Kiki Bikes Across America

Saturday, June 27th – Larned, KS to Dighton, KS

We woke up again early, around 3:30am and headed out just before 5am on the bikes. We intended to go to Ness City, 66 miles for the day. There weren’t any places really to stop for food, so we just had poptarts along the way and then in arrived to Ness City around 11:30am. We stopped there for lunch and around 1:45 continued on towards Dighton since it was only another 32 miles and that way we wouldn’t have to do a 103 mile day the following day.

Along the way we ran into 6 other cyclists going from the west to the east. We passed a group of 3 from England, met Steve, who is cycling from Yorktown to Oregon. He was staying in Ness City though. And between Ness City and Dighton we ran into 2 more cyclists, a couple from Indiana. They were sporting all Novara gear from REI and had the 2009 version of the Novara Randonee, which is what I have, but from 2007.

So we pulled into Dighton around 4:30 or so in the afternoon and did our mandatory ice cream stop at the dairy bar. I had a snickers Tornado which was yummy and then some people there told us about this ranch rodeo that was going on tonight and that we should check it out. So we left the dairy bar and went to the city park to set up camp and go for a quick dip in the pool, then showered there and then went back to the dairy bar for dinner. On our way back the guys bailed on the rodeo and said they were tired and wanted to go to bed, so I went and checked out the rodeo alone and saw a really nice sunset. I also met a really nice family at the rodeo and they were telling me they also hadn’t seen a ranch rodeo before, so I’m glad I wasn’t the only unexperienced person in the audience. It was fun and different – teams of cowboys or cowgirls competed against one another in finishing tasks, like herding a calf into a ring and then into the back of a trailer along with their horses. They had to race to see who could do it the fastest. I stayed until about 9:30 and then headed back to the city park to turn in for the night.

GPS Stats:
96.2 miles
07:13 moving time
24.8 max speed
13.3 avg speed

Computer Stats:
97.59 miles
07:12:15 moving time
25.0 max speed
13.5 avg speed

Snake count: 2
Dog chases: 0