Cows & Combines

Made it to Maine, bikes dipped in the ocean 5 days ago, Acadia National Park explored, & currently spending the next 3 days on the coast at a peaceful B&B while I try to catch up on this blog…but more on that later! Where were we? Oh, yeah…just left Colorado. Some days I was better than others in terms of documenting our trip so a few of these entries will be more reflections & observations than a play by play… but I digress.  Back to Kansas!

Day 63 – 4th of July: Up early, veggie egg scrambler, fruit, orange juice & coffee, then on the road. We were slightly delayed in our departure by an itty-bitty-teeny-tiny bunny. It was SO LITTLE, we just had to soak up it’s cuteness for a few minutes 🙂 Mid 90s today, rolling hills, another chorus of crickets, tiny shoulder to ride on but considerate drivers. Speed limit was 65mph for a two-lane highway, which normally feels a bit hairy (too fast with little room to move over) but everyone gave us ample space when they passed (almost TOO much sometimes!). We stopped in Atwood for lunch at a little cafe, planned to swim in the lake but it was nasty, so off to the community pool!

After swimming, we rode for a while until Ben stopped to snap a picture of a combine harvesting wheat. As the farmer rounded the corner where Ben was standing, he opened the door & asked if we wanted a ride to see what it was all about! Heck yeah! I love that spontaneous stuff. It was AWESOME! The farmer’s name was Roger, his family was from Sweden, & he’d been farming for 83 years! He took us around the entire field, us asking questions the whole time about how the combine works, what happens to the wheat once he’s done with it, & so much more. He was so happy to answer our questions & show us around. We asked him other things too, not just about harvesting, like how farming has changed & what he misses most about his younger years of working. What’s changed is the internet & technology. A lot of the combines are now run by computers & when farmers have down time everyone is on the internet instead of talking to each other. He misses when they used to have more free time. When he was younger they used to be able to play softball when they were done with their chores but now it’s work all day to make the most pay 🙁 We made it back to our bikes, shook hands (even though I wanted to hug him!) and parted ways. Even though we only spent 15 minutes together, I’ll never forget it. It was so fascinating! I couldn’t stop smiling for hours after that. What a neat experience. Thanks for opening the door for us, Roger, & letting us see inside your world for a bit!

We made it to our final destination for the day (Oberlin), checked into a motel, showered, did laundry, got pizza for dinner, & wandered over to the fair grounds for a firework show (a pretty decent one too!). Back to the motel & passed out. We were pretty exhausted today.

Day 64: We just couldn’t get out of bed this morning so we decided to sleep in. A quick breakfast bar, apple & coffee in the motel room then we biked downhill into town to the grocery store for a better breakfast: yogurt & granola, as well as granola with half n’ half (like cereal, not bad). Back uphill to the gas station for cliff bars & Subway for ice. The same waitress from the pizza place was working there too so we all had a chuckle when we recognized each other 🙂 All 3 of us: “you again?”. We weren’t on the road, heading out of town, until 11:15! Wowza, even for us, that’s a little late 😉

Today was rolling hills again & overcast. Yay, only upper 70s to low 80s! We saw a big snake slither into the weeds & lots of white moths along the route. I took a spill on the bike but luckily it was when I was stopping & I fell into the weeds…nice & cushy. We stopped for lunch in Norton: appetizers at Sonic & a real meal at Las Canteras. At Sonic we got mozzarella sticks to go with our pickle juice slushie! Unfortunately, the slushie was disappointing. It was too sweet; I wanted more salty & sour. We also witnessed a quarrel among staff which led to an employee quitting & storming out. Uh oh. Two guys at the table next to us were asking about our trip & we asked them for a lunch recommendation: Las Canteras down the hill, so off we went! Great food & a really sweet decorative toilet. Seriously, it was beautiful!

Back on the road, I was a bit sluggish (my butt was pretty sore today) but we eventually made it to Phillipsburg & checked into another motel (!). I filled the tub to find the leak in my sleeping pad (found it!) and also took an actual bath, finally able to use the salts my mom sent us back in Utah (aaahhh, so nice). Ben made dinner, I did laundry, then we just relaxed for the night & watched a movie before calling it a day.

