September 23, 2022
Day Twelve: Council Grove, Kansas to Grandview Plaza, Kansas
I woke up early, looked outside, and saw that it was raining. And it was chilly. So I went back to sleep for a while.
It was alarmingly close to 10:00, my latest start yet, before I rode out into the light rain. John Egan had suggested a route for the next few days, and despite the fact that I had it loaded into the RideWithGps app on my phone, I was once again confused navigating the small town of Council Grove. After some brief fretting that I might be experiencing some sort of early-onset dementia, I made it out of town on a quiet paved road.
I'd left Council Grove without buying an snacks, so I stopped at a small marina outside of town where I purchased my morning Diet Pepsi and a few cookies from the sparse inventory. There were three friendly ladies at the marina store, and I spent several minutes talking to them. They gave me some advice about local road conditions, including the fact that my route included some gravel which might be sloppy.
I left the marina, and after a few miles of nice pavement in the misting rain, I rode onto this:
It was a gloppy mess. I checked my map, didn't see an obvious alternative, and rode on as my tires threw the mud up at me.
It looked like I'd have about ten miles of this.
A pickup truck slowed and pulled up beside me. Its driver said "I was regretting taking this shortcut, but it looks like you have it worse." I just laughed and gave my usual response - It's all part of the adventure.
I pulled off the road a few times, including at the apparent ghost town Kelso. There was an old church there which I examined.
It had stopped raining now, but it would be a while before the road dried up.
I finally turned off the mud road onto pavement, and quickly biked to Dwight, population 226.
Nothing was open in Dwight except for the post office. I'd hoped there would be a store or café, but this was the closest thing to either one of those:
I left Dwight and headed northwest on a surprisingly empty state highway. The sun was out now.
The bike had developed an alarmingly loud creak. I stopped a few times to look at it but everything was so covered in mud that I couldn't determine what was wrong.
I decided I absolutely had to clean the bike, the panniers, and myself, all of which were coated with mud.
I crossed under I-70 onto a frontage road. The billboards that are designed to be seen from interstates always seem so massive when you ride directly beneath them:
I decided to stop for the day, even though I'd only ridden an unimpressive 39 miles. I pulled into the entrance of the first motel I saw, and quickly checked its reviews. It seemed the least terrible of the cheap motels in the area.
The woman who owned the motel was in the lobby, and was very friendly. She was also very curious about how all that mud had gotten on my legs. She instructed her maintenance man, "Poppy", to find me a bucket and some rags so I could clean my bike. Poppy spoke no English, so this took a while. Based on Poppy's dubious glances at my muddy bike and me, it was clear that, unlike his boss, he was not very enthused about my potentially mess-making presence at the motel.
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I've used fenders on my old Cannondale T-400 touring bike in the past, and they *did* work well. However, I found them fiddly, especially when I had to fix a flat on the rear tire - something which seemed to happen frequently.
I've never had a flat tire on the Salsa Fargo, with its sealant-filled, super-tough tires.
1 year ago
I spent a couple of hours cleaning the bike and panniers. What a mess it was. While I was doing that outside my room, I observed a few colorful characters who apparently lived full-time at the motel. This was a little concerning, but it was also apparently the kind of place where hard-working construction workers stayed for weeks at a time while working on projects. And really: What did I expect for a room that cost $48 *including* tax?
So I decided the place was probably alright, despite the slightly alarming warning in my bathroom not to flush syringes down the toilet:
Dinner was a couple of slices of gas station pizza from across the road. I was concerned about noise in the night, so the friendly owner let me borrow a loud box fan from the lobby. She really was very accommodating.
Today's ride: 39 miles (63 km)
Total: 813 miles (1,308 km)
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1 year ago
There's a dense fog advisory this morning, so I probably won't be able to head out until 9:30 - another late start, ugh.
But I'm liking the Kansas scenery. So far it's much nicer than the TransAm route south of here.
1 year ago