Bad Weather in Dodge City, KS

Well here I am roughly a week after my last rest day and I'm in Dodge City, KS. I wasn't planning to take a rest day until I reached Colorado but the weather is keeping me from making progress.

After leaving the Holiday Inn Express in Marshfield I headed west bound for Golden City, Missouri but after about 15 minutes of riding I saw that I was definitely heading directly into a darkly clouded horizon and reports of serious thunder and rain. I made a U-Turn and headed back to hunker down for a couple more hours indoors. When I finally got on the road it was almost 11 o'clock and Golden City was too far to reach that day. Instead, I rode for Ash Grove. It was a pleasant, pretty uneventful ride but I was glad I'd waited that couple of hours as the weather turned out to be absolutely beautiful. On arriving in Ash Grove I pulled into an empty parking lot to get my bearings and figure out where to stay the night. As I was monkeying around on my phone a friendly lady named Brenda pulled in to talk to me. She identified herself as a former mayor of Ash Grove and asked if I needed any help finding something. She told me how to get to the town hall where they could get me registered for staying the night in the park. When I told her I was planning to pick up a few things at the grocery store to cook my own dinner she insisted on giving me some money to go out to eat with and recommended a pizza place. The people at Town Hall were super friendly too and gave me a key to stay inside a small house on park grounds as more adverse weather was headed in later. I got settled in and then walked to the little pizza restaurant on the edge of town. Good food and more friendly people. Four other cyclists arrived that evening and stayed in the house with me. Headed out early next morning for Girard, Kansas.

Since my last flat tire I'd been running with only the inner tubes I had in my wheels and was praying I'd make it to Pittsburg, KS where the next bike shop was. On Saturday morning I found out the guy closes on Saturday at around 4 pm and is closed Sunday. I wasn't really panicking but I was concerned and pedaled the 70-ish miles to Pittsburg in only 5-1/2 hours. As soon as I turned onto the street where the bike shop was I got my 3rd flat tire. I was praising God that it hadn't happened 10 miles previously. Got to the shop around 1:30, left Fledge in the care of the mechanic and walked down the road to an All You Can Eat Chinese buffet. On arriving back at the shop I was disheartened to receive a bill of about $180 for two new tires (which I did need) and some spare inner tubes. Having decided not to shoot for Girard that day, the owner of the shop recommended a campground that was free to cyclists on the edge of town and directly on the route I'd be taking. I swung by the Walmart to pick up dinner fixins and then pedaled off towards my campsite.

Sunday's ride was daunting. I made the questionable decision to try and make up the distance to Girard and then ride the full distance to Eureka, KS. The grand total was slightly over 120 miles. So I rode. And I rode. And then I rode some more. The headwind was annoying but didn't keep me from making acceptable progress. There were a couple decent hills, though, and I was super, super proud of myself when I arrived in Toronto, KS having completed my very first century on Fledge. As I took a breather a guy and his daughter or granddaughter pulled up next to me in a pickup truck. "There's a convenience store and grill about 2 miles down this road. You ride up there and I'm going to buy you a Gatorade!" "You're sure they're open?" "Yep! They're open! You ride up there and I'm going to buy you a Gatorade!" So I rode a couple miles and sure enough there was the place he'd mentioned. They were relaxing inside and when I stepped in I was told to pick out what kind of Gatorade I wanted and rip it open as he'd already paid for it. Talk about friendly people! The owner let me fill up my water bottles using the water and ice in her soda fountain and told me the swimming pool was open in Eureka and would still be open when I got there. Those last 20 miles were miserable. I shifted in my seat trying to find a comfortable position but my buns refused to be comforted and just wailed in pain from time to time. I knew there was no way I could camp tonight so I pulled into a motel on the edge of town and got a room before wandering over to the Pizza Hut to enjoy a protein-rich dinner of chicken wings and the salad bar.

The next day I was shooting for another century to Buhler but when I arrived in Newton I'd had enough. 75 miles was an amazing feat after 120 the day before. I went to the fire department and they directed me to this amazing bike shop that called itself the oasis in the grass desert. It truly was an oasis! Newton Bike Shop is probably the best place I've stayed at so far on the entire tour. They offer two separate packages for cycle tourists. I picked number one which simply included the bed, an unlimited supply of beer on tap, a load of laundry and use of the kitchen all for less than $15. The other package was about $50 and included a bicycle tune-up, cleaning the drive train and a couple extra things as well as what was included in the other package. If I hadn't had my drivetrain cleaned the previous week I'd have considered doing package number two but riding for charity dictates I keep my personal costs to a minimum and a bed with some beer well suited my needs. For some added excitement I got to hear a loud, angry customer chewing out the manager of the Dollar General where I picked up some groceries. Made me miss Walmart. haha

The next day I was really sore. I mean really sore. I knew 100 miles was well out of the question for the day so I decided to take it easy and pedal to Hutchinson which was just down the road about 30 miles. On talking to the owner of the bike shop I decided to deviate from Adventure Cycling's route and just take US-50 most of the way to Pueblo, CO for the next few days. So I took 50 to Hutchinson and took in the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum which had a great exhibit on the story of how we reached the moon. Fascinating history! Nazi missiles were the first serious attempts at rocket science and had Hitler never come to power we may still not have reached outer space. Also, the more I learn about John F Kennedy, the more I think the guy had some serious balls! Something I hadn't realized was that when he started talking about putting a man on the moon the vast majority of United States attempts to get things *into orbit around the earth* ended in serious embarrassment and failure. Russia was kicking our butt at the space race! The idea of not only getting a rocket into space, not only getting an animal into space, not only getting a human into space, not only getting a human to orbit the moon but to get a man ON the moon must have sounded like JFK was losing his marbles! But that's what happened! Unbelievable!

The next day I was planning to ride from Hutchinson to Offerle. The longer I rode, though, the more I thought Offerle wasn't a good plan. From what I'd seen on Google Maps there wasn't much there. Tiny little town without any grocery store or restaurant. So I decided to stop after 84 miles in Kinsley. Not a large town by any stretch of the imagination but they had a grocery store, a campground, a couple restaurants and a little hospital. So I picked up a couple things just to refresh myself at the grocery store and then rode to the campground where I cooked up a little sack of backpacker's food I'd bought a few days ago. As I was finishing my dinner a young man walked in and we chatted for a while about the insanity that I was doing of riding my bicycle across the country. Kinsley was a nice little place to hang out.

Early yesterday morning I hit the road trying to get to Garden City. There was a brutal headwind out, though, and I was riding about 7 MPH despite the fact that it was completely flat terrain. About halfway to Dodge City I decided my original goal was no longer tenable and that I'd go for Dodge instead. Of course after I made that decision the wind got a lot more reasonable and I felt like I could make it significantly past Dodge. But I'd heard the reports of bad weather by this point and felt that Dodge would be my best bet to stay safe. It has a population of about 20 thousand, several churches, a police station and other things that make me feel a bit safer in the face of heavy winds, rain and lightning. Plus there were things to see and do if the weather wasn't so bad that I had to stay indoors. The weather looks poor for the next few days so I'm just going to hunker down here until Monday or Tuesday. There's a shelter in town called The Manna House which the police recommended to me if I need to get in out of the storm. It's a homeless shelter but I'm sure they'll understand my situation and give me some kind of help. Right now, it's just cloudy outside and it looks like I may not get hit as hard as I was thinking. Still, it's best to be safe and be able to take cover in the event that things take a turn for the worse. One thing's for sure, the first chance I get to get out of Dodge I'm taking it and riding as far as my legs will carry me! With a couple days for my muscles to heal that might be a good long way!