Unexpected

June 26

Happy as I am to be out of Missouri, I must confess to missing one thing: the cooler temperatures.  Looking at the NOAA forecast for the next few towns/communities we'll be stopping in has been a pastime for me but I try to avoid it now.  Chiefly because the forecast gets more distressing.  Triple digit high temperatures are not my forte`.  I am a child of the less emphatic East.  If you want to see how bad it can be, just go to NOAA forecast page now and look at Larned, KS...see.

All this heat and drying south wind has shifted the daily schedule.  It is now something like this: rise at 4am and eat a little (too hot and sleepy for much), drink some coffee from the room provided pot or lounge....because now we are regularly checking into motels in small towns that are rated at $ or $$ because they: a. are cheap enough to be easy going about where bicycles go, b. the only way to get your brain cooled off after a day of heat and c. there isn't much market for luxury hotels in the middle of nowhere.  But, I digress.  Put on kit, cover all exposed skin with factor 50, load bike  and leave as close to 5am as possible.  Today we got out at 5:30, rode around town for a few minutes trying to get around a stopped train (2mile detour) and finally got on our way.  67 miles later, we pulled into Eureka.

Kansas between 5am and 10:30am is lovely, very lovely.  After that Kansas gets mean.  And it isn't even flat!  What a shock to find these gently rolling hills!  They aren't very scary and most can be conquered in the largest chainring....but still, they are there in a place that I expected to be flat.