Hot, sweaty, windy Kansas, and a little bit of fried chicken

     Alright, so we have made it to Lawrence, KS, "the blue dot in a very red state." She is full of coffee shops, kids getting their PhD's, and farmers markets.  However, despite all of the red, we have found Kansans to be entirely hospitable, caring people, and we have loved experiencing the heartland culture and what it contributes to the cultural diversity that creates the U.S.
     With that said, we have had some hard days in Kansas. I don't know if any of you have been watching the national weather report, but as Brant likes to say, "We're riding the heat island of America." The U.S. is a colorful range of warm colors, the California coast being yellow, Nevada and D.C. being orange, and Kansas/Kentucky/Missouri colored firey red. Most days have hovered above 100 degrees. Yesterday we pedaled 72 plus miles in what got to be 106 degrees. We used to be able to get most of our mileage done before noon, but without a tailwind, that has been hard to accomplish. Instead, we find a shady green space to nap in around noon and continue on to finish our mileage into the afternoon. After thoroughly baking ourselves in the heat wave sun, we try and find a public pool to take a refreshing dip before heading to bed.
     We have been to so many public pools now that we have deemed the U.S. part of our cycling trip "The Great American Pool Tour" (#thegreatamericanpooltour). And we have every intention of visiting as many public pools, sliding down as many water slides, diving off as many diving boards, and lazeing in as many lazy rivers as we can find in this blessed country we call home.
     After the great pool in Garden City, we visited the lovely town of Jetmore. It's a small town with brick lined streets and late 1800's style buildings. We got there after a long hot ride and sipped some ice water at the first convenience store we could find. I asked the ladies running the cash register, "Where's the best place to eat around here?" and the older one said, "Right here." This confused me for a second, so I clarified, "Here?" pointing to the counter of the gas station, "Yep." I knew now that these girls were not to be trusted. "What about Judy's," I said, as I pointed across the street to what looked like a teeny-tiny diner. "Oh, Judy's...they only got four booths."
     So we took our chances and biked across the street to find one table full of very happy customers with full plates of food, and three empty booths. We plopped ourselves down to order some ice water and good old midwestern fried food--good thing we didn't have anywhere else to pedal. Our waitress informed us that Great Bend (our next day's destination) had not just a pool, but a water park, that only cost $4. This was one sweet piece of encouragement! Judy hooked it up and we were all satisfied and ready for the pool.
     The public pool was modest, no slides, but they did have some liberal diving boards with a lot of bounce. The kids were super interested in our trip and before we knew it we made friends. Our favorites were the two little red headed twins. One took a good look at Reid and said, "Hey you! You wanna competition me?"
      Reid laughed, "Of course."
     "Race ya to the bottom of the pool!"
      And so our friendships began. These kids were full of hopes and dreams of college, entirely fascinated by living off a bicycle.
      We slept in the local city park, and played our first game of cribbage on the trip.
      The next morning we made our way to Great Bend. After another challenging day we enjoyed the blisses of The Wetlands Waterpark. This incredible place was nothing like the California water park I grew up with, but to us, at this moment, it felt like Atlantis, with four twirley slides and a gushing water bucket that drenched the masses every five minutes. They even had a tiny climbing wall overhanging the pool. We had fun, and made a big pasta dinner on our little camp stove. Brant bought me some local Kansas birthday beer to celebrate my oncoming birthday, and we slept not so soundly in the neighboring park.
      From Great Bend, we made our way to McPherson (there is no fear in mick-fur-son, we came to find out.) I woke to find "birthday" flags strapped to my bicycle. So I rode 70 miles with red, white, and blue flags blowing behind me. I think this mitigated some of the anger that truckers honk at us.
     The ride to McPherson had us all absolutely wiped out, low blood sugar and just too hot. McPherson is a college town so we found a weird coffee shop and ate bagels, iced coffees, and blended tart lemonades. Reid and Hannah fell asleep on a couch and Brant, Dave, and I made our way to the pool.
     Now this pool had a slide with a punch. It looked friendly, but it had some moves. The boys tried to see how high they could get their bodies out of the slide. We lazed in the first "Lazy River" we have encountered and noted that the more recent a pool was built the more rules they have. So we obeyed all the silly rules about no back flips, no going down the slide face first, and no getting out of your tube in the lazy river.
                  Brant found me a thrift-store midwestern mumu dress to wear for our Kansas fourth of July, so for my birthday dinner at a local Mexican Restaurant I dawned my mumu and some earrings to feel pretty.
      We celebrated our country's independence at a wonderful man named Jeff's house. He moved to Canton, KS from Denver, CO and is an avid traveler and motorbike aficionado. We met Jeff at an ice cream parlor and he invited us to sleep at his house and celebrate the fourth of July.
       Now Kansas knows how to celebrate the 4th,  unlike California, you can buy a LARGE variety of personal fireworks, and you are expected to fire them off ALL day. So as the sun went down, and Brant and I biked the last few miles to Canton, the sky was filled with fireworks from all of the homesteads, little towns, and neighborhoods. We arrived at Jeff's house to find a block party located on his porch with canons and an endless amount of magical firecrackers. Brant and Reid, I think, felt like all of their childhood pyrotechnic dreams had come true, lighting bottle rockets, roman candles, sparklers, mortars, fountains, and cracklers into the dark. It was classic.
     We enjoyed the cool of a house and slept well.

