The Great Milkshake Debacle of 2009

It was actually cold this morning. Weird. And damp. We said a few words to the Londoners and hit the road. The arm warmers finally came out of the dark crevices of the panniers. For Jordan, anyway. I should have followed his lead but instead took the group out too fast on the first few miles because I was trying to warm up. Next time. We began the day with a 38 mile stretch of no services. Just farmland, and power poles, and fence, and a stand of trees here and there, cars passing by occasionally. It's a good warm up for the 75 to 85 miles we'll go without any stores or commerce out in the desert states.

We did about twenty miles and had a break on a bridge over a small river. Clif bars, oranges, bananas, and the like. We've been seeing a lot of touring cyclists lately. Kansas seems to be the place where those who started on the east and those who started on the west come to meet. We saw few at the start of the tour and it'll probably peter out again at the end. Before, we'd stop and chat but now there's enough where we just wave and shout a few words at reduced speed. I believe we saw eight today. We got into Newton around mile forty and were feeling fine. The place has near twenty thousand people so it qualifies as one of the biggest towns we've ridden through. They had a full service grocery store called Dillon's. I got acquainted with the salad bar. Every kind of Clif Bar. All kinds of organics. A jumbo produce and bakery section with La Brea stuff. Cool.

Then it was another eleven miles to Hesston where Jeremy visited the post office to pick up his wheel. They had some strange lunch hours so we went over to the library to kill some time. When business resumed, Jeremy picked up the wheel and transferred his tube and tire over, made a few brake adjustments, and was good to go. He also shipped his previous wheel back home. We slipped a few empty fuel canisters in on the sly. Although I suppose that might be less objectionable than when we shipped all of our full fuel canisters inside the bike boxes. Hey, we're in the sticks out here.

A final nineteen miles on the new wheel and we arrived in Buhler. The town is really nice, around 1500 people. All of the stores are open and well kept – they even had a coffee shop but it closes fairly early in the afternoons. We also visited the pool. It felt amazing to get in the water and there was a high dive as well. When we began stopping at pools in the Midwest, the attraction actually was the water. At each pool we go to, less and less time is spent on the aquatic recreation in favor of ogling the various female lifeguards. The pools have been an oasis from the heat but also from the frightening lack of attractive women. If we could trade a hundred slumping old barns for one lifeguard, morale would go through the roof.

Then it was the milk shake debacle of 2009. For whatever reason, the dairy connoisseurs among the group have been craving milk shakes for the last few nights. We got some at Sonic but it just wasn't the same as the down-home, stirred-in-the-metal-cups variety. We went to Joey's diner in town after the pool. The place was understaffed so we had a look at the menu and waited ten or fifteen minutes to come up to the counter and give our order. At which point, we were told they were out of ice cream. Soul crushing. Earth shattering. We thought we could just get some regular ice cream at the grocery store across the street but it had closed while we were waiting to order. It may seem trivial, but when you've been dreaming of something for so long and then... it was comparable to torrential rain storms.

We slumped back to the park and felt slightly better because the showers at the pool had fine water pressure. Then we bitched to each other a bit more before talking to a gentleman who was an accomplished tourist himself. I guess he lives in town but he had done RAGBRAI five times, and ridden through Yellowstone in 31 degree weather in June, and all kinds of other loops and connections and solo jaunts. We traded some stories and then conked out.

Getting flatter now.

First food break.

Same place.

The man has a new wheel.

It's farm country.