Bale of Hay

 

Day 30: Bazine to Leoti, KS

distance: 96 mi

total distance: 2111 miles

Have you ever flown across the country by airplane and looked outside the window to see patches of squares colored in different shades of brown, yellow and green spanning the land beneath you? Each patch measures a square mile and is dedicated to some sort of crop. It looks vast from a bird's point of view. Now imagine being somewhere in the middle of one of these fields. All around you, you see nothing but grain and corn. While riding through Kansas, this is what we observed for hours at a time. Every town is 30-60 miles apart from the next, and no services in between. Once you leave a town, you mentally prepare to ride into the abyss of endless land. The road in front of you is flat and straight. No turns and very little deviation.

There is something truly relaxing about this kind of riding. I have come to love the sight of farmland and take a deep breath whenever I pass dozen bales of hay. The smell of hay is roasty. It smells familiar, although I don't know what to compare it to. If I were to have a backyard, I would stack hay in it just for the smell. Two nights ago we spent the evening at a bicycle hostel in Bazine, KS. Dan, the owner of the hostel worked in the hay industry and told us all about his work. Through him I learned that hay is good business in Kansas and is often sold by the ton. Shipped either locally or to other states such as Texas, the sole purpose of hay is to feed cattle.  That's it. We have seen so much hay over the past month, that it seems almost too strange to think that it is all bunched up for them cows (I guess that just means that us humans eat lots of beef.)

Though the roads are flat in Kansas, the winds can create unpredictable riding conditions. I believe we have been fairly lucky. For the most part, the winds have been coming from south, thus hitting us from the side and requiring us to slightly lean to the left in order to keep our bikes upright. Yesterday, we had a good two hours of tailwind. And let me tell you that it is one of the most wonderful things ever. When you are moving in the direction of the wind, you feel like there is no wind. It pushes you forward, ever so slightly, and makes you feel like you are riding at enormous speeds (18-23 mph) effortlessly. I wouldn't trade that moment for anything.

On the other hand, headwind feels like an invisible beast. You pedal and pedal and at best are moving at 11 miles per hour, though the roads are flat. Somehow I feel that a headwind is hitting me harder than the others. My energy wades quickly and I look for opportunities to steal a piece of energy from my companions. This is where drafting plays into the picture. When you bike at a speed of at least 12 mph, you create a gust of wind behind you that another rider can ride in and be pulled with. Over the past few days, Laura and I have been excellent drafting partners. I pull her a few miles, while she chills out in my draft, and when I get tired, we switch. Moving in each others draft, we have covered a decent amount of miles in a much shorter time than if we were to move side by side next to each other. It's great! And did you know that humans copied the concept of drafting from birds? How smart they are!

Only 15 miles from the border of Colorado, we will be leaving Kansas in a few hours. And then I may finally say, "We are no longer in Kansas, Dorothy!"