bought some astronaut ice-cream to see if it was as disgusting as I remembered it (it was) and defaced some currency. For 51 cents, I smushed a spaceshuttle clean across Abraham Lincoln's proud, copper face.

And now I'm in the library. Hutchinson has a museum of Hollywood kitsch 650 feet underground in an abandoned mine, but sadly it's too far away to walk to. I will make do with the Wichita Business Journal, the tourist bureau's 'Kansas: as big as you think', and 'The Philosophy of Spinoza' by Spinoza.

I have 75 miles to go today and it looks like I'll be starting at 3. With luck, I'll be done at 11PM. I very well might have to ride by the stars.

Day 23, 100 degrees in the wind

Today was another slog through the winds of Kansas. It was horribly hot. But, for a good five hours, the corn gave way to grass.

West of Eureka are the flinthills of Kansas -- the largest natural grassland in the world. It stretches up to the tippy top of Nebraska and down as far as Oklahoma. Much of it, I'm told, is open range. Cattle (It's what's for dinner) get to wonder the wide strip until cowboys on ATVs round 'em up. Cows aside, they also farm oil and wind. The flinthills are hilly by Kansan standards and -- of this I am dead certain -- the winds always bluster westsouthwest.

We got an early start to try and beat the wind. Sadly, the wind got up even earlier. Consider the syllogism: the earl bird catches the worm; the early worm gets eaten and then vomited up and re-eaten; earliness is not all that jazz.

So we pushed on. We pushed on as Kansas went to church and then stayed home. We pushed on through ghost towns, down long straightaways, and right into Jim Davis. Jim had pulled his pickup onto the side of the road because he saw us and wanted to offer us a soda. We talked bikes, ranching, and all sorts of things because the longer we talked the longer we didn't have to bike, and because the longer he talked he didn't have to fix his sister's porch. It was lovely.

It was Kansas. The people are few and far between, but when you see them they're lovely. The ladies at Braum's ice cream were wonderful ("she has boys about your age you know; bless you; good luck"); the boy who turned 14 today and entourage were all sweet as could be when he invited us over for lemonade ("well, you know I'll be driving soon, so cyclists watch out").

I love it here. The sky is so clear it's like a planetarium. There are no sharks. Overcrowding isn't an issue. I've begun putting myself in a trance state so I can sleep through much of the riding. I keep my eyes open just thin enough to keep the yellow dashing by on my left and the gutter on my right. I think about how little time 6 hours ride is, say, to a prairie. I think about how I would have improved The Munsters (improvement number 23: add a living hand).

Oh: I called Pastor John to thank him for everything and to subtly apologize for calling him by the wrong name. He told me,

"Don't worry about it Jack. I've been called worse things."

Jack!

Day 22, yet more Kansas

This was a day of ups and downs on flat land. I had a wonderful breakfast with Pastor John, who I called Bob through the entire meal, after he gave me his card (all I saw was a 16 letter surname), and when we said goodbye. I would hate myself for this for hours, but Johnbob did say that Christ was put here to save us from our sins and to remind us that we were fallible. I'll tell you what is infallible: Johnbob's fresh and strong coffee and his tremendous homemade biscuits with pumpkin jam. Plus, real butter in margarine country.

I left and biked west into the wind. I almost never stopped biking west. The wind almost never stopped blowing at me.

The land here drives you mad. A good working definition of infinity: think of the largest number you can and add 1 to it. And so it goes with Kansas. Think of all the corn you can and add ten miles to that. Ditto hay, yellow dashes in the middle of roads, telephone poles, and grass. There is no stillness in this. You move down a straight road with the worst feeling that you're going in circles.

But, with nothing in between, I made it to Eureka. I paused for milkbreaks and to tape down another popped spoke. I could have gone on for another 100 miles, but the bike shop in Hutchinson is closed on Sundays so I will have to wait them out and only go 77 miles tomorrow.

I am at the new pool. I went swimming earlier. My new friends and I -- Cody, Earl, and Cody's sister, all 11 -- had a couple of handstand contests, underwater races, and biggest splash conversation.

"So you're a biker huh?"
"That's right."
"I have a bike. It's one of those bikes from Wisconsin --"
"I farted, haHa."
"I ride it a lot now. But I crashed once. Schwin, it's a Schwin, but my Uncle Eric has another kind and he's a real biker."
"Canopener!"
"I can make my stomach fat."
"That's nothing," I said, "I saw a woman in Kentucky who couldn't fit in this entire pool."

Closing time at the swimming pool is one of young life's great sadnesses. It can't be explained. The other is dropped ice-cream cones.

I am cooking for myself for the first time in a small while. It's rice fro WalMart. The instructions ask for margarine. I'll try and find some when I hit up the bowling alley.

Cheerio.

Pool closing

Day 21, my third week begins

Tonight I sleep like a king on the floor of Lutheran Pastor Bob's office. Bob welcomed us with fresh vegetables from his garden. After hellos, we walked back into it to grab some fresh sweet cream corn. We ate it, made a puttanesca with the veggies, and ate chocolate cake in a Sunday School classroom. We are in Kansas.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of food and here are our oilfields. The plains unfold in four directions like an awful perspective drawing of corn, highway, sky, corn, hay, corn, and telephone poles. What you can't quite capture on the canvas is the wind.

I do not believe having enemies is petty. Multiculturalism does not exist if you are so polite as to allow everything to happen (the cannibal's right to dinner does not eclipse my belief in the rights of all mankind). Of course it is a sad day when one makes a new enemy: so welcome headwinds, meet totalitarianism, anti-individualism, fluorescent lights, U2.

The ex-marine I spoke to a while back told me this bit of pseudoshakespeare: every state takes its pound of flesh. I left Missouri five pounds heavier (I had pie for breakfast), potbellied, and in tremendous spirits. Five miles of biking against a 10 mile an hour wind left me miserable in Kansas. My poor bike registered its dissatisfaction by blowing a spoke a little ways down highway 7 our of Pittsburg, KS.

Pittsburg is a neat little town. There is one block of turn-of-the-last-century American vertical architecture and then it quickly descends into two story houses, ranch homes, trailers, plains. The post office is spectacular. I went into a pawn shop and found myself torn between a poster of Buzz Aldrin, a handgun, or a Dolly Parton album. I left with nothing.

A while up the street I stopped a man to ask directions. He knew nothing. He was probably my age but his cheeks were hollowed out and he wore his t-shirt around his shoulders like it was designed to improve his posture. His empty, sunbleached blue eyes could have been ripped from a Walker Evans photo or, as Connor correctly noted, Larry Clark.

And that brings us to now. Or then. Since starting this post I have taken a shower and I have helped Pastor Bob trap a small cat in a cobwebby basement. He returned to his crime procedural and I to you, but not without walking through a field of 100,000 fireflies.

Tomorrow, I am having breakfast with Bob and then hitting the flat road. I hope to ask Bob what, exactly, is Garrison Keillor's role in the Lutheran Church. I have 200 miles to the next bike shop. With luck, Rocinante should hold up until we can get him seen to.

Some parting advice: drink milk.