Reflections

1. Two days in a row, Ben was able to get farmers in their tractors to honk for us as we passed by giving them the semi one-arm pull-down signal. The horns were actually pretty quiet – more of a beep than a honk. They smiled, we giggled like little kids – it was great 🙂

2. Eastern Colorado & most of Kansas, being flat & full of wheat or corn fields, get a fair amount of wind, yet there were no wind farms to be seen. I’m curious about their absence in such a resource abundant environment. It would be a perfect place to utilize it. Hmmm…

3. We saw what looked like a huge cloud of smoke but as we moved closer it started to move like it had a mind of its own! What was happening? Turns out it was a giant swarm of tiny birds – thousands of them – that flew so close together they were more of a blob than a flock. It was cool!

4. If you’re ever biking through Kansas, through corn & wheat field country, & in need of water, just look for trees. Trees? Yes, trees. The view for miles in any direction is one solid crop, with little else disturbing the horizon, so when there are trees they stand out. At least through this area, where there were trees there was almost always a house beneath it’s shade…so if you ever need water, look for a tree, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a house, & hopefully water – your best option besides flagging down a driver.

5. Preparing to leave every morning on this bike trip reminds me of a comedy bit by Michael McIntyre – People with no kids don’t know (YouTube it – it’s worth a laugh or two). He jokes about leaving the house before you have kids and after. Before kids (or in my case, this trip), it was so quick & easy to leave in the morning. “Shall we leave the house?”, “Yes.”, & then you walk out the door. NOW…it’s a process with so many steps & takes forever. “Where are your shoes? Put your shoes on! Where is your vest? I don’t want to wear my vest!” We have to cook, eat, do dishes, carry out a number of hygiene tasks, roll up our sleeping bags, pads, pillows & tent, change into bike clothes, fill up our water bottles, make Nuun water (like Gatorade), put on sunscreen, put on our vests, maybe pump up the tires or degrease & lube the chains, plug in the destination on the Garmin & compare it to Google Maps, turn on our lights, & go to the bathroom one last time. Not as quick & easy as before; an hour would be “quick” for us now 🙂 Not complaining, just reflecting. I’m happy to do all those tasks if it means we get to do this trip.

6. The majority of the drivers we encountered in Kansas gave us the single-finger wave as they passed…no, not the middle finger, just the index finger as a slow, casual wave of hello. It was so nice 🙂

7. It was wheat harvesting season as we rolled through Kansas & as a result saw SO…MANY…tractors, trailers & trucks. More often than not we saw trailers towing tractors – it was a quicker way to get the tractor to the next field. It was quite the operation. I called it the Combine Cavalry 🙂 Pretty impressive.

8. I’ve been fighting with my kickstand this whole trip (cut it too short) which leads to some pretty comical moments of me repositioning my bike for 2 minutes until I find the perfect spot. Ben sits & laughs at me while I act like it’s no big deal to pick up & move my heavy loaded bike 10 times & turn the front wheel a certain way, trying to find that perfect balance that will likely be disturbed by someone sneezing in the next town over…but that’s normal, right? 😉 Oh, the things we choose to get used to.

9. Maybe I already said this in another post so I apologize if I’m repeating myself, but something we noticed on this trip (even as of Kansas, & especially having made it all the way to Maine now) is the majority of motels we stayed at were run by Indian immigrants & their family. The more motels we stayed at the more we were curious to know if it was a coincidence or happened that way for some reason we were unaware of. I did a quick Google search to see if others had noticed this & came across an interesting NPR article that explains it all! If you’re also curious, check it out: Here To Stay.

10. Gretchen & Larry, our Warm Showers hosts from Fruita, CO, had talked about the phenomenon as a biker when there is no traffic for miles but when there finally is, it almost always seems to be one car in each direction & they just happen to pass each other at the exact same time they’re passing you, creating a tight squeeze & temporary “hold-on-for-dear-life-don’t-move-an-inch” kind of vibe. They didn’t have a name for it & figured other bikers must have experienced this so surely there would be a name for it but never found one. Well, with all the time we had in the middle of nowhere & hours to think about the stupidest things, I came up with: traffic triple threat. You go from having to worry about nothing to 1) a car behind you, 2another car in front of you, and finally 3) if both of these vehicles are capable of not hitting each other & you…which was questionable at times but we survived!