      The next day's ride was a hard ride.  It was 106, there was too much traffic, and there was little places to stop for water. We ended up taking a nap in the back of a grungy poker bar in Strong City because we were all too hot and too tired to pedal any further. When we finally awoke we found the last twenty miles to our destination to be quite pleasant despite the heat. We rode down an old scenic two lane highway that crosses the Flint Hills, and it was full of open space, green valleys, and trees, and the hills brought some diversity to the ride. We finally landed in Council Grove, an adorable town outside of a large recreational lake. We swam, made great burritos and salad, took showers, and rejuvenated after one of our most challenging days.
       We woke nice and early the next day but lagged at getting out of camp. We were already sweating and seeking ice water at 7am before we had a flat tire. We stopped at a few towns to refill water along the way. Dave made a legendary Chex Mix Muddy Buddy and jelly sandwich for second breakfast. And two different ladies at a convenience store in two different towns told us that we had to stop in Pomona at Green Acres Restaurant for some good home cookin. So 60 miles later we ate burgers, and Brant and Dave enjoyed a buffet and salad bar of "broasted" chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad,  and peach cobbler. Oh my goodness it was good.
     After scarfing our healthy food, we made it to the Ottawa public pool.

     The coolest part of this entire day was the fact that Laura and Karrigan Bork rented a Uhaul trailer and drove to pick us up in Ottawa. I'll back up. So, Hannah is a preschool teacher at a wonderful lab school at U.C. Davis. While Karrigan (Lawrence, Kansas native) was getting his PhD at Davis in Ecology, his son Jack was in Hannah's class. After finishing his degree the family moved back to Kansas to be near home. This family had made an impression on Hannah, so when she knew we were going to be pedaling through their home state she contacted them to meet up for coffee. We weren't going to be in Lawrence so Laura and Karrigan were happy to meet us along our route. We were all excited to meet them, but a few days before our set day to hang out, they decided they could just rent a Uhaul,  and drive thirty miles out of town, to pick up 5 dirty cyclists and open their home to them for two nights. INCREDIBLE.
     I have so much to say about this family and our time in Lawrence. Lawrence is a wonderful town, as I have said before, but the time we spent with Laura, Karrigan, Jack and little Anna, was the most impressionable part. We shared so many great conversations that kept me remaining thoughtful and contemplative, and shared so many stories that left us all belly wrenching in laughter. We ate lovely food; we jumped off high dives. It was was entirely refreshing. So, if the Bork family ever reads this, we say "thank you" once again, and we hope we can spend more time with you when we get back.
     For now we are off to the state of Missouri and the Katy Trail. We'll miss you Dave :(