Month: August 2024

The weather turned very warm as I entered the plains. For the first few days, I had a bit of a tailwind for some of the time, and was making pretty good progress. But the past few days have been mostly cross or headwinds, and combined with the heat have really felt like a slog. I think it was 4 days in row with the high above 100. Each day I’ve gotten up early, trying to be on the road before 8 am, and get in 40-50 miles in the cool weather as quickly as I can. Then I’ve been finding a restaurant, bar, or park to hang out in until late afternoon before continuing to ride. I’ve gotten a few cheap hotels, because the forecast said it would still be 80 degrees at midnight, which makes it pretty tough to sleep in a tent.

Each day I head East, it has gotten slightly more humid, slightly greener, and starting yesterday, I started seeing trees again. Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas is mostly dry rangeland, but that soon gave way to wheat and corn fields. Today I even stopped at a farm stand at an orchard. The towns are slowly getting bigger as well. Tonight I’m sleeping in a town park in a town just northwest of Wichita.

I’ll soon be veering off the Transamerica trail to head north to pick up the Katy trail in Missouri, where I’ll be meeting up with Zach on Monday. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the Katy trail, and am looking forward to hundreds of miles of traffic-free riding – as well as being close to a river!

Whoops been a bit since I posted!

• Kansas continued to be hot, and increasingly humid, but also greener and with more trees
• In Toronto, Kansas – my last spot on the Transamerica trail – I stopped at the lizard lips grill. For 17 years, the extremely nice guy running it has been giving cyclists little plastic lizards to adorn their bike. Also, he refused to take payment for a delicious cinnamon roll. He wished me safe riding, and at least 3 times advised me “don’t hit any buffalo”
• I picked up a bike trail for 30 miles heading north out of Iola – it was great except I lost one of my shoes (my non -riding shoes). I went back about 5 miles looking for it before giving up – the road gives, and the road takes
• I was excited to find a campground on a large lake, only to find out there was no swimming because it was the cooling outlet for a large power plant
• I had breakfast in the first town I hit in Missouri – Alexandria – and the owner, after seeing my bike, refused to let me pay! I spent about an hour talking to him and the server. I’d recommend the place, but he said he was closing it in a week to retire. I later learned that retirement for him was moving to Branson and finding a cool job there
• I met Zach at the beginning of the Katy trail in Clinton. We camped at the trailhead, where we met a dad and five kids who were riding the trail together with a small armada of bicycle trailers
• I finally met some other bike tourists on the Katy trail – the first I’d seen since Ed in Hartsel, Colorado. We spent some time with one guy who worked as a meteorologist for the Wisconsin Air national guard, and had built his own boat for sailing on lake Superior. (I regret that I didn’t ask if he was familiar with the legend Dick Goddard). He had an amazing story where he had messed up his knee and wasn’t able to walk for 14 years, and started having heart problems. The doctors finally figured out how to fix his knee, and he started riding and lost 100 pounds – he was riding the Katy trail back and forth as his first foray back into bike touring!
• We made it to Zach’s place in Columbia, and our friend Joel drove down from Cincinnati to shuttle Zach to a wedding. We spent a day kicking around Columbia – including hitting up a pierogi restaurant – and then stayed up till 3am watching nostalgic 80s videos on YouTube – Zach is a connoisseur of old local TV news intros.
• I got my first flat of the trip in Columbia, which is pretty good considering I’m using last year’s tires, so they have about 5k miles on them
• The plan was Zach was going to come back from the wedding and then keep riding with me, so I spent a few days just chilling at his place. Unfortunately, real life reared its ugly head, and Zach got scheduled for a bunch of meetings for his new job, so I pulled out of Columbia a sad solo cyclist again
• I wasn’t solo for long though – as soon as I made it back to the main trail, I met two guys from San Jose – Pat and Ralph (I think) – who were riding from Kansas City to DC following pretty much the same route I was taking. They had also ridden nearly the same route as I had last year!
• We stayed in another very cool bike hostel that night – it had originally been a general store I think from the late 1800s. There was even a local family that would deliver food if you called them – those guys did it and they got a huge dinner
• I was riding faster than them (they were in their late sixties) so I peeled off the next morning
• I finished out the rest of the Katy trail – it was really nice to be out of traffic for so long, and all the little tiny old towns it runs through were very cool.
• I crossed the Mississippi into Alton, Illinois and found a cool brewery. Instead of riding back south along the Mississippi to meet back up with the Transam route, I decided to take the “eastern express connector” route which shortcuts straight across Illinois and Indiana, saving me about 250 miles of solo riding
• The weather cooled down a bit, and several nights in my tent I was treated to a light show from nearby thunderstorms, though none ever really hit me
• I don’t have a lot to say about riding across Illinois and Indiana. A lot of the route I’m following is on us-40, which runs parallel to I-70 so it doesn’t get much traffic. It’s also the old “national road” that was built out in the early 1800s, so there’s a lot of interesting history along the way. The riding has been really pleasant – lots of rolling hills and cool little towns
• My brother Chris is meeting me tomorrow and we’ll be at my brother Mike’s place – in Ohio! – tomorrow night! Definitely getting to the end game

• Chris met up with me in Cambridge city, and we headed east towards Ohio!
• On our way out of town, we saw a pretty cool model railroad setup, and talked to one of the guys who helped maintain it
• In Richmond, IN we got chased by a pack of 10-15 dogs. When a few of them started nipping at my panniers and sandals, I employed the “squirt them in the face with my water bottle” tactic to great success
• We had a pretty easy ride to our brother Michael’s place outside of Dayton – lots of gentle rolling hills through country backgrounds, very little traffic
• Picked up the bike trail network outside of Dayton and started seeing a ton of other cyclists
• Stayed at a cool trailside campsite in London, and met another eastbound tourist! Mike left San Francisco a few weeks before I started, and is heading to Long Island! He’s riding solo at the spry young age of 61! We rode with him for a good amount, swapping stories
• Had a pretty smooth ride into Westerville to meet up with our aunt and uncle. We made plans to come back in a few weeks to ride the last final TOSRV (Tour of the Scioto River valley) ride – Uncle Jim has been doing that ride for over thirty years!
• Chris had been plagued by flats, so he picked up some beefier tires. Then, the next morning, it was my turn to have flat tire woes: two tube swaps before we made it half a block!
• More great riding on the Ohio to Erie trail – had savory and sweet kolache for second breakfast
• Camped outside of Millersburg at a campsite that was up (and down) a huge, steep gravel hill – too steep even for my touring bike to get traction, so we had to end the long day with a bit of hike a bike
• Had lunch on the final day at the Dutch kitchen – all you can eat buffet with tons of desserts!
• More great trail and backroads riding to get us to our great-nieces birthday party – ice cream cake!
• The adventure will continue at the end of October – Alice and I will be riding from Akron to DC via Shenandoah!