Tribune, Kansas to Eads, Colorado
I awoke to a sunny day and the sound of tennis balls being struck. The city park was actually adjacent to where I slept. I pitched my tent in the fairgrounds amid a lot of carnival rides - dormant Tilt-a-Whirl, ferris wheel, among others. The fair was not in progress but the rides reside there year round. Kind of a carnival ghost town, but there was an intense early morning singles match in progress.
I packed up the tent and grabbed some breakfast. I planned to visit the Horace Greeley museum early in the morning. Locals last night said to call the police and they will contact the museum people, who will meet you there. I did. The sheriff put me on hold while he called them. We arranged to meet me there at 8:30 AM. Finished coffee and headed over there.
A woman greeted me and I immediately started hitting her with questions about Horace Greeley. She didn’t seem to know any answers but knew a lot about what was in the museum. I quickly realized the Horace Greeley Museum featured next to nothing about him, but did a fantastic job displaying everything that had to to do with the history of the area. I felt it should have been called the Greeley County Museum, so as not to be so misleading. Anyway, the woman wanted to answer my questions, so she went into the curator’s office and called Nadine Cheney and let me sit at the curator’s desk and talk to the curator at home on the phone from her very own desk, on a rotary phone, I might add! She answered all my questions, most importantly, how the town came to be known as Tribune. Basically, Greeley had a friend named Gerard, who published the local paper and named everything after his friend, Horace Greeley. There was even a town named Hector located a bit north. Hector was Greeley’s dog.
I had to ask her about the name of the museum, because I thought my idea for a name was much more appropriate, and she answered me defiantly, "What else would we call it?" Okay, let's drop it!
The most impressive display in the museum was a series of photographs of the dust bowl days. Shots of a cloud 50 feet high enveloping the town of Tribune, with the caption “Midnight at Noon.” Taken in 1935. Hate to say it, but it reminded me of the dust chasing people down the streets of lower Manhattan on 9/11. I signed the guest book and took a picture of the exterior and was on my way.
Today I am a high plains biker - cue the music: oo-ah-oo-ah, waaaah-waaaah-waah. Riding the high plains out of Kansas and into Colorado- fierce headwinds... they’re baaaaaack! VERY slow going. Took me 3 hours and 37 minutes to go 30 miles. Just before I crossed the Colorado line, I met a biker riding a sit-down type bike with a fairing. He was zooming along on the tailwind that I was fighting. We talked a bit. He’s going from Colorado Springs to Florida. Didn’t catch his name but he looked pretty comfortable on that kind of bike. It was only around 11 AM and he had already covered most of the miles I was planning to ride today. My destination was his starting point and clearly demonstrated the power of blessed tailwinds. I've still got 40 miles to go.
Crossing into Colorado was not as exciting as it could have been. Battling these headwinds dampered that thrill. To me, they are another kind of hardship that challenges one like hills and rain. I kept thinking about the pioneer spirit and the drive they had to cross the country 100 years ago. I like to think that is part of me. I try to put it in perspective as I pedal a paved road with no threat of injuns. Mild and tame by comparison, but hey, the tractor trailers can be quite hostile at times!
I remember as a youngster, for a while, “How The West Was Won” was my favorite movie. Although Indians, whitewater, and harsh conditions took their toll, it would not prevent most from making it west. It was their destiny and this is my destiny. So onward I pedal, as the miles slowwwly roll by. Today was a low for me. My goal was only to get to Eads, CO - a mere 60 miles or so, but not sure if I would even make it there by dark.
To make matters worse, it was very hot and dry. The elevation began at 3500 ft. and would rise to 4250 by day’s end. At these higher altitudes, water is doubly critical. My halfway point was 30 miles at a town called Sheridan Lake. My TAT notes said there was a gas station/convenience store there, so I took the appropriate amount of water and food for the day, enough to span the 30 miles... or so I thought. At the 12 miles point I was already down to my last water bottle and when I reached for it I discovered it was EMPTY! At this elevation and considering the heat too, making it the next 12 miles would be chancy. Luckily, in a small building next to a grain elevator, I spotted a rusty artesian well pump. I went over and tried it and ice cold water came spewing out!! Whew!
