Kiki Bikes Across America

Wednesday, June 24th – Chanute, KS to Cassoday, KS

We got up just before 10pm and packed up and rolled out from Chanute around 11pm. We had 100 miles to go until we reached Cassoday, Kansas. We figured it’d take us 8 hours biking time and we’d take breaks throughout the night and make our meal (or lunch) at 3am or so. We biked to Toronto (41 miles) and there stopped to make pasta and rice and try and find more water. We had the hardest time finding water – and finally Chris found a house that had a spicket outside. However, the guy was still awake and sitting on his couch inside watching TV (mind you, it’s between 3-4am). So we snuck up very quietly and stole water from his spicket. He didn’t hear us thankfully!

We all made food and then stretched again and were on the road to Eureka (about 20 miles further down the road). We arrived there around 6am and I was exhausted and feeling sicker than ever… horrible stomach pains and nauseous feeling of sorts. I felt like throwing up while riding, but wanted to keep on going because the heat would be coming soon. I got to Eureka and took a 45 minute nap on my mat that I laid on the ground in front of Sonic (the drive-in fast food/ice cream place). I slept there and then some workers showed up before 7am to open the place…they must have thought I was some bum or homeless person. I mean, I guess technically speaking I am homeless, but whatever.

It’s really confusing about what day I should be keeping stats for and writing about now that we’re riding across days in the night.

The open road in Kansas

After Eureka, we had another 20 miles or so to Rosalia and then 17 from there to Cassoday. It was getting warmer, we hit the Flint Hills of Kansas (little hills here, kinda rolling). We stopped to take some photos of us standing in the middle of the road and I’ll try to post those later, maybe tomorrow. Once in Cassoday, we met some other cyclists, Moe and Alan (visit their website). They have been cycling for 9 months around the U.S. and are from New York. They got a grant to do this trip and they’re doing interviews and photojournalist stuff that they’ll compile and put together and hope to show throughout the country, I believe in 2010 or 2011. So I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for more info on that. We all went to the general store/grocer to eat and then we wanted to find somewhere cool to stay for sleeping during the day. At the general store, we also met another cyclist, Bill (visit his website) – Moe and Alan had already met him back in Hutchinson, but he’s heading from west to east as well.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much here – the church wouldn’t let us stay inside, the motel was under renovation, and the school was locked up. We thought we’d have to camp outside in the city park – at least they had a water spicket there. So I was exhausted and started to get ready to camp out at the park, but then the guys thought it’d be too hot and wanted to sleep inside somewhere. They went door to door knocking to see if someone would let us just crash on the floor to sleep until tonight. They struck luck and we’re now staying in someone’s home and got here about 2pm and slept till 7pm. We woke up when the mom came to say she was going to a softball/baseball game and the whole family was going. They told us to stay and feel free to eat whatever and we’ll sleep till 10-11pm tonight. They’ll be back by then, I imagine.

Anyway, so back to bed… we’re heading out at midnight to cover more ground, about 80 miles or a little more. We’re going on to Hutchinson where there’s a really nice hostel so we’ve heard, so we’ll sleep there during the day and ride again at night to avoid the heat.

Enough of this – time to get more sleep.

GPS Stats:
98.9 miles
07:16 moving time
29.8 max speed
13.6 avg speed

Computer Stats:
100.38 miles
07:17:48 moving time
30.0 max speed
13.7 avg speed

Snake count: 1
Dog chases: 3 (at night in the dark)
Cars at night: approximately 5 or 6 the entire night.