Day 21: Kansas (A.K.A.The World's Life-Line)

Waking up clean with mattresses under our backs was certainly a treat, and after a few more jokes from Mister Jokey we took off to conquer mid-Kansas.

Mister Jokey was the husband of our married RV park hosts. If you havn't guessed, he was full of jokes. I'll grace you with two:

"So there was this yellow toad. His odd color found him the brunt of many mean jokes so we opted to go to the witch for a color change. The witch brewed him up a potion, he drank it, and poof, he was brown like all the other toads. Well, except for his member, it remained yellow. He demanded that the witch change it to brown as well, but she didn't know how. So she sent him off the the wizard.

A few minutes later a purple elephant strolled in, asked if he can be changed to grey like all the others. So the witch mixed up a potion, he drank it, and poof he is all grey, except for his member. He puffed up a storm and demanded that it be changed to grey as well. The witch shruged her shoulders, and advised (with a smug grin) that he runs off to the wizard. "How do I get to the wizard?" the elephant asked (very perturbed). Oh, that's easy exclaimed the witch, just follow the yellow pricked toad!"

hahaha, okay, I won't torture you with the second one...

We took off from our room and headed off towards Smith Center. About 6 miles out we were suddenly overtaken by other 5 cyclists wearing silly looking spandex shorts and skin tight jerseys. Turns out that they were the same "bike and build" cyclists we met at the church in Pittsfield, IL (just way ahead of the others). We chatted for a bit and pulled into their rest stop to take a picture of the trailer that hauls all of their gear (pictured below).

The stop was short and we pulled back out into the road to enjoy the scenic hillery of Kansas.

After a few more miles we found a sign that excitedly proclaimed that we were in the geographic center of the United States! (pictured below) The sun kept us from basking in the centric glory for more than a few minutes and we pushed on...

To further boost our Kansan pride, we discovered (via the sign pictured below) that Kansas Agriculture is the World's Life-Line! All this wheat is the mainstay of the world foodstuffs, and everyone should thank American industrialized agriculture for ensuring a steady dumping of genetically similar, subsidized goods into the hands of third world farmers so they don't have to break a sweat to create and maintain a diverse domestic agricultural market that encourages a sustainable food-production system. Note the blood dripping from the phrase "The World's Life-Line" in the picture (then again, maybe it's oil). Disturbing but fitting.

We made it out of the wheat fields and into the city in center of Smith county. It is cleverly named Smith Center. Upon entering Smith Center we found a delicious cafe inside a gas station and gorged on $5 footlong subs/garlic cheesy bread. We then hit up the library and blogged our brains out (library pictured below).

The weather report wasn't looking so good by the time the libray closed and we were warned by some police officers that a big hailstorm was coming, and we should find shelter. So we went back to the gas station cafe...

The storm was HUGE. Screaming wind, hail, and torrents of rain blasted us for about 2 hours. Sam managed to convince the woman working at the Smith County school board to let us keep our bikes in her office, so we left them there and ran back into the fray (Sam pictured below, screaming at the storm like a wild-man).

Well, the storm ruined our chances of our getting out of town for the day, so we decided to convince some motels that we deserved a room at a discount price. Our pathetic wet-dog looks didn't help at all and the best offer we got was a concrete floor and shower for $30. Defeated (captured in the forlorn eyes of Nick and Luke pictured below) we went back to the gas station cafe and talked the attendants into despising us (except for the librarians and Barbara the nice school board woman, everyone in Smith Center was cold to us).

We played around a bit, and the bored wet coldness brought out the new-aged pirates in us (three pictures below).

We eventually began to buy and eat candy. Sammo made a commemorative 1000 mile Reese's Peanut Butter Cup display (pictured below), which we promptly ate (and our stomachs made us soon regret).


We eventually pestered the gas station attendants enough that they gave us a free pizza! Yum, it immediately sat poorly in our stomachs but such is life...(Nick pictured below, nervously unsure what the pizza is about to do to his bowels)By the time we got our pizza, it was almost 10pm and we had no place to stay. We checked out the local road side park, but it was all wet and we couldn't get to our tent because it was locked up in the school board's office until the next morning. So we snuck into an emptry greenhouse at another strip mallish store and slept the night away on some elevated skids (Sam pictured below, preparing his sleepin pad).


Thanks to the Barbara of the Smith County school board for leting us store our bikes in their building for the night!

Miles: 31

Morale: stormy

No flats, but big rain