Prairie Dogs are funny little critters. There were a ton of them scurrying around in the miles east of Lamar. They live in colonies on the high plains and are constantly popping in and out of their dirt mound/holes and dashing around doing whatever prairie dogs do early morning. Don't really see them once it gets hot ... they are much more sensible than we are and get out of the heat.
Our ride today was fun. Spent most of the day riding with Gerard who is on the staff and Seattle Bob. With Chris joining us in the beginning till he figured out he could break his record for a hundred mile ride and left us in the dust.
These (mostly) flat lands make it tempting to see how hard and fast you can ride. Today I set my all time best record for a century ride. Averaged 18.5 mph for 100 miles and got in in 5 hours, 22 minutes ride time (doesn't include stops). That means riding above 20mph for most of the ride. It was the perfect day for a fast time ... four riders made it in under 5 hours which is really fast for a century. Chuck made it his mission to beat Tom in and break Tom's string of fastest/arrive first that he's held since the beginning of the trip. He's pretty pleased with himself. He rode the full 105 miles today in less than 4 hours, 30 minutes. This rivalry should be entertaining as we go on.
And, who knew, Kansas isn't flat as a pancake. I knew of hills in East Kansas, but we rode through 25 miles or so of bonafide rollers A few miles east of the Kansas line. How exciting!
What we are seeing is farm land ... a lot of it. As we pulled into Syracuse I joked "Look, there is the Kansas skyline." This would be the huge grain silos and ag processing equipment that rose way above the prairie and resembled a small version of skyscrapers. We are seeing more corn - all looking good and knee high by the fourth of July. Fields and the dark green of maturing plants, the lighter greens of new growth and shoots and golden fields of what must be wheat that was cut short and left fallow. Most of these fields will have a tree sheltered house and barn in the center of open space.
It's clear a lot of the small towns we passed through are struggling. Closed shops and for sale signs are prominent. And large agribusiness is evident everywhere from the huge Tyson processing plant to semi-trucks hauling livestock, hay and farm equipment. I can't believe the small farmer is faring very well now.
Right now we are staying in a Comfort Inn in Garden City. They are being incredibly nice, including having a bike wash station complete with cold bottled water and oranges for us when we got in. I was chatting with a woman from here and asked us what we could do here and she said "Well. We used to have the largest free swimming pool in the country but then they built the slides and started to charge." Probably won't make it to the pool.
Tomorrow we go to Dodge City. This promises to be full of cheesy touristy wild west wax museums, fake gunfights and who knows what else. Should be a blast. A short ride - only 51 miles - should get us in with plenty of time to be tacky tourists.
