Kansas

We've made it from Missouri to Dorothy's lovely state of Kansas. While not as flat as everyone claimed (thank god, the slight hills are actually way better than just plain flatness) it's definitely as windy as they claimed. We biked through what we thought was a windy day yesterday only to be informed by every local we ran into that that was not in fact windy and that we would find out what windy was in a few days. We did however turn north for the last 16 miles of our day and get a lovely tailwind which allowed me to get into my highest gear for the first time in the whole trip. It was amazing and felt like we were flying. At first i thought that the wind for the day had just died down but then we took a sharp 90 degree turn only to find out that it was not dead and had in fact been pushing us along, luckily we got to another 90 degee turn and got pushed a little further to our destination - the town of Cassoday KS. Here we spent the night in the city park, after being turned away by the local pastor. This was the first time a church had turned us away and he was not very nice about it at all - so much for do unto others, but whatever. We ended up having a very loud night in the city park since there were train tracks near it with trains that seemed to pass and ring their alarms or whatever they do about every two hours all night.

Yesterday we also ran into the second group of people going our direction, a British couple, who said they'd been chasing us down since Kentucky, constantly seeing our names in all of the various log books you sign along the route. They inevitably caught us since they are doing around 80 to 90 miles a day - they called a 60 mile day a half day! They were really nice and it was exciting to meet more poeple going our direction, though they will be taking a more southern route once we get to Peublo, CO.

I'm getting really exctied for the rockies and for the first glimpse of them after the nothingness that will be eastern colorado. We will definitely be posting some pictures when they appear.