Days 38-40: Marching Westward to Colorado

July 28
Larned, KS to Ness City, KS
66 miles

July 29
Ness City, KS to Scott City, KS
57 miles

July 30
Scott City, KS to Tribune, KS
47 miles

We entered a new time zone today (Mountain), and are half a day’s ride from Colorado. We can’t say we’re sad to leave Kansas. The people are wonderful, the scenery is spectacular, but the riding is monotonous and taking a toll on our bodies. We’ve been riding the same flat terrain for over a week, providing no variation in saddle position. Instead of logging the long-mileage days that we expected, we have been frustrated by headwinds, thunderstorms, and sore butts, and our mileage has gotten shorter by the day. On the other hand, we couldn’t be happier with the temperatures. While the Pacific Northwest is sweltering in record-high temperatures, Kansas is experiencing record lows. We have been cycling in 70-80 degree weather, which is practically unheard of in the summer months. Another bonus: we’ve hooked up with the dynamic brother-sister duo of Aaron and Saz and hope to continue riding with them as long as we can keep up!

Tonight’s evening entertainment was the county fair, being held right here in Tribune. We took in the swine show, followed it up with hot dogs and root beer, and then some of us (K, Aaron, and Saz) braved the swing ride. Everyone survived the sketchy circa-1950 machinery, though K came off looking a bit green. To complete the fair experience, we shared a funnel cake, then decided to call it a night while limbs and stomachs were still reasonably intact.

Although we are behind schedule, it’s amazing to look at the map of the US and see how far we’ve come. We have cycled over 2,000 miles and are more than half way across! We can still hardly believe that we are doing this trip. Early on in our trip, in Kentucky, we were having one of our daily interchanges with local residents about our trip. A man asked about our trip, and we responded that we had started in Washington, DC and were headed for Seattle. He looked at us and there was a long silence. Then his eyes got wide and he exclaimed in his thick Kentucky drawl: “On BAH-cycles!?” I think of this conversation at least once a day, and think to myself, “OMG, we’re crossing the US on BAH-cycles!”

Days 35-37: Holy Water

July 25
Eureka, KS to Newton KS
76 miles

July 26
Newton, KS to Sterling KS
66 miles

July 27, 2009
Sterling KS to Larned, KS
58 miles

Short of the big guns, tornadoes and car-damaging hail, Kansas has pulled out all its summer weather extremes for us. We’ve cycled its cool, still mornings, sampled its headwinds, and broasted (that’s simultaneous broiling and roasting). Today we rode along a 53 mile stretch with nary a service, not even a lemonade stand at one of the five houses we passed. Along the way cows cooled their heels and other parts in any available pond. When polled, ten out of ten cows agreed Kansas is too hot! Along the way K spotted a sign for the Peace Church and spent four miles riding in prayer for a spigot. It paid off. Now she’s spotting the holy spigot on toast and tortillas. After soaking our shirts, heads, and kerchiefs, we rode off feeling refreshed. Three-quarters of a mile later, our holy water had evaporated and we were heating up again.

The forecast was for a 20% chance of thundershowers, which shortly after our church birdbath turned into a 100% pounding thunderstorm. ML smartly pulled out her rain gear, including her newly purchased Walmart flamingo-colored shower cap, while K tried riding on, eventually seeking shelter in the cab of an abandoned John Deere corn harvester. That is, until she remembered that she was sitting in a gigantic lightning rod and might as well be riding her bike on a golf course holding her clubs in the air. Storm over, we raced the final 18 miles into Larned ahead of the next band of showers

The last two days we’ve met another wave of eastbounders, including a couple of retired teachers from Seattle, Frank and Allison. We finally met Rebecca and Mia, two cool young women on their own, who we had heard about from Keith a couple of weeks ago. Mia was using her mom’s Brooks saddle from when her mom rode the inaugural Transam in 1976.

Days 33 & 34 – Wind: Friend or Foe?

