Day 22 Park City,KS to Yates Center, KS (97 bike miles;1586 cum miles)

With Charlie on the mend and taking the day off from biking, Bill and Kriss set off from the Days Inn in Park City and headed east thru Kechi, and then picking up Route 254, a four lane highway. Fortuantely, it was not nearly as busy as was Route 54 the previous day, so it was not that unpleasant a ride. Near Eldorado, 254 joined up with 54 again, which fortunately was not a four-lane superhighway.

Eldorado was a pretty and charming town, with some beautiful Victorian homes, pretty parks, an Oil museum and even a livestock auction!

Route 54 continued into the country with many farms and pasture lands. The cows always seemed to take notice as the bikers in our funny garb passed by.

And now for the beautiful legs competition - can anyone match the legs with the respective biker?

After lunch it was back on the road passing by endless farms which had once been part of the huge tall grass prairie in the midwest.


And finally into Yates Center, a somewhat depressed town, after biking 97 miles!

In Yates Center, Charlie gives an update of the past few days including his condition.

Day 21 Pratt to Park City,KS (73 bike miles;1489 cum miles)

The day started innocently enough. Charlie and Kris leaving the Econolodge in Pratt, where we had stayed for the night. Bill, taking advantage of internet connection, posted the blog for the night before and left about 30 minutes later.

Approaching a railroad crossing just before the City of Cunningham, KS, Charlie took a nasty spill when his front bike wheel got stuck in the space between the track and the road. He banged his head, hard against the ground. Fortunately, his helmet took the brunt and he did not suffer a head injury. But he sustained lacerations to his leg, badly bruised his hip and also hurt his shoulder. His bike also suffered damage. When Martha arrived in Tiggy, she and Charlie headed for Kingman, about 15 miles away where the nearest hospital was located. Kriss and Bill continued biking in the direction of Kingman.

About 5 miles up the road, Kriss and Bill spot Tiggy on the shoulder. The tread on the inside rear tire had unraveled, forcing Martha to pull off the road. Fortunately, a pick-up truck stopped and asked if he could help. Martha immediately replied: 'Could you take Charlie to the hospital in Kingman", which he immediately agreed to do.

Bill called the Road service and was told that the service person was coming from Hutchinson which was more than an hour away. Kriss continued biking to Kingman, while Bill and Martha waited for the towing service.

After waiting about 2 hours, the tow truck arrived and Tiggy was jacked up and tire replaced with the spare tire. Meanwhile, Martha had researched places to get a new tire using Charlie's GPS and found one in Wichita about 50 miles away that was open on Sunday. Meanwhile we heard back from Charlie with the good news that he had no broken bones nor neurological damage, but he was in a lot of pain from all his bruises, and of particular concern was pain and lack of motion in his shoulder.

Bill said he would bike to Kingman to meet Charlie. Martha said that she would wait a few minutes to give Bill a head start, and then go to pick up Charlie and then go with him to Wichita to get a new tire.

About 10 miles up the road, Bill gets a call from Charlie: "Bill, you need to stop riding". Bill: "Let me get to the top of the hill". Charlie: "You may not want to, since you may need to go back to Martha". Bill: "What?" Charlie: "Yes, the towing guy forgot to lower Tiggy from the jack and Martha can't move. Bill: "Gulp".
Charlie: "Wait a minute, Martha is calling". Charlie: "Its ok. The towing guy came back. He realized that he had forgotten the jack and returned. Martha will be heading to Kingman shortly to pick me up".

Bill decides to continue biking , but rather than taking the RAAM route that Kriss took which heads north around Wichita, he decided to stay on Route 54, which is where the tire store is located.

About 10 miles later, Route 54 turns into a 4 lane highway, with a 75 mph speed limit! Bill naturally is riding in the shoulder with cars and trucks whizzing by. This is NOT fun bicycling.

