Day Fifty Six: End of the Centuries
Distance: 115 mi.
7AM: Roused by muffled thud of ball hitting softball mitt, a young woman and her presumed father engaged in unusually early training. Perhaps they’re avoiding summertime swelter, wise idea, so we pack efficiently and break camp in twenty minutes, a spat of time well suited to lessen the dawn wetness clinging to our camp towels into mere dampness, suspendend in their dewy state until able to dry in more leasurely airs.
Slant northwest through Medicine Lodge’s checkered brick byways to River Road, looping over tawny meadows into wheat fields of pure saffron.
Rust colored canyons form gradually on horizons to the south and north, casting the drab and dry semiarid landscape into relief. Liz and I play a memory game to pass time, naming insects from A to Z, recalling Ziggy’s advice to defy boredom via remembering every conceivable instance of things belonging to certain categories, such as machines, fabrics or artists.
Ride through Sun City, a true one-blink town: an old redbrick bank lies infixed in concrete; a shuttered general store has succumbed to sun-bleached dust, might’ve closed five years ago, or fifty. The sole impressive structure is a protracted three-story school or hospital on a shaded grove on the near side of a cattle farm, broken windows toothless and agape, a likely nuisance to the ranchers who won’t pay to demolish it. A pack of springer spaniels corralled behind a thick wire fence bark us out of town.
River Road deteriorates into gravel west of Sun City, so we opt for a paved road running due north; it ends in a T three miles later in a measureless expanse of wheat fields and arid soil. No respite from the intense heat, best to keep moving; we test the gravel on both legs of the T and chart a course to the east and then north, selecting a flatter route that avoids the worst of the dangerously soft gravel.
It’s like that for seven miles, which takes us well over an hour. We finally intersect 400 and feel fits of veneration for actual pavement, as well as the multi-ton tons whooshing beside us flush with wheat which seem to pull us up the highway in temporary speed bursts. Eleven miles and an hour later we reach Haveland, water and food our primary and secondary concerns. I ask the town librarian where we can eat, she directs us to a hardware store selling plate lunches on the side. The menu, written on a paper plate in Sharpie, consists of prepackaged white bread sandwhiches a-la gas stations and scoops of macaroni salad served from ten pound Costco tubs; we decide to look elsewhere for more nutritious food, chance a cafe across the street. Ding! Ding! Reubens and grilled cheeses greet us, accompanied by fresh coleslaw made by sixteen year-old woman who runs the place one a week; I eventually get an ice cream sandwich and a coffee, though it takes thirty five minutes and several ‘reminders’ to the young woman, who is distracted and harrassed by an annoying overgrown man-child wearing a Team Asia shirt, the man is ordering food but won’t pay for it, asking flippant and ridiculous questions about smoothie ingredients, god I want to punch this man for keeping me from the punch of calories and cool in the ice cream I so wantonly desire.
Back on the road for seventy minutes until the head is too impossible for Lizzie, invokes her “I need to stop and I’m serious about it” bell ding so we do. Buy energy bars and a cold water and exit, on our way out the door the cloudless sky is contradicted by a local woman’s report of storm warnings, 75 MPH wind gusts and sightings of silver dollar sized hail to the north. I’m skeptical it will actually strike our path until two hours later when a wind gust nearly blows us off our bikes and chunks of trees start tumbling across the road. We turn off into the single residency’s driveway in a mile’s reach, two front-yard horses gallop curiously alongside as we approach, then bank away; we hang up on an unknown and unseen farmer’s porch, I sit cross legged on the front steps while to my dismay Lizzie runs around the house knocking on windows and scoping out an open garage door, I rebuke her probably too severely, afraid it’s a crapshoot whether she’d be taken inside or shot at, should she actually find another human who isn’t driving around cattle or trucking a wheat harvest. Though each tired limb protests I quickly tire of sitting, we’re only thirteen miles from Dodge City and my desire to arrive and vanquish the 115 mile day is unbearable, so we check the radar and my hubristic sophistry is convincing enough for Lizzie to get back on the bike and chance the storm.
Three miles later my rear tire goes flat from a nail punction, which really sucks. I yank out and replace the inner tube as quickly as possible, but the Schwalbe tire is extremely tight and cumbersome to seat; I do a sloppy job and a poorly seated section of tire limps along with every spin until we finally arrive at Warren and Lindy’s house northwest of Dodge.
Lizzie and I drink a gallon of iced tea, eat a few pounds of pasta and crash into a deep basement sleep.