July 23
Pittsburg, KS to Chanute, KS
59 miles

July 24
Chanute, KS to Eureka, KS
66 miles

Eastbound riders’ reports out of Kansas were not glowing. Boring. Hot. Keith reported being “suicidal” by the time he reached the Missouri border. Karen, an enthusiastic rider, exclaimed, “Rent a car. Drive across Kansas. There’s no shame in it!” For the past month, the main headline of biker’s Kansas stories has featured the terrible headwinds of Kansas. On the flipside, we’ve been reading about Westbounders easily logging 100+ mile days with the winds at their backs. We crossed our fingers that the winds would stay the same. Ha! Not so my friends! Our two days of riding in Kansas have been directly into a strong dehydrating wind of 12-20 mph, with temperatures up to 97. We had hoped to make up some miles in this flat state, but are pedaling hard just to eke out 65 miles a day.

The winds are not our first challenge on this trip, nor will they be the last. Today, we were comparing notes and found that when the going gets rough and we find ourselves getting negative, we both hear Denise, our extraordinary yoga teacher, reminding us of meeting challenge with gratitude and presence in the moment.

The kicker is, the winds the past two days are what native Kansan’s consider a gentle breeze. We learned this bit of Kansas meteorology from two wonderful Kansas women, Jay and Janie, who we met in Eureka. In town for their family reunion, we happened to ask Janie a question about lodging as they unloaded their car. This friendly exchange turned into a car tour of Eureka, a trip out to Eureka Lake, a treat out to dinner (our first chicken fried steak), and the affection of Red, their Boston Terrier. A delightful antidote to a grinding day.

Day 32 – Hello Kansas

July 22
Ash Grove, MO to Pittsburg, KS
73 miles

We finally escaped Missouri today, but not without one more stretch of roller coasters. Boy, are we ready for some different terrain. A couple of hours into the day’s ride, ML’s rear tire flatted again. We pulled over to the nice lawn next to the Massey-Ferguson dealer to change the tube, and while we were doing so, Seann, another westbounder pulled up. We have been playing leapfrog with Seann ever since Summersville. He rides faster than we do, but we get up earlier, so every day he passes us during the late morning.

Lunch stop for the day was Cooky’s in Golden City, a café known far and wide among Transamers for being bicycle-friendly and for their dozen-plus pie varieties. We have been dreaming about pie and looking forward to this lunch stop for several hundred miles. ML had peach (of course) and K had strawberry-rhubarb. The pie was solid, but not as good as what’s served in the 66th street neighborhood, so it left us a bit homesick. This won’t keep us from testing more pie across the country though.

The rest of the ride was long and hot, and included a trek through mud to avoid an 8-mile detour around a construction zone. Many other cyclists had told us to ignore the detour and just continue through, noting that the ¼ mile walk through the construction zone was well worth the miles saved. Well, this was before the previous day’s heavy rain that turned the construction zone to a muddy mess. We got through it, but not before gumming up our wheels/fenders with mud that literally kept the wheels from turning. We spent a good 30 minutes cleaning out enough mud from under the fenders to let the wheels spin freely so that we could continue on.

The last 15 miles were a sprint into Pittsburg as we raced to reach the bike store before it closed at 6pm. Bike stores are very few and far between on the Transam, and we didn’t want to miss this one. We arrived at 5:20 and a mechanic immediately started working on K’s bike to adjust the shifter. After her bike was done, it was off to the Y for a shower, then dinner, then to the city park to set up camp.

Kansas first impressions: people are extremely friendly, even more so than the previous states, hard as that is to believe. While we were waiting in the bike store, Kenny, a professor at Pittsburg State University came right up to us, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself. We had a long chat about biking, Seattle, and other random topics. We have had many similar encounters our first day in Kansas.

Days 30-31 – Do These Hills Ever End?

