Day 34 - June 6 - Down Day in Mankato, KS - Two Old Guys Take On A Continent

June 6, 2023

Day 34 - June 6 - Down Day in Mankato, KS

D-Day

John’s Story

I’m starting today’s journal at lunchtime, because, I have time! So far today, in my opinion, has been one of our more relaxing down days. Made breakfast at the picnic table out front of the motel. The motel owners allowed us to use their washer and dryer to do our laundry. We did our routine bicycle maintenance in the shade in front of our room. We rode our bikes into town to the coffee shop. No decaf🧐but good hot chocolate😁. We had muffins from the grocery store around the corner with our drinks. Rode to the library two blocks away to do some Ride with GPS navigational maintenance. A few blocks over to the community swimming pool to check it out. It doesn’t open until 1 PM. To the liquor store to purchase our evening quaffs. Back to the motel. I went 200 feet further to fetch a menu from reportedly the best restaurant in town (one of two).

Not a grand old Victorian courthouse like you find in Ohio and Indiana, yet still stately and made of native stone. There are a lot of buildings in Kansas made of the same yellow stone, perhaps the same stone they made the rock posts out of.

This is the main drag in Mankato. Many of the streets in town are still brick. I really like them, except when I have to ride on them on a bicycle.

Ed has been wanting us to go see Guardians of the Galaxy 3 ever since we started this tour. I thought sure this was our chance until we noticed the dates. The movie theater’s only open on weekends.

Now back in the room having a preprandial lunchtime beer. Lunch is whatever we have left over from dinner last night. Lunch will be followed by a mandatory afternoon nap. Later in the afternoon we plan to ride back to the pool to enjoy the ample sunshine and warmth available here this time of year. We’ll keep our eyes on the weather to make sure we’re not rained out. To cap off our day dinner will be at the restaurant next-door to the motel. Further reporting later today.

Downtime in the room between our morning excursion and our planned afternoon adventure.

We did get to the pool today. Quite refreshing to jump in. Did a few cannonballs and can openers off the diving board. Almost everyone else in the pool was a teenager. I don’t think they’d ever seen a can opener before, so I feel like I brought a little bit of aquatic culture into this small town.😂 After I did it they started trying to do it.

I’ve been waiting for a good while now for the first appearance of these bad boys. At the pool I parked my bike on some mulch between the building and the sidewalk. The mulch was apparently infested with goathead stickers. Before we left the pool I removed at least a dozen goatheads from my tires. I hope I don’t see any more of them.

Goatheads are really quite amazing burrs. If they don’t flatten your tire right away, they will break off leaving a spine in your tread. As the tread wears away the spine pushes deeper into the tire until eventually you get a flat.

Today’s Road Angel Award will go to Alex and Lacey for allowing us to use their laundry facilities at the motel in a laundromat-free town.

Lacey had already gone home for the day, but here is Alex, part of the Road Angel team.

I talked with Lacey for a while this morning. She and her husband have only owned the motel since last August. She works for the school system during the school year, but took the summer off because they want to go on vacation at some point and her kids have swim lessons. She talked about being a horse person. I told her about my niece Melody‘s horse which cost as much as a car. Lacey told me that the last time she sold a horse she could’ve bought a house with the proceeds. She bought a horse for $7,000 from a lady who was having trouble training it. She was later able to sell it for $90,000. She was very active in rodeo in high school and college. She was on the rodeo team at university (who knew they had such things?). She was good enough to advance to National Finals Rodeo a few times. It’s amazing the interesting things you find out about people when you take the time to talk with them.

Before we walked to the restaurant next door for dinner I made a last ride into town to try to find of all things, a comb. The thinner your hair the more teeth you need on your comb to get anything done, and the teeth on the comb I brought have been breaking off due to being crushed inside the pannier. As I was riding back to the hotel I was struck by how quiet this town was at 6 PM on a weekday evening.

We are pretty excited about tomorrow’s ride which will end in Franklin, Nebraska. We have hooked up with a WarmShowers host where we will spend tomorrow night. They have excellent reviews on the WarmShowers website going back seven years in Alaska, Arizona and Kansas.

Looking farther down the road, we will be spending the night in a city park in McCook, Nebraska that has no showers. The showers were closed a year ago due to vandalism. Luckily McCook is a large enough town to have a YMCA, and we can buy a shower pass there for two dollars. Even farther down the road in Briggsdale, Colorado, the USFS Crow Valley Campground has not had water since last year due to construction on the water facilities. Luckily there is a convenience store and a liquor store (beer!) about a half a mile from the campground. We won’t have to fill and haul our extra water bladders until we’re almost to the campground. Maybe there will be access at least to non-potable water there. Can you spell “sponge bath”?

As we travel west we’re leaving an unfortunate trail of ruined plastic shopping bags. Our modus operandi has been to shop for food for the evening meal close to the end of the day at a grocery store. We have the food double bagged in plastic and then tie the bags to the backs of our bikes where they stay until the end of the day. It’s usually impossible to untie the knots so the bags are ruined as they’re taken off and trashed. We’re leaving a trail of non-biodegradable plastic that archaeologists documenting our trip in the far future will be able to trace easily. I feel guilty.

