Day 57, Hutchinson to Newton, KS

Miles – 43

Miles From Start/To Finish – 2,568/1,777

Ave Riding Speed – 10-26 mph

Hours Start to Finish – 5.25

Weather – Smokey Haze the Partly Sunny and 84

Kim was up before me and headed down to the Super 8 breakfast. I heard her leave so I got up and met her at the breakfast nook. We both had cereal and a cup of coffee. I wasn’t very hungry as I had that bowl of creamy chicken and gnocchi soup for a snack before bed last night.

We cleaned up, packed and left the Hutchinson Super 8 at 8:15am and headed east for a half-mile and got on Hwy 61 headed north for 7-miles. The sky was hazy from the fires out west. A mile out of town the road turned into a freeway. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed on the freeway in Kansas, but we kept moving quickly to get to our exit. After we were finished for day, it looks like riding a bicycle on the freeway is prohibited but that possible exceptions can apply. We’re going to go with we “had an exception to get back to our designated route”. Kim and I exited on E 85^th Ave and the small community of Medora and we were back on the mapped route heading east. The road turned into E 82^nd Ave/Hwy 556 and there was littles noticeable wind from the east so we cruised along at 15-17mph.

A couple miles out of Medora, a local rider caught up to us and we rode together for the next 3-miles. Ron was riding a pretty fancy road bike and chatted the entire way. He was a retired community college teacher and gets out to this stretch about 4-days a week. I was asking him, being he was from Kansas, that was this crop called Molic or something. He said it was called “Milo,” otherwise known as sorghum. The crop is high in protein and used in foods like flour, syrup, molasses, or animal feed, or biofuels or making alcohol. It was fun to learn about the crop I’ve been hearing about in Colorado and Kansas. Ron said he was turning around after we rode 3 miles together and we thanked him for the conversation and handed him one of our cards as we traveled down the road together.

For 26-miles we rode through the Kansas country-side straight east via a 2-lane, no-shoulder highway with light traffic. There was an increasing number of oil well pumps and gathering stations along this route. The numbers weren’t anything close to the numbers I experienced in the Bakken Formation while working in the Oil & Gas industry in North Dakota.

I got another flat tire a couple miles west of Hesston. Same rear tire and about the same place as the four previous flats. I borrowed Kim’s glasses and started inspecting my tire tread. I noticed a very tiny shiny foreign object, about the size of pin end, in the tread and pulled out my knife to gently dig around it. I wedged it enough to get something to grab onto with my pliers and it was another piece of wire about a ¼ inch long. I can only gather that whatever I ran over in Montana was in multiple pieces and as I ride and my tire wears down, the objects continue to pierce the inside tube. I ran my fingers around the inside of my tire and found nothing, again. The biggest disappointment was that I no longer had 75lbs of pressure in my rear tire as I can only get about 55lbs out of my portable pump.

As we loaded my saddlebags and started back on the highway, I was a little annoyed by another flat tire. My brain started to notice things that weren’t positive, like the wind speed had increased and directly from the east and I was not getting the efficiency out of each pedal stroke because of another flat. Then it dawned on me that I was pretty lucky just to be out here, together with my wife, traveling parts of our nation I’ve never seen before. It also occurred to me that somewhere in the world someone is counting on us and our effort to bring awareness to lobular breast cancer, finding better ways to diagnose it earlier and supporting more research. So, I changed my tune and happily made a decision to enjoy the ride.

We rode into the first town of the day, Hesston, and stopped at the convenience store for a Clif bar and use the restroom. From there we traveled south through the countryside for 6-miles on Hwy 811 till it veered east for 5 more miles into Newton. We rode east through town to the Holiday Inn Express. Across the street was the only restaurant within walking distance, an Applebee’s. It was only 1:30pm when we checked in, but they did have our room ready for us. We showered and walked over for lunch/diner and had burgers, fried and water. Food was tasty and the service was great. Debbi, our server, did a nice job.

The picture of Kim and the lush corn crop and greenery in the background is an example of what we’ve seen alongside the roadways and across the landscape of central and eastern Kansas.