July 20
Hartville, MO to Ash Grove, MO
76 miles

July 21 – Rained out; 0 miles

After Alley Spring (which we rode through several days ago), we were under the apparently false impression that the route would get continually flatter as we neared Kansas. Oh no. Yesterday we encountered another 30-mile section of continuous roller-coaster terrain. The climbs were shorter and a bit less steep than the hard section several days ago, but exhausting nonetheless. And, the heat is back. Although it wasn’t humid, the sun beat down on us relentlessly and by the late afternoon we felt like rotisserie chickens. We are dreading Kansas with its triple-digit temperatures.

For lunch, we stopped in Fair Grove at a delightful café called Oddfellows: a virtual oasis in the Land of Everything Fried and All Vegetables Cooked for Hours. We thought we might be hallucinating when we approached the café; it seemed so out of place. We had panini (!) – delicious.

About 15 miles outside of Ash Grove, our destination for the day, a thunderstorm caught us. The rain felt good and cooled us off a bit, and created steam as it hit the hot road. We took cover (not before getting quite wet) at a convenience store, and enjoyed some chocolate milk while waiting for the rain to subside. Another 7 miles down the road, ML’s rear tire flatted. At this point in the day, hot, tired and hungry, the last thing we wanted to do was stop and change a rear tire. Hoping it was a slow leak, ML pumped it up and we kept riding. The strategy worked; we pumped it up every couple of miles and made it into town without stopping to replace it.

Once in town, we stopped at the first gas station/convenience store to ask directions to the town park where we planned to camp. Tom, the store owner, directed us to the park, but warned us that the forecast called for strong rain overnight and added that if we wanted, we could talk to his wife about renting their small apartment over the store. We thanked him and went in search of the park. We found the park in short order but were disappointed to find that the pool (and showers) was closed. Having gone the night before without a shower, we were in dire need of a good scrub. The wind had also picked up and the sky was darkening. The park had a couple of pavilions, but they were small and would offer poor protection against a strong storm. We made our way back to the convenience store to inquire about the apartment. We thought that they rented the apartment as a regular thing, but in talking to Leanne, Tom’s wife, it was apparent that no one had been in the apartment in over a year. She said it wasn’t fancy and apologized for the lack of a dishwasher, tv, or Internet when she showed it to us. We, on the other hand, felt like we had won the lottery. It was a multi-room air-conditioned apartment with living room, bedroom, full kitchen (with stove/oven, refrigerator, and microwave), and a washer & dryer! We thought this fine accommodation would be way over-budget, so when she said that it would be $20 we nearly fell over.

This morning we awoke to steady rain, a forecast of heavy rain and thunderstorms, and a flash-flood warning. It’s 30 miles to the next town, and the only accommodation there is camping, so we’ve decided it’s safer to stay put. Tom offered to lend us his truck to drive to the library and Leanne just showed up with a big steamer pot and a box of fresh vegetables from her garden. We continue to be overwhelmed by the generosity of the people we are meeting.

Day 29 – Adapting to Life on the Road

July 19
Summersville, MO to Hartville, MO
61 miles


Another hearty meal at the Trailside Restaurant and we set off for more of the aforementioned rolling pastoral farmland. En route, an hour-long, entertaining roadside chat with Art of Longview, WA and Doug of Bend, OR ended with the “ceremonial” handing over of Halt dog spray from us Westbounders to the Eastbounders. Although we continue to encounter the occasional snarling dog, attacks are much less frequent this side of Berea, KY.

Tonight’s accommodations: center stage of little Hartville where we pitched our tent on the shady lawn of the county courthouse. To access the restrooms we only had to walk past the jail cells and through the work space of the deputies and sheriffs who were quite friendly about the invasion.

