Day 45, more

I would like to add that Eureka Nevada is a lovely town, completely justified in calling itself The Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America. They've offered me their library, pool, and town park. People come up and talk to you and are lovely. I just wish there were more Eureka across the state, one every twenty miles, like spiritual rest stops. Oh well.

Day 44

Eureka, Nevada.

"He would have made it if he'd lasted just one more jump. But that was a mean horse. Well, I'm pretty proud of that boy."

The old timer talked out of the side of a smile, holding a picture of his grandson at the rodeo riding a wild horse to a gallery of open mouths. The boy came fourth, but he did have his photograph land on a bottle of local wine.

I forced myself to sleep late. The purple light from the neon signs kept me awake later than usual, but the sun woke me up regular. I left up into the hills and can't say I really remember anything. There was a DOT truck or two, some dumb cows who insisted on eating right on the side of the road, mild heat, then a small dust kickup on a bit of unbrushed road. At the base of the last hill, another cyclist, conversation, running out of breath from talking, thirsty, then downhill into Eureka, a fish hamburger, chocolate milk, my book.

I will nap. I'll wake myself up at 9-ish and bike by night to Austin or beyond. I don't get physically tired anymore. I just get bored.

There is a reason we bomb ourselves here. Nevada is not our prettiest place. It's our gallbladder. I wouldn't really mind if the basins did fill up with water. I think an archipelago in the mid-West would do wonders for the look of the country, provide a nice visual contrast for Maine and Florida's pointy points.

Las Vegas might serve a social function. Every country should have a space for luck-seekers, cheap-hope, and second-rate theater. It should be bright. We should go there on intervals, eat violently, have fun or else, and then leave safe in the knowledge that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

But Las Vegas is a bright dot. It's actually a very thirsty dot and it wants water from everywhere across the State, water for those who do get stuck and live and who require green lawns, swimming pools, water spectacles, and other things reasonable from a city in the unreasonable desert. We can always move Vegas south or east or west or north because it has no real business being where it is. The rest is stuck here.

You don't mind Nevada. It's not really that bad. It's just not that anything. Nevada is in its name: say it fast. Nev-ada, N-vada, Nada. There's nothing here.

There shouldn't be a place of nothing in America. It's un-American. There should be a city to house next year's Hannah Montana memorabilia, a city made of corn, a massive waterpark, military bases, I don't know. Just fill it up. Every inch of New York is filled up so you can hardly rest your eyes without seeing an ad for something you need. Move that here.

I'm on US Highway 50. They call it the Loneliest Road in America. It's not. Road's don't get lonely; that's pathetic fallacy. It goes from coast to coast. It has all the good gossip from California and it's plugged into the Washington scene. Lots of other roads intersect with it and it probably knows what kind of terrible drivers they have in Chile. The Road is far from lonely. The people on it aren't lonely either. They're waiting.

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!