The day after explorin' Topeka, I sped home in my car.  I covered 510 miles via Interstates 70 East and 35 North in about seven hours.  It violated the "ride slow and smell the roses" bike touring ethic in a horrible way.  I didn't care.  At least I made it back home to wish The Feeshko a happy Mother's Day.  Also, it gave me a few days to prepare for another trip back to Iowa for my dad's next medical appointment.

An interesting news item came on the radio while I was drivin' and it related to my bike trip.  Here's the story: 

While campin' at Historic Lake Scott State Park, I noticed a crane on the dam that creates Lake Scott.  And there were a lot of people standin' around the crane.  I assumed it was all part of a dredgin' operation or something like that, so I didn't think much of it.  Later, another camper told me that they pulled a car out of the lake while I was out cyclin'.  I sure wished I seen that part.  

"Probably some idiot who thought he could drive across the dam and lost control," I said to my campin' neighbors."

"Probably alcohol was involved too," replied my new friends, and I agreed.

The radio news provided a new twist to the story.  It told about how a fisherman found the submerged car on his fish finding device and he called the Sheriff' office.  The sheriff put together a recovery team, who successfully removed the car.  But there was still a mystery.  Nobody knew how the car got there or how long it had been there.  The only clue was a Pepsi can found inside.  It was a style of can that the Pepsi Company hadn't produced since the 1980's.

I thought that story was worth reporting here ex post facto, and I'm also posting a photo of the dam.  It was taken the night before the recovery operation, but I didn't post it at the time.  A dam is a dam, after all.  In light of the recent news, however, I figure the photo might provide a little bit of perspective.

Heart

2

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

************

I had a lot of fun writin' this screenplay for the most ground-breakin', rootin'-tootin, action-packed, deeply symbolic, Cycleblaze cowboy movie of 2025.  "Ersatz Cowboy Lassos the Wild West: The Movie" will likely win a few Academy Awards next year, and I am proud to have provided a sneak preview as to how the story unfolded in real time.  (By the way, that Oscar trophy should look nice alongside my Pulitzer Prize for "Bicycle Touring Journalism," which I'm also destined to win pretty soon.)  

I have no doubt that I get a bigger kick writin' this stuff than I could hope anybody would get from readin' it.  I ain't kiddin' ya.  It's as if I ride all day thinkin' about WHAT I'm goin' to write in my journal, and HOW I'm goin' to write about it.  Who the heck would do that?  I would, that's who.

I'd have written even more, but my evil cartoon alter-ego talks me out of a lot of it.  G-2 is my editor.  He is of the belief that if I start typing too much, or taking myself too seriously, I MUST edit that crap out of my narrative.  Take a bow, G-2.

Heart

5

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

(Come to think of it, if G-2 is such a great editor, why didn't he catch my inconsistent substitution of apostrophes for "g's" in my gerunds and other "ing" words.  Sometimes I dropped the "g" and sometimes I didn't--often within the very same sentence.  Any second-rate proofreader should have caught that.)

************

Before I ride off into the sunset, I have a few acknowledgements:  

I acknowledge this bike trip was not very long.  I acknowledge my daily mileages were not very long either.  I acknowledge there were no dangerous situations, weird encounters with shady characters, meet ups with other bike tourists, or bloody injuries to give the journal a little pep.  I acknowledge that my pictures of cows and Kansas scenery were getting pretty monotonous.  I acknowledge I didn't shed much light on cowboy culture.  I acknowledge I might have been the only one having fun here.  

Yet, amazingly, quite a few people kept reading and sending nice comments.  I appreciate that, and so do my bike and my cartoon alter-ego.

Heart

6

Comment

6

Link

Nancy GrahamNo disastrous reading needed! I had fun on your trip too. 😉.
Reply to this comment
1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesDisasters are just slightly more fun to read about than having a root canal without anesthetic. Don't feel any aspirations in that line. Reading about your normal days was just fine.
Reply to this comment
1 month ago

Karen PoretMORE G-2, please!
Reply to this comment
1 month ago

Gregory GarceauTo Steve Miller/GrampiesI don't wish disasters on anybody, but when they write about them, I admit it's usually some pretty riveting reading. You two have had a few of them.
Reply to this comment
1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Gregory GarceauDisasters are Type 2 fun. They are awful when being experienced, but funny in retrospect. Actually, they can be funny right away to the readers, who only have to hear about them not live through them.
Reply to this comment
1 month ago

Emily SharpThat's a nice bit of conglomerate above your head. I think you had enough wind adversity on this trip to chalk up plenty of Type II fun. I think you made the most of the conditions and I am very glad that the greatest weather adversity was wind and a bit of rain. KS in April and May has the potential for much weather-related disaster.
Reply to this comment
4 weeks ago

Log in to comment or reply

************

WAIT!  I'm not quite done yet.  Something will be happening tonight in Minnesota that very much relates to my bike trip in Kansas.  If all goes well, I'll report on it tomorrow.  If not, consider this the last page of the Ersatz Cowboy movie.