Our new itinerant lifestyle has sparked various creative survival adaptations. We’ve learned to be on the lookout for power sources to repower our electronics any time we’re off the bikes. When we’re in restaurants we always choose the table next to an outlet and have become pretty savvy about other outlet locations. It turns out that park pavilions and utility poles often have electrical outlets and between our various sources we manage to stay charged most of the time. ML is a master at finding free wireless service; sometimes this is as easy as sitting down in a café with free wi-fi, but more often involves walking around the perimeter of town parks searching for unsecured “neighborband” from houses abutting the park. K has gotten quite adept at spotting small packages of free condiments and salad dressings at convenience stores that we use to liven up our camp cooking. We now top off our water bottles whenever we have access to a water source and are running out less often. When in a restaurant, we’ve learned to ask to have our water bottles refilled with ice water, and the staff is always happy to do so. Perhaps the most difficult thing has been figuring out what to cook for dinner under these conditions: one pot, no refrigeration, no way to store leftovers, and often very limited selection of ingredients in the stores. Pasta is easy, but we’ve gotten pretty tired of that over a 4-week period. Shopping takes an inordinate amount of time as we wander from aisle to aisle pondering what to cook tonight. We’re still learning and experimenting with bike-touring cooking and hope to have a solid repertoire of dishes mastered by the end of the trip. Or not.

It was a shame to have to turn off from the road to Success


One-room schoolhouse


Lots of these crazy looking armadillos


Camping on the courthouse lawn

Days 26-28 : Mother Nature Hands Us a Gift

July 16 – Rest Day in Farmington

July 17
Farmington, MO to Ellington, MO
71 miles

July 18
Ellington, MO to Summersville, MO
48 miles

Sometimes a bad reputation is just a tall tale. We’d been reading, and hearing from the eastbound riders, about the Ozarks. Along with the Appalachians, these Missouri mountains have a reputation among Transamers as having some of the toughest cycling of the route. The steep grades and intense summer heat tag-team to sap the strength from riders and demolish morale. We experienced just this phenomenon our first day in Missouri, as we crawled up 12% grades, drenched in sweat. The bad rep was well-deserved, and for days before we reached it, we’d been dreading a particularly hard 32-mile section between Ellington and Alley Spring that resembled piranha teeth on the elevation profile.

During our rest day in Farmington, a miracle of nature occurred: a cold front moved in and brought unseasonably cool weather. For the past two days, as we pedaled our way through the heart of the Ozarks, we have enjoyed temperatures in the 70’s (!) with low humidity. It feels like we’re back in Seattle, and the cool conditions make the hard climbing so much easier. Today we made it through the tough section, huffing and puffing, but able to enjoy the scenery of forestland and wide, calm, crystal-clear rivers. It was work, but just good hard work, not a sweltering slog.

After 2 nights of camping in city parks we are spending the night inside, in paid lodging in sleepy Summersville, population 548. Camping is allowed in Summersville’s city park, but there are no restrooms. We manage just fine with no showers, but draw the line at no restrooms. Dinner was the fried chicken special at the town’s one restaurant: 2 pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, Texas toast, and salad bar for $5.99. We are getting used to these prices! Tomorrow we continue our quest for the Kansas border.

Congratulations to Brooke and Joe on their wedding day!

Day 25 – Ozark Foothills

July 15
Chester, IL to Farmington, MO
49 miles

Our day was bookended by thunderstorms with a whole lotta muggy heat in between. Typical summer weather in these parts, apparently. The ride through Chester this morning was amusing; this town’s claim to fame is in being the hometown of Popeye’s creator, and Popeye and all his buddies are everywhere. Now if we could just find spinach to eat. Just after passing the Popeye statue, we were on a small bridge crossing the mighty Mississippi. Now that is one big river! We would have loved to have taken a picture but there was nowhere to pull over and we didn’t think that even the most patient of motorists would have taken kindly to waiting while we played tourist.

Today’s ride was beautiful, once again, but it was hard to appreciate the scenery with the pain we were in. After a too short ride along the fertile floodplain, we started into the foothills of the Ozarks. If what we went through today are just baby Ozarks, boy are we in trouble when we get into the big boys. On the other hand, we’re riding on legs that have been going hard for 8 days solid and they are drained. Even though we hate to get another day behind, we have to be realistic and take a rest day before riding through the heart of the Ozarks.