I quickly filled all my bottles and continued on. When I reached Sheridan Lake, I bought and quickly downed a Gatorade and tomato juice, then tried to take a nap. I was completely exhausted after only 30 miles. The stop was ridden with small flies, so a nap was impossible. I just closed my eyes for 15 minutes, woke up, and made some sandwiches from supplies I brought. A half hour later, I bought another Gatorade for the road and headed off for another 30 miles of "fun." When I commented on the wind, the gas station mechanic said to me, “What wind? This isn’t wind. Wind here is when you chain a log to a tree and it floats in the air next to the tree!” Very funny!
I forgot to mention I passed a school before my first stop and had to take a picture. In big, white letters across the front of the school, it said, “Plainview.” Having grown up in Plainview, NY, I found this amusing. I asked the gas station mechanic about the name and he said it was just the name of the school, no town connected to the name.
The second 30 miles had two “towns,” 8 and 14 miles up. Of course, these towns are nothing more than grain elevators. In any case, they serve as short, intermediate goals within the larger 30 mile goal.
The road surface in Colorado is very rough, crushed stone and often depressions where each section is joined. At 60 mph in a car you would hear the rhythmic duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, but on a bike, you get a jolt through your handlebars that runs through your hands and up your arms to your shoulders and is really annoying. So couple that repetitive jarring with the heat, headwinds, and endless thirst - which no amount of water seems to quench - and you have the making of a long, hard day. Most of the time my mouth would be dry with thirst. Literally five seconds after a couple of guzzles of water, I’d be parched again. This is the result of combing heat with higher altitudes.
It’s funny, as I look around me, at 4250 ft., the surrounding land as far as I can see is high plains and flat. I’m already at twice the altitude of the highest point in Missouri and all here is flat. A few times I stopped and would just stand in the middle of the road and slowly do a 360 just to take in the immensity of the sky and land that seemingly goes on forever. This, plus an unbelievable sunset, were the only bright spots in the day. Tomorrow promises cold winds out of the north. I need to rest up.
Totals for the day: 61.70 miles, 6hrs. 41 min., 2205.9 total miles
Well, the day’s not over. Earlier in the day the gas station mechanic told me definitively that sometime later in the day the wind would die down for a half hour and then come roaring back out of the north. I came out of the cafe after dinner and what had been calm when I went in, became cold, roaring, howling wind from the north, just like that guy said. I quickly scrambled to get my sweatshirt out of the pannier and man, I was cold! I got on the bike and didn’t need to pedal 5 blocks to the park - the wind instantly accelerated me to cruising speed, which pushed me along a bit too fast for safe passage in the darkness.
Set up the tent in a treed grassy area between the courthouse and the grain elevator. The southside of the courthouse provided a windbreak from the fierce north winds. Put the rain fly on for extra warmth and wind blocking. Well, around 12:30, it started to rain - or so I thought. Strange sounding rain, driving at times and then it would stop, hitting different parts of the tent with an occasional torrent. I thought maybe it was run-off from the roof of the courthouse. Decided to take a peek out and the first thing I noticed was a dark sky with plenty of stars. Then I saw the SPRINKLER!! I had set up the tent 2 feet from an underground, retracting, lawn sprinkler head. Now the challenge! How to defeat it... Stick a shovel in the ground in front of it? Lay the bike pannier on top of it? Do nothing? Well, by the time I tried to block it, it cycled off and disappeared underground only to sequence another section of sprinklers to start watering. Only one of those could reach the tent and only a distant corner of it for a second on each revolution. I went back to sleep and hoped for no more surprises.
I picked up few distant AM stations trying to fall back to sleep. One was KNXT in Los Angeles, giving freeway traffic reports at midnight and there seemed to be a lot of traffic problems at midnight in LA. Man, I am definitely west. Also caught an AM out of Dallas, TX. Clear night, good skip (ionosphere radio frequency bounce), as they say.