Shortly thereafter, the "rumble strips" changes direction. Rather than running just inside the shoulder parallel to the road, some highway engineer genious decides to have the strips run perpendicular t0 the road through essentially the entire shoulder. The only way to avoid it was right at the while line that separates the right lane from the shoulder. So that's basically where I rode, with cars continuing to whiz by me. I may have uttered a few works of profanity to several who got a little close for comfort. Getting near 5 pm , I call Charlie and he tells me that they are finishing up the tire balancing and they should be ready to go. After some difficulty, I finally get to them.

Now, we need to find Kriss. After several futile attempts to reach Kriss, Kriss finally calls and tells where he is. We head up I-270, go past where he is, get off the next exit, and then head back. Kris is waiting for a Days Inn is Park City (northwest of Wichita) and we decide to stay there for the night - with our usual routine - Charlie in the hotel room and Kriss, Martha and I in Tiggy. Being dinner time, Martha did her usual dinner research and came across a family owned Italian restaurant about 6 miles away.

The restaurant was exactly what we needed after what had been the most trying day of the trip. Charlie had scotch on the rocks and we ordered a bottle of Chianti with dinner. The dinners were all fabuous!!

And then back to the Days Inn and Tiggy for much needed sleep!

Day 20: Bucklin, KS to Pratt, KS (54 bike miles; 1416 cumulative miles)

A DAY OF SERENDIPITY (or Grace, as Charlie put it)!

As we were getting ready to leave the 1950's era West End Motel (and they were probably still using the same furniture) in Bucklin, KS, population 847, it was cold and damp, and then started to rain. The forecast for the rest of the day was not good - rain and northeast winds of 10-15 mph. So should we take the day off? Should we go to Dodge City about 30 miles to the northwest (wrong direction)? Should we wait, go ahead and bike in the rain, or just wait it out and see? After about 30 minutes, the rain stopped, and we decided to give it a shot. Leaving Bucklin we saw a sign (for once Bill did not have his camera because of the still strong threat of rain) that read: Greensburg 19 miles; Pratt 49 miles. Amazingly, although we still had headwinds, they were not nearly as strong as they had been the past two days. We were actually able to ride consistently between 10 and 17 mph. Eventually it did rain but it was not a downpour, and not too uncomfortable. By 10:30, we arrived in Greensburg and immediately noticed the remains of the devastation of the tornado that struck on May 5, 2007 and entirely wiped out the town. But it was also clear that much had been rebuilt. Looking closely, we saw that the recurring theme of the rebuilding effort was "green town" - the town had decided that it would rebuild smarter and greener. Greensburg held special significance to Charlie since he had done a sermon on "generosity" that was inspired by an NPR story about the tornado, and had interviewed a woman who had lost everything, but held out hope that her wedding ring and the wedding ring of her mother would be found. (Hear Charlie's description below)

Later we visited the office of the organization that is promoting "green" home restoration. Charlie and Bill bought T-shirts there to help support the efforts. We had a nice conversation with Curt Roener, an Architectural Engineer involved in the rebuilding. Curt told us that there were festivities taking place all weekend to commemorate that 2 year anniversary of the tornado. In fact he invited us to a free barbecue lunch at the newly reopened John Deere retail store about a mile down the road.

Not to be ones to pass up a "free lunch," Charlie and Bill biked to the John Deere facility and entered to find people listening to a live a capella group, while others were eating or standing in line for the barbecue. We were directed to the shortest line and got into a conversation with Kent and Ann, who were wheat farmers and Anabaptists from a small town south of Pratt, called Sawyer. We found a few vacant chairs and asked if we could join them. We were warmly welcomed by Marion, and Jill Ann (right photo), who were daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. Jill Ann and her husband Max (right photo) were residents of Greensburg, who survived the tornado, but whose home was destroyed. Charlie asked Jill Ann if she had heard of the story of the woman whose wedding rings were lost and later found. She said that she had and called over Steve (center photo) who had in fact found his wife's (and mother-in-law's) ring and who later presented it to his wife on one knee and asked her once again to marry him. It was very touching and emotional!