Personal Note

I’m not sure why I want to share this particular information about me, except perhaps because of the parts of the country we’ve been riding through. My favorite musical genres are folk, Bluegrass, old time acoustical (whatever that means). I love hearing acoustic guitars, mandolins, banjos, fiddles, and like. To get a good idea of one of the sorts of music that turns me on musically, listen to the soundtrack of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?

My favorite musical artists growing up were (and are) James Taylor, John Denver, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger….. you get the picture. Of course, there are many other artists in these and related genres that I could name, and many other genres of music that I love, but this is my core.

I can trace my love for this kind of music and my desire from childhood to learn to play the guitar to two albums in the house when I was a kid (~10 years old) One was The Very Best of Hank Williams (1963).

The other album and more influential to the development of my musicals tastes was Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies by Pernell Roberts (1963). You may remember Pernell Roberts as the actor who portrayed Adam Cartwright on the TV show Bonanza (1959-1965); or if you’re younger, the actor who portrayed chief surgeon Dr. John McIntyre, the title character on Trapper John, MD (1979–1986). If you’re even younger (and never watch Bonanza in syndication) you may never have heard of him.

Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies was his only album, and I still love all the songs on it. These songs are definitely on top of the pile that my earworm refers to regularly. So I will share one song each day until you’ve heard them all.

The Bold Soldier

Experiment

I’m learning how to upload videos to YouTube so that I can put them in the journal. This test video you are about to see was actually taken at Watkins Mill State Park days ago. Let’s see if this works.

Ed’s Story

I will read what John wrote later so I will probably end up repeating something he said but oh well.

Went to bed last night at 10 o’clock. That was a mistake. I was awake by 530 wondering if it was time to pack my panniers. Then I remembered it was a rest day today. I guess if you get used to waking up early, it will continue to happen. It will probably take a long time after we have completed the ride to sleep in at home.

Since there are no restaurants in town that serve breakfast, I had my usual: a banana, peanut butter burrito, orange juice, and oatmeal. The owners came in about 8 o’clock, and I never saw the coffee listed on their webpage.

I know John mentioned that we were able to use the motel laundry, but they also let us use their detergent. We have at least one Tide pack to go with us as we continue our journey.

When I worked on my bike, I did not find any loose screws (except the one who worked on the bike). My drivetrain was really dirty. I brought some cleaning fluid with me and that helped me clean not only the chain, but the cassette and the rear derailleur as well.

Needless to say the bike rides and shifts much smoother now being cleaned and lubed. I was also able to finish straightening my handlebars which were still a little out of whack following a stop we did yesterday.

We did go to the local bakery to try to buy a treat for ourselves, but found out they were closed on Tuesdays. Bummer. Since it was already getting warm, I had an iced coffee vice a hot one.

We did check out the pool. It looks like it will work well this afternoon, as long as there is no thunder and lightning in the forecast.

Maybe the tank can help protect us on the road tomorrow if all the large trucks return to the road.

After looking at the pool, I went by the pharmacy to buy some postcards to send to the two grandchildren, Jaxten and Elle.

I would have preferred to send something a little funnier, but the pharmacy only sold Kansas themed postcards.

After we got back from a morning outing, it was lunchtime. I just had leftovers from what I bought at the store yesterday. Pasta salad, and can of beans and some bean dip.

Just relaxed on the bed the rest of the afternoon and watched some Netflix. I think it’s been a week or more since I watched something. When I got tired of watching, I took an honest to gosh nap, it was wonderful.

It was finally time to go to the swimming pool. I packed what I needed so I could take a shower after we were done swimming. Even after five minutes in the water, I could feel the chlorine all over my body.

A nice sunny day for the pool. The water was just the right temperature, once I got used to it. Looking at this picture, I look like a POW. I really need to put some meat on those old bones.

I swam, I dived, I cannonballed, and I sat on a lounge chair, just soaking up the sun (not for too long, however, even though it was later in the day). While John and I were sitting there, two teenage girls kept walking back-and-forth in front of us waving at us. I think they knew they were just teasing two old men who are harmless in public.

I downloaded music to my iPhone prior to taking this trip. I figured I could listen to music while I was riding. What I found out was that listening to music really sucks down the battery. When I listened to it on the Katy Trail, even my dynohub wasn’t able to keep up with the power drop. So now I only listen in the hotel (if I remember.)

Most of my panniers are already packed for our trip tomorrow. My food and cooking panniers won’t be packed until after breakfast tomorrow.

Tomorrow is another day with services few and far between. Will need to make sure my water is always filled. Unless we go off route to a nearby town, there is nothing for two 30 mile stretches until we reach Franklin, Nebraska.

Today's ride: 6 miles (10 km)
Total: 2,308 miles (3,714 km)

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Bill ShaneyfeltNice video of the inchworm. Family Geometridae moths.

https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/lter/pubs/pdf/pub3739/pub3739_09j1.pdf

By the way, I too really dislike (bordering on hate) goatheads!
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