After rousing only to tend to our quickly festering mosquito bites, we decided to go out for breakfast in downtown Oberlin, KS. We packed up and deposited excrement in the nicely kempt campground outhouses (oh yeah, behind the outhouse Sam and Nick discover another bountiful crop of wild marijuana-- pictured above; Kansas is the only state where any of us have ever stumbled upon wild pot.) Breakfast consisted of large omelets for Luke and Nick, and a large waffle for Sam (below: Nick rides gingerly into Oberlin priming his mustache in anticipation for his omelet).
After filling up and stretching out, we departed for a 30-mile journey to the next Kansas county seat, Atwood. I must regress for a moment and fill you in on the layout of northern Kansas. When traveling through Kansas on Hwy 36 there is 13 counties which are almost all 30 miles wide. Each county has a county seat located generally smack dab in the middle not far off of 36.
Because we aim to travel 60 miles a day, we normally try to ride from one county seat to the next by lunch and then finish at the next by night fall.
Between Oberlin and Atwood we saw some beautiful landscapes. (below: Notice the dryness and quite barren vegetation at 3,000 feet . These regions are impossible to farm and exhibit a different side of Kansas, the High Plains)
We stopped in Atwood at the first gas station we saw. Inside, we met several interesting folks, including a man who knows a Kansan women who moved to Athens to teach at the College of Osteopathic Medicine, and an even more peculiar interaction with an even more peculiar man who is purportedly in the final stages of creating his own hydrogen powered car (pictured below). Forgetting his name, we will simply call him hydro man. Hydro-man spent 30 minutes explaining that he and another partner have discovered how to split hydrogen and the oxygen. He attempted to field Nicks more prying chemistry and physics based questions, but came off sounding quite rhetorical, spouting off things like how many grams of hydrogen are in a liter of water and his most glaringly repetitious rhetoric which he must have said 37 times, "we'll be going down the road for free.....on water."
If you haven't yet gathered from my writing, we all viewed this man with an incredulous eye but were still completely enthralled with his enthusiasm, courage, and libertarian gusto. While Luke and I retired to the gas station to feast on rice pudding and blueberries, Nick and Hydro-Man chatted about their distrust for the government, especially an ill-advised agricultural system that champions the exclusive use of macro nutrients.
(below: entering Atwood Luke is clocked by the police radar at 13 mph below the speed limit, only exemplifying our crawling pace.)
We eventually finished chatting and gorging at the gas station and made our way to the public library to avoid the heat while catching up on facebook and such. We left the library around 5:00 and were hoping to make it to St. Francis, KS.(below: the terrain changed dramatically after leaving Atwood to a more gradually rolling and eventually flat agricultural land)
below: flat wheat fields surround us as we approach McDonald KS. Combines follow behind Luke for awhile and we eventually evacuate to the side of the road allowing them to pass, but as we wait on the side of the road for them to pass, they turn off onto the road behind Nick.
Riding 45 miles after 5:00 was a bit ambitious, and we decide to call it quits at the first ice cream shop , located in Bird City, KS, some 15 miles east of St. Francis.
After sucking down milkshakes, we headed in to town to scrounge around for some lodging. A few houses in on the main drag we notice a man and a woman skanking it on their porch (note, skanking it is a term some friends and I use to describe the simply act of chilling; it has nothing to do with promiscuity). They inquired where we were traveling to and fro, and then I asked, "can we camp in your lawn?" They agreed and we let down our hair. Tony and Angel (the aforementioned they) offered us beer and egg rolls. We accepted them ravenously. Eventually Tony's sons, Tony and Steven emerged and hung out. We spent the next couple of hours eating, chatting about life in small town Kansas (having moved there from Denver only 2 years prior), and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.(below: Luke and Nick listen intently between bites of the most delicious egg rolls we ever consumed)
(below: Tony telling a good story while taking a break from congratulatoryily smacking Sam on his sunburnt back for being the smart one)
Thank you so much Tony, Angel, Tony, and Steven.
Morale. too high to move
Mileage. 60
Weather. hot and crispy
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