Tonight’s sleeping arrangements are the most unusual of our trip yet. The firemen of Farmington welcomed us and two other cyclists (Chris and Kyle: our first encounter with fellow Westbounders) out of the rain and thunder. We are now resting comfortably in the Farmington Fire Station’s air-conditioned Mobile Command Unit. It’s a gigantic hi-tech bus with cable tv so we can watch the Tour de France. The guys here are super friendly and have really made us feel at home – welcoming us to hang out in their break room and have full use of all their facilities. We hope to have a restful night, barring any local disasters.

Day 20 – Day 24: Two More States and 1 Time Zone Down

July 10
Hodgenville, KY to Falls of Rough, KY
61 miles

July 11
Falls of Rough, KY to Sebree, KY
75 miles

July 12
Sebree, KY to Cave In Rock, IL
58 miles

July 13
Cave In Rock, IL to Goreville, IL
61 miles

July 14
Goreville, IL to Chester, IL
69 miles


Sorry we haven’t posted in so long. We are busy biking, eating, finding shelter, and sleeping, and are having the darnedest time finding the time to write about the day. We have barely taken any pictures either (yeah, we're kinda tired of the farm landscape too). But, the good news is that we are now 1 time zone closer and two states closer to home! We finished Kentucky on the 12th and have ridden across Illinois in 2 days. We are on the banks of the Mississippi tonight, poised to attack Missouri tomorrow.

Some brief reflections on the past few days:

Unpleasant surprise of the week: Illinois is not all flat! The southern tip is decidedly hilly! According to fellow Transamers, the route isn’t flat until we get to Kansas, and then it’s so flat and boring that we’ll be wishing for hills again (ha!).

We continue to be impressed with how friendly and welcoming of cyclists the residents of the many small towns that we pass through are. We have experienced many simple acts of generosity that really mean a lot to us. In a small market, the owner approached us and offered us popsicles, and then filled up our water bottles with ice (!). In Whitesville, the two young checkers came outside to talk to us about our trip and asked if we needed our water bottles refilled. At the delightful Marion Café, our server welcomed us to stay as long as we wanted, even after they had closed. (BTW, we had a very memorable dessert here: a piece of Ho-Ho cake, a delicious concoction of chocolate cake and whipped cream filling.) At Delaney’s Café in Goreville, we were treated to dessert (as are all cyclists). We are approached by literally dozens of people every day, asking about our trip and giving us their well wishes.

Many businesses keep logs for bikers passing through to sign. In Sonora, a man in a car flagged us down to encourage us to stop in at the local café (Brooks Café) to sign the log. We did stop, and were amazed to find a log that went back to 1978! It’s great fun to read comments from other cyclists, some of whom we have actually met on the road.

We are passing Eastbound cyclists in spades now: 3-5 groups per day. Many are road-weary and ready to be done, but yesterday we met a group of three (an American woman travelling with 2 Dutch men) that were still enjoying themselves and so enthusiastic about the trip that it was a real joy to talk to them. We got a lot of helpful tips about the route ahead.

Another task slowing us down is the number of turtle rescues that have to be performed daily. We have a picture documenting the process. No doubt our speed will increase noticeably once we are out of turtle country. K also stopped yesterday for a snake (the first live one we’ve seen on the road), but after noticing the rattle, she decided he was on his own.

We experienced another fabled Transam institution on Saturday: the bike hostel run by the First Baptist church in Sebree. In exchange for a 5-minute attempt by Pastor Bob to save us, we were treated to a stay in an air-conditioned basement with mattresses, a hot shower, tv, and use of a full kitchen. Most cyclists also have dinner cooked for them by Violet, Pastor Bob’s wife, but unfortunately, she was tied up with the Sebree Summerfest so we had to fend for ourselves.

Over the past several days, we have passed through several Amish and Mennonite communities. The motorists in these locales are very patient with us cyclists, we figure since they get a lot of practice with the horse and buggies on the road.