11. Speaking of riding in the middle of nowhere with hours to ponder our existence, we would think such silly things that either didn’t make sense & would have us laughing at our weirdness or would make us feel like we had an amazing revelation…but mostly the weird stuff 🙂 For example, we had many conversations with cows as we passed (yes, we talked to cows…you can’t possibly be surprised) that started with us mooing at them, which caused them to stop what they were doing (all of them, even a herd of 50 or more) and watch us intently. They were captivated, or as we punnily coined it, calftivated.  This led to a discussion about their life cycle…and inevitably more puns. Our chats that held them calftivated we called cownversations, some of the males would have been calfstrated, and at the end of their lives all of them would eventually be decalfitated. I told you it was weird…

12. Speaking of cows, we saw two black moms with white calves. I’ve never seen that before; I was intrigued. Either I didn’t know that was possible or it’s not & they just adopted them. Again, with the weird thoughts… 🙂

13. Heading into Atwood, we heard a loud bird cry that reminded me of Marahute, the golden eagle, from Rescuers Down Under. It was such a powerful & striking sound…& now I want to watch that movie. “Pea soup!”

14. Sunscreen for babies & kids is marketed as “tear free” or “sting free” but the same doesn’t apply for adult sunscreen. Who decided, & at what age does it change, that adults can handle the tears & the stinging? I’d prefer the tear & sting free stuff please!

15. While at the pool in Atwood, & packing up to leave, this little kid (maybe 6?) saw our loaded bikes & stopped to ask where we were going. We explained California to Maine (blank stare), one side of the country to the other (blank stare), ocean to ocean (blank stare), at which point he finally shrugged his shoulders, said “huh” very nonchalantly, and walked away. I don’t know why but Ben & I thought this was hilarious & couldn’t stop laughing. Most adults are surprised, impressed & want to hear all about our trip & then this kid comes along and was all “hmmm, whatever, I gotta swim!”. Brutal honesty, gotta love it 🙂

16. Constantly dripping with sweat & riding through heavily insect-laden areas I discovered my body was moonlighting as a gnat cemetery. I was constantly covered in the little buggers! Any time we stopped I’d have to wipe off dozens of them. All these critters were just flying around, doing their bug thing, and little did any of us know that my body was going to be their final resting place where they all came to die. I felt like a human windshield.

17. One of Ben’s reflections: there were these weird piles of poop on the shoulder, every mile or so, that he couldn’t understand. They were big too & seemed to be strategically placed. It was amazing how it was always dead-center in the middle of the shoulder, never in the road. Assuming there’s no human serial pooper in Kansas, it had to be from an animal, but which one? It couldn’t have been a dog out for a walk with the owner. It was the middle of nowhere – there were no houses or dogs & when there were the dogs probably didn’t go for walks…they ran free. A wild animal can poop anywhere, especially in the fields where they live…why would they come out to the road & poop on the shoulder? Was it the same animal every time, for miles & miles? Or was it some unspoken rule among raccoons or coyotes, that they’re supposed to do their business on the shoulder & nowhere else? It remains a mystery & puzzle we never solved…at least not yet 🙂

18. Speaking of poop…sometimes things happen when you’re far from a bathroom so there may or may not be some random turds on the edges of cornfields or under an overpass…

19. This trip has turned me into a sleazy objectifier…of roads. “Check out the shoulders on this one!”, “Oh yeah, I could ride that all day”, “Oooohhh, it’s so smooth!”.

If anyone is still reading this I think that’s enough weird stuff for this post. I’ll save more for the next one 😉 I love this deck at the B&B with a perfect ocean view, but I’m starting to get gnawed on by a few mosquitoes so it’s time to move back inside for the night. Once I’ve had dinner & maybe watch a movie I’ll be in the right frame of mind again for more blogging. Until next time!

Whitney

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