Day 14 – Saturday 07th May 2011 – Dodge City KS – Great Bend KS

Another day in the Kansas office dawned fine and clear with little initial wind. Breakfast was at the hotel at 6am in a room just for us and consisted of eggs, bacon, sausages, biscuits & gravy, pastries, fresh fruit, orange juice and coffee.

We got the hell out of Dodge just after sunrise, leaving the hotel just after 7am with a 13°C air temperature which was quite pleasant.

Just out of town is the “scenic” highlight of Kansas – a cattle feed lot. We stopped and Patrick took a photo.

Carrying on, the light to medium wind was right on our noses and we were joined by two of the ABB staff, Jim the mechanic and Judy, logistics, who were happy to sit on our tails. The road continued long and straight and we had to translate what were saying into American to converse with the ABB staff!

The first sag was at 37.2 miles and is the mid-way between San Francisco and New York. It is not yet the mid-way of our trip. The route we are on now is largely similar to the one I did in 1999 on the Cross Country USA tour. Mike Munk took our photo on the ABB camera of the train pushing us into the wind.

From there, we rode through the town of Garfield (no cats or lasagna sighted!) and then Larned. Each of the small towns is visible from about 10km away due to the large grain silos and long, straight roads and flattish roads. We had a leisurely lunch in Larned as some riders had detoured to the Larned Fort which meant the luggage truck would not arrive at the hotel until about 2pm.

After lunch, the last 23 odd miles was more of the same – rolling country direct into wind as we passed through the towns of Pawnee Rock and also Dundee. There were no crocodiles there! We also passed a tiny historic church.

We arrived at the hotel at 1:38pm after 5hrs 22m on the bike and 133.5km. This means we have completed our 2^nd ever 1,000km Monday-Sunday riding week! The wind conditions meant it was a slow and gentle ride but no soft pedaling was possible with every inch requiring effort to be covered.

The hotel was similar in design to that of yesterday with a central pool, whirlpool (not working), pool table and some video games but no Pacman. We were given room number 111 but the keys worked once we found it.

Later in the afternoon, we walked up town to a Super Wal-mart and Patrick bought some licorice. Across the carpark, we went to Radioshack and I bought a web cam to try and run Skype. For dinner, we went to Perkins Family Restaurant across the road for roast turkey and pie.

Rap for tomorrow is at 6:45am after a 6am breakfast. The wind direction is a little uncertain but hopefully we will get at least some benefit otherwise it will be a very long day.

Numbers for the day:

Departure time: 7:01am
Distance:  86.0 miles (138.4km)
Riding time: 5hrs 22m
Average speed: 16.0mph (25.8km/h)
Maximum speed: 20.8mph (33.5km/h)
Vertical climbing: 556ft (170m)
Temperature range: 13-32°C
Arrival time: 1:38pm
Weekly (Monday – Sunday mileage) to date: 624 miles (1,004km)
Total kilometres ridden to date / approximate kilometres to go: 2,358km / 3,205km
Rolling last seven days total kilometres ridden including today: 1,004km