By 1:30, we left the plant and continued on our bikes, destination Pratt, KS about 30 miles away. After about 10 miles it started raining quite hard, but we were pretty bundled up, so it was not really a problem particularly since the winds were not too bad. The rain stopped after 20 minutes or so, and we were able to enjoy the landscape, with fairly frequent oil wells in the wheat fields. We always knew we were approaching a town when we could see the grain elevator in the distance.

When we got to Pratt, Charlie mentioned that he ran into Kent and Ann and they asked more about the purpose of the bike trip. When Charlie mentioned the Hunger project and Toni's Kitchen, Kent gave Charlie $40 to support the effort. He also invited us all to come to a dinner in their home town of Sawyer for the Volunteer Fire Department. Charlie and Bill decided to go while Martha and Kriss preferred to do laundry. It worked out great!

Day 19: Plains, KS to Bucklin, KS (59 bike miles;1362 cumulative miles)

Today's theme was TEAMWORK!

We awoke again to gray skies, with temperatures in the 40's and a VERY strong headwind. Today we would need to work as a team to draft for each other if we were to make any progress. Each of us would take the lead for a mile, and then dropping back in the shadow of the other two where we were protected somewhat from the wind just like geese.

It was actually fun working like this. Grain elevators continued to be prominent in the skyline, signalling an approaching town.

Day 18: Hugoton, KS to Plains, KS (51 bike miles: 1303 cumulative bike miles)

Yes, we miss Oklahoma indeed!!!

All day we battled very strong headwinds, along with chilly weather, like this lonely tree! (Sorry for the corniness :)

Among today's milestones were Charlie having grape jelly for lunch!!

Plains, KS was a nice little town with a library that was open till 6:30, with wireless Internet that worked even outside of the library. Bill chose to continue to work on the blog in Tiggy while Charlie, Kriss and Martha had dinner. We stayed overnight at an RV park located near the local grain elevator and railroad.

Day 17: Clayton, NM to Hugoton, KS (119 bike miles; 1252 miles)

Today -- Aptril 29 -- was Jonathan's 26th birthday. Happy birthday Jonathan!

The forecast for the prior evening and the upcoming day was not good, with many showers and thunderstorms in the area. So we expected a long day when we left Clayton at 8:30 Mountain time with the wind blowing quite hard. But it turned out that it was a tail wind. Within 1o miles, we crossed the border into Oklahoma. (Bill took a short detour into Texas since Route 56 went right by where the 3 states (New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma) meet. By then the sun was shining and with the tail wind we were flying across Oklahoma at speeds of betweeen 25 and 40 miles an hour.

!

We took a short lunch break once we reached Elkhart, Kansas, having travelled 85 miles in a little over 3 hours.

We continued through Cimarron National Grasslands and another 34 miles to Hugoton, KS, for a total of 119 miles for the day - the most of any day so far.

Later that evening, the Beat Boxing Biking Trio (sans Beat Boxing), consisting of Bill, Charlie, and Kriss, called Jonathan. They explained that they had planned to serenade Jonathan on his birthday, given that he has been a key part of the Bike across America for Hunger and Toni’s Kitchen, having helped drive Tiggy across the country, biking the first week, and of course setting up all the blogs and being the videographer while he was with us.

But after today’s wonderful bike ride through the State of Oklahoma, the trio were inspired to celebrate their love of Oklahoma, by singing a modification of Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma as follows:

Oooh K, la homa,
With a tail wind pushing us along
And a real smooth road, and a long downhill,
And hardly any trucks at all.

OoK-la-homa
We quickly moved across the state
The scenery’s great, With not one wait
Even Charlie’s speeding right along.

We have thousands of miles to go
Through Kansas and Ohio
And it would be a JOY, aye yip-eye-oh-aye-oye!
If they’d be just like Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
OK-LA-HOMA OKLAHOMA, OK

And then singing our family's version of Happy birthday to Jonathan:

We wish you a very happy birthday
A glorious and celebrated birthday
To you dear Jonathan,
We wish you a long, long life.