I got a good amount of sleep last night. The wind wasn’t a problem but the ground was pretty hard. I was up earlier than usual because of the time zone change but I decided to stay in bed a bit longer since it looked like the weather was going to be fine. I had a terrible breakfast this morning. I was planning on getting some bread at the convenience store but they didn’t have any. So I was stuck with eating some kind of breakfast pizza which was pretty lousy. But I was on the road before 8 again.
The morning was a little chilly so I kept on my long sleeve shirt. The cross wind from the north wasn’t that bad and actually helped reduce the turbulence from the trucks going by. I met a guy named Chris on the road. He was from Tucson and is doing the Trans Am in the opposite direction as I am. He had a pretty cool looking bike and was carrying a fishing pole which he had used 7 times but hasn’t caught anything yet. He also told me about a grocery store up ahead in Eads which had just gotten a fresh shipment of fruit. I got to Eads around 1 and headed for the grocery store where I got bread, peanut butter, apples, bananas, chocolate milk, and even a mango. Lunch was the milk, PB, and a banana.
I hit a nail on the road as I was riding out of town. It punctured my tire and tube so I had to replace both with a spare. That took only 15 minutes but my pump wasn’t working well and I couldn’t re-inflate my tube. So I had to walk over to the autobody shop and use their pump. A few miles out of town the tire was flat again. I rushed putting the spare back in and messed it up. But I was able to get a ride pretty quickly back to town from some man in a pickup truck. Back at the auto shop I was sure to install the tube the right way and it ran fine the rest of the day but I didn’t get back on the road until 3.
I met two guys from Tennessee that were doing the Trans Am in the other direction. They said they had met Dave last night. He apparently had done about 125 miles that day so there was no way I was going to stay with him. But these guys told me there wasn’t much in the town I was planning on staying in and they convinced me the ride to Ordway wasn’t bad. So I decided to push it and have an easy day tomorrow. They also told me how they flew from Portland to Astoria (the final town on the route) and from there I can fly back to PA. I’m glad I won’t have to ride an extra 95 miles to Portland and can just get on a plane and relax. So now I just need to figure out what flights to take. I can ship my bike home from Astoria too.
I crossed into Colorado a few miles after I started and was really excited to finally get out of Kansas. I’ve been looking forward to getting into the Rockies for the last 10 months and I knew I was finally going to get there. A little before 7, I got my first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. You couldn’t see much besides an outline because the clouds got in the way. I doubt you can see anything in the picture but you could in person. I decided that I was going to do this trip back in September and I knew that the Rockies were going to be my favorite part. So after 10 months and about 2,300 miles of riding I could finally see them.
After I rode through Haswell, where I originally planned to stop, I was getting a little tired. But I had the rest of the chocolate milk and I was back to doing 18 mph. My average for the entire day was over 15mph and I’m real happy with that since it was such a long ride. I’m having a large pizza and am going to the camp ground after I finish eating.
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