Larned to Ness City (65) to Leoti (79 miles) - 2000 miles, 6 states and 2 time zones DONE (almost)

Hello from Western Kansas! We have been busy uploading and updating for your reading pleasure - you will see at the top you can see maps of Our Route, slideshows of our Photos and Videos, and short introductions on Our Group members. We hope you like them!

The past couple of days from Larned to Leoti have been in the most part enjoyable, especially the day we travelled to Ness City when we had a little tail wind and flew into town. However, our luck changed yesterday when we had a very strong south westerly wind and lots of HUGE combines, grain/cattle trucks and a few massive wind turbines on trucks zooming and whizzing past at speed. We are in the epicentre of Kansas' wheat harvest - add in a strong cross-wind and little cyclists like us just get blown around like leaves! The combine caravans travel up from Texas and follow the crops, it really is a like a wave across the country.  This day was horrible, and dangerous - I was quite literally thrown off the road by gusts of wind on numerous occassions and at one point seriously thought that I may have to walk into Leoti. But I did cycle in and we are now sat in our motel room enjoying a day's rest. Not looking forward to tomorrow as the weather forecast is similar, the road will be the same and traffic is likely to be similar to yesterday, also it is another 80 mile day.

Cycling here is a lot like sailing. You feel like you are at sea, with the wheat waves on an ocean. The horizon dead flat and distant. The only features to see are trucks wizzing (ships?) and grain silos dotted at regular intervals like... ummm, running out of parallels... light houses/cliffs/supertankers - you decide.

Today, in Leoti, which is a very small town we did nothing other than have a lie in and good breakfast, and wander main street (not a lot to see or do), followed by a meal at the one and only mexican restaurant. It is good to have a rest and the wind today was so strong, we could hardly walk in it, let alone cycle in it! We met another group of cyclists (raising money for MS), whom came from Scott City (24 miles away), but decided to stop here for the night rather than continue on due to the extent of the strong winds. They too are planning to ride to Eads, Colorado tomorrow, same as we are, so we should see many cyclists on the road tomorrow! We also chatted to a self-contained guy called Kirk who has overtaken us - http://pedalaround.blogspot.com/
And tomorrow (besides the wind), should be an exciting day as we go into Colorado (our sixth state!), cross a time zone (1 hour extra in the day), and hit 2000 mile mark! All in one day! Bye Bye Kansas, I have partially enjoyed you but will not miss those winds!!

Sterling to Larned - 50 miles

Today we arrived in Larned after a 50 miler which involved one long straight road with no services or water stops. Fifty miles felt like a lifetime. The views were very pretty but after you've seen 5 minutes then you've seen it all and for me this is hard because there is nothing to distract you, except the pain in your behind!

Yesterday afternoon's little visit to the town library in Sterling was interesting-we were treated like some minor celebrities and asked if we could speak to some local kids in the library about our trip. It was lovely, Robin sat nodding whilst I entertained the kids with stories from the TransAm! They were so cute and so interested in what we were doing! We had a lovely swim in the local pool, which seems to be routine for us these days for two main reasons; to cool down and to get a shower! In the evening they had a little concert in the park - just to prove we were in small town USA, the post mistress (we had tried to by airmail stamps earlier and she had to look it up in a book - such is the tourist demand) was there selling raffle tickets and the gas station guy was there playing tuba. Turns out the town is famous for turtle racing on 4th July - shame we wont be there.

Except for the local corn silo drier sounding like a jet engine when the world is otherwise quiet, a grain train shunting, and the park sprinkler system drenching us (no joke - Robin managed to stamp/plastic bag one but then got soaked by a pincer movement from another) we got a good night sleep. Waking in the morning, it was a mere 85 degrees - somewhat chilly!

Tonight we are staying in a church and the pastor loaned us his car so that we could avoid the 5 mile extra bike ride to the Museum of the 'Sante Fe Trail'. Five miles doesn't sound a lot when you you're cycling over 4000 but every moment off the saddle helps towards rebuilding the skin and bones around my behind area! Did you know that only Great Plain Indians wore feather headdresses? Tepees were only used after Westerners had traded guns with the Indians and they gave up farming for nomadic buffalo hunting?

Only a couple of days before a rest day and then, Colorado!

Kansas - Chanute to Eureka to Sterling

We left Chanute Kansas early passing through the small deserted streets, heading into fields dotted with oil wells. Our route passed beautiful green pastures and the cross wind momentarily becomes tailwind and we actually overtake Kath, Dennis and Jerry - Luc hitting a respectable 24 mph. Steadily Kansas becomes emptier but the roads just keep on going, straight.

We passed through Toronto, a small typical ghost town - aside from the post office and a struggling grocery, the only motion on main street is dust blowing up at the weatherbeatern empty shop fronts as the cracked flaking paint gives a clue of a former baker and barber. Many of the more beautiful old houses looked abandoned - what must it be like to grow up here - isolation or traquility? - what will the future hold?

We continued to Lizard Lips Cafe - the shack in the middle of nowhere appeared like a mirage in the hazy heat. We escaped the 93 F heat, had pie and picked up the obligatory little plastic lizard souvenir.

We entered the Flint Hills region, open prarie grassland, apparently the largest unploughed grassland in the world dotted with cows fattening up in the summer as part of a cycle rotation (they spend winter in Western Kansas eating all the corn grown there). The road swept off into the horizon and open vistas fell away either side. And then we encountered the cyclist arch-enemy - HEADWIND. This basically is like riding uphill but never reaching the down. Just a little prelude for tomorrow.


Eureka's town park was an oasis, neat and green. After much discussion (on the path of the sun/shade), we set up our tent under a tree and cooled off in the town pool. To escape the heat, we went over to the bar to watch USA get beaten by Ghana (we were the only ones watching!). We lay in our tent and tried in vain not to melt away in the heat.

The next day the wind had shifted - a stiff headwind and it was hard enough to stand still. We struggled along the almost dead flat roads of the Blue Stem pastures, passing all the cattle farms - herds packed tightly around watering holes - You had to "mooo" every-so-often to prompt a mass of blank stares (and once a stampede). Cycling here is strange. One stretch of 38 miles of "nothing" was particularly memorable for being unmemorable, if you see what I mean. Telegraph poles, mounds of gravel, an oil well, a cow all become features of interest. Initially I counted down the miles (79 of them) but then I found Luc had two skills I never knew - playing I-spy (I know, aren't we...!) and singing in the style of a Munchkin. It was a long day.

Whenever you think you have it bad, something makes you realise someone has it twice as bad. We met a guy who is WALKING the route. Started in April, sleeps wherever and hopes to finish in October. His kit bag is the same size as our day sack. Mad.

Today, powered by last-night's delicious stir fry (if I do say so myself) we reached Sterling and tomorrow our 58 miles is completely without services - the largest stretch of "nothing" we have. We're almost halfway across the USA and halftime. As we were fighting with our tent in 90 degree heat and screaming at the mosquitoes taking advantage of our vulnerability today, Kath said to Luc..."half way through the race is always the toughest and then the champions come in at the end". That made us feel better. Lets hope they do.

For your viewing pleasure, we've got a little map of our progress...

View Bike America Coast2Coast - TransAm - the story in a larger map

and our rough route...

View Bike America Coast2Coast - TransAm - the plan in a larger map

Pittsburg to Chanute, KS

Our rest day in Pittsburg was short lived as always and distrupted by a 60 mile cycle today to Chanute. I think I stayed in pretty much the same gears the whole way as it was flat, flat, flat for the first time ever. About time too!! Roads in Kansas are like on a grid so its very difficult to get lost, but I'm sure Hugh could give it a good go!!! He actually turned up a few hours later than everyone else yesterday after taking a detour!!

We are staying at a church with air conditioning (great!) but with no showers (not so great when you've just finished a 60 mmiler in the heat!). So after an hour of trying to find a shower somewhere in Chanute, and Hugh spending about half hour on the phone to the local police station trying to pursuade them to let us use thier shower, only to be told that they do not have a shower at the station, we, (Kath, Hugh and I) came to the conclusion that people in Chanute just don't shower. Hugh offered to make a donation to the police station so that they could put it towards getting a shower for their officers (never mind the fact that they don't need one, they just shower before they come to work!)! The fire stations are usually pretty good and we have stayed at them before but Chanute Fir Station would not allow us to use their shower. How dissapointed we were. Again, desperate, Hugh offered to put down a $125 deposit for any damages caused!!! Thats probably why they weren't keen on us using their shower. Exactly what were we planning on doing in there???

Anyway, after another search for a shower and an hour long chat with a pastor in another church, Gerry Sharp (who told us the history of his musical family and background and called himself G Sharp (get it?),we discovered that there was a swimming pool just a couple of blocks away, with showers!!!! So now we are nicely showered up having had fun in the pool too!!!

Tonight, we are planning to head to the bar of a hotel on the same street as the church we are staying at (after a nap and for a coke!) and have also been invited by Pastor Gerry Sharp to the church for a sing song and a strum! Lets go crazy!!!

Ashgrove to Pittsburg, Kansas

Today is our rest day in Pittsburg, KS. We arrived at our lovely air conditioned motel for 2 nights after a 73 mile (half hilly, half flat with big winds) cycle to get here. We crossed the border from Missouri into Kansas about 4 miles before entering our destination, Pittsburg, so havn't had a chance to see much of Kansas yet.



This morning we went to the one and only bike shop in Pittsburg to find that they had completely almost run out of stock due to another large group of cyclists coming through. I thought this explanation sounded a little strange as they would have had to have bought the entire shop!! Anyway, we did manage to get 2 more water bottles and holders for our bikes as looking at the Kansas maps, it appears that some days there may be up to 50 miles without any water stops (Kansas is vast and desolate apparently!)



A group of us then decided to check out the outdoor store for some camping fans (since we cannot sleep in our tents at night!) and to our great surprise they were giving a free lunch cooked on some BBQ grills they were trying to sell - lucky for us it was lunch time and we were hungry so burgers and hotdogs all round it was!! We didn't tell them that we were travelling across the country on bikes so the chances of us actually purchasing one of this BBQ's was ZERO. They didn't have any fans by the way so we will continue to be cooked alive until our next rest day which won't be until we are in Colorado!

Off for a swim now (in the lovely Econolodge motel pool) and then to the cinema to see Toy Story 3! This is becoming a bit of a habit on rest days as you may have gathered as the cinema is one of the few places you can hide out that has air conditioning and the chances of dropping dead is the heat is therefore reduced greatly!