On Sunday I met Philip, walking East to West, also pulling his possessions behind him in a cart. He seems to dedicate his trip to mental health. Him and Jonas were crossing paths later, going in opposite directions, and it would have been interesting at their meeting, to be a fly on the wall of their meeting.
For the next two nights it's a cheep motel in Great Bend. Despite only costing £37 per night, its clean, comfortable, has a fridge, microwave and coffee machine (but no kettle). You can also take your bike into your room and there is a supermarket just across the road, if you can get to it, dogging the traffic on a busy 4-lane highway.
Cycling along in the two-lane Kansas roads, I was impressed how much space people give you. Even if you are on the hard shoulder, most cars and trucks pull out and pass you on the opposite lane. Not exactly 50 Miles of Elbow Room, but enough to make you feel comfortable as a cyclist. I suppose Kansans, or Jayhawkers, as they are called, can afford to be generous with space, they have plenty of it.
There are always some people who are not quite as tough as you and others are much more so. On the informal Trail information network, I had heard about the German guy who had raced East to West on a bike and was now running back East. Anyway, I met him, Jonas, somewhere between Eads and Leoti, running along, pulling his possessions behind him in a cart. He was doing between 30 and 50 miles a day. He had travelled all over the world, cycling, running and walking, sponsored by companies like Shimano. To date, I have been able to empathise with most people I have met on my trip, but Jonas was definitely out of my league. I just couldn't imagine how you could do something like that. Obviously, standing at the side of the road, we couldn't explore that any further.
On the Plains, cycling on these long straight roads took some getting used to. In fact, after the Rockies, it felt positively odd. It didn't seem to make sense. You would peddle along, and in the distance would see a car or truck appearing on the horizon. You would keep peddling, then, a bit later, look up, and it wouldn't have moved. Maybe just got a tiny bit bigger. Again, after some time, you look up again. Again a bit bigger, but nowhere close. Finally, after what seems ages, you could hear it, and then finally it would pass you, and equally slowly, disappear from your rearview mirror.
At other times, there were long periods where there was, as far as you could see, nothing moving, except me and my bike. It was easy to imagine being in Stephen King's post-apocalyptic story, The Stand, and you wouldn't see any other people, ever again.
Then, apart from the normal traffic, there was the change of look and smell from trucks. In Colorado, it was freshly cut pine timber and heavy ore transporters. In the Plains, this was replaced by a strong agricultural smell coming from passing trucks, animals, manure, hay and corn. To that, at times, was added a strong smell of sulfur, from the storage tanks of numerous mini oil pumping stations. I didn't know that Kansas was an oil producer.
On Friday I passed a sign at the side of the road, stating that I was leaving the Mountain and entering the Central Time Zone. Flying, it feels normal to adjust your watch when you get off the plane (your phone does it automatically) but to just take a step and move forward an hour feels strange. It reminded me a bit about Around the World in 80 Days, where they win the race because they didn't realise that they had actually made it in 79 days.
Apart from everything else, I am definitely entering the Bible Belt. At the side of the road, even in the smallest of places, there are regular signs about churches, services and devotional messages.
On Thursday, camping in Eads, I met the first non-white person on the Trail: a woman from Derry in Northern Ireland of all places, of Indian origin. She was part-way through traveling around the world with her partner, a Londoner. After crossing the US, they were going through Marocco, then to Spain, France and back to the UK. I asked them, if they had any negative experiences, traveling through some of the poorest countries in the world. Not a single incident. Their take was, that they were viewed as even less fortunate, not being able to afford a bus, a car or a plane ticket for traveling. Also, although they had a lot of expensive equipment, non had any real value in those parts of the world. Who wants a small, lightweight tent, a touring bike or a GPS navigator?
On Wednesday then, it's out of the Rockies, through Pueblo, into the rolling plains of Eastern Colorado. Coming through Pueblo, I realised that I had become a country bumpkin. The town was too noisy, too smelly and too busy. It was the first big town I had come through since leaving Portland. I think the next one after that will be Richmond.
On Wednesday night I stayed in the city park in Boone, population 339. In fact, I have been staying in city parks for free the whole week. Anyway, Boone had everything you need, restrooms, water, a picnic table and a patch of grass to put up your tent. However, it was a rather interesting night. First were the trains. Every couple of hours one these three engined (front, middle and rear) monsters would pass just on the other side of the road. There was a level crossing right there, so the barriers would come down with the usual bells ringing and the lead engine would use its horn numerous times to warn of its approach. Then, what seemed a mile long train would rumble past, shaking the ground. If that wasn't enough, at 5 in the morning the sprinklers came on, soaking the tent. Not really a problem, because even the wettest things dry within 5 minutes in the sun here.
On Tuesday it was over the Hoosier Pass, the highest point of the TA Trail. The ascent was only 2,000 ft and it took me just 2 hours. Only two times I was almost running out of gears, both times on the inside of serpentines. Tommy, you know from the Logie Kirk Climb, what difference the inside and outside make. The 30 days of training seems to be paying off. I got to the top without much of a problem. In planning, the 11,000 ft were a bit of a worry, but in the end it all went smoothly.
Then it was downhill towards Pueblo. As I mentioned, last Thursday I had met Half Moon and Jan, and he had invited me to his house. On Tuesday I tried to get in touch with him to arrange a time and place to meet. However, I got no reply, so assumed he was out of range and decided to press on.
The problem was that he got my messages but I didn't see his replies. He presumed that this was happening and so calculated where I was likely to be on the road and got out of his way to track me down in his car just passed his turnoff.
I easily loaded my bike (big American cars have their uses) and he took me up into the hills above Guffey to his beautiful house with its own well, solar and hot water panels. When