Day 16

Our route today was still in Kansas, but you couldn't prove it by what we've been riding through the last few days.  Gone are the rolling wheat fields for as far as the eye could see and the flat terrain was gone too.  Eastern Kansas is one of my favorite areas to ride as the terrain rolls and vast rolling pastureland dominates the scenery.  I think if I had to use one word to describe today it would have to be the word "green."  Every time we come through here everyone is amazed at how green the foliage is in this area, but today green came all the way to the highway.  If I didn't use green, I'd use the word "wet."  They've had so much rain over the last few days that everywhere we looked we saw standing water in the fields or streams that were swollen with the spring runoff.  It's going to take them several weeks before they can get into their fields to do any farming.

I was in the van during the morning until lunch where I took over the riding duties from Karen.  One treat today was seeing a prior rider who came out to lunch to ride in with us.  Jeff Unruh who rode Fast South in '06 rode out to meet us and to tear my legs off on the way into town.  Jay and I teamed up with Jeff for what promised to be a "brisk" pace for the last 32 miles.  And the expectation was realized as soon as we coasted out of Eskridge where we had lunch.  I can remember when it was easy to keep up with these young guys, but today seemed to press me a bit, but I hung on without throwing up...but I did taste that milk I had at lunch a couple times. 

All the talk of the day was how beautiful the terrain was in this part of the state and with the favoring winds, everyone was just grooving in the moment.  With the favorable conditions, everyone was in my 3:30 or so and quickly started finding bike shops or hitting the indoor pool...Tonight we were treated to a BBQ hosted by Jeff Unruh and his wife Julie.  Everyone enjoyed the fellowship in their lovely home and the break from restaurant food for an evening. But before the wonderful evening at the BBQ, we had to rap and said good-bye to Paul who is leaving us here.  This is as far as he could get off work.  It is sad to see him go as he is a part of our cross country family.  We wished him well and also got to meet his family who had come to pick him up.  I wonder if we could keep him? 

Tomorrow we head to St Joe MO...in the past we've had a day off in Topeka so it's unusual for us the staff to be packing up tomorrow morning for a quick departure.  Our next day off is in Springfield this trip...whew...still several days away.  All in all though it was an easy, enjoyable day for everyone.  It was nice to finally get a day where we could just sit up and not worry about the winds and watch the countryside drift by...it was a beautiful countryside for sure. 

Hope you are having as good a day as we had.  Tune in again tomorrow and see us enter into our next state...Missouri.