Kiki Bikes Across America

Tuesday, June 23rd – Pittsburg, KS to Chanute, KS

Today marks exactly 4 weeks since we set off on our bikes leaving from Yorktown, Virginia. We have had 3 rest days during that time (one in Berea, KY, another in Carbondale, IL, and our latest yesterday in Pittsburg, KS). We have nearly reached our halfway mark which seems incredible to me – just about 1,700 miles into the journey and hard to believe that we’re now almost in the middle of the U.S. and literally in the middle of nowhere!

Anyway, today we got up at 3:30am and rolled out on the bikes at 4:45am. We made good time and saw about 6-8 cars in the first hour on the road. It was empty and cool, 77 degrees at 6am according to a bank sign we passed coming into Girard, KS. We had a good pace going and switched up every 8 miles with who was leading. We only had about 30 minutes of actual darkness before the sun started to rise. It was really nice though to get in 60 miles by 9:30 or so this morning. The miles went by really fast too which was nice. We’ve still got a ways to go today – another 46 miles or so to get to Toronto, Kansas. There we’re probably going to be camping as we can’t find anywhere with AC that’ll let us camp inside. It’s going to be hot! Woohoo!

We’re just relaxing and hanging out at the public library in Chanute, KS for a few hours. We’ve been here in Chanute since 9:30 and are heading back out to finish our miles probably around 3pm. But first, I’ve got to grab some food!

Currently our average speed is 15.0 mph, but I imagine that’ll drop as the second half of the day is resumed – with heat that’s absolutely horrible, near 100 and probably more than 100 with the heat index.

Revision: So it was too hot at 3pm, so we decided to stay in Chanute until it got cooler. We went to the fire house and asked if we could sleep there until later in the night (10pm or so). They arranged for us to sleep upstairs so we took our mats and sleeping bags up there and went to bed around 4pm. I woke up 3 hours later hungry and then couldn’t fall back asleep. I tried, but was too awake, so I got up and went to Walmart to buy a new tripod for my SLR along with a speaker for the ipod to keep us awake during the night riding. Yes, it may sound extravagant, but it was well worth it and we’ll be using it for several more days while riding so we can listen to music and keep awake.

GPS Stats:
60.0 miles
04:08 moving time
27.1 max speed
14.5 avg speed

Computer Stats:
60.56 miles
04:07:56 moving time
14.7 avg speed
27.5 max speed

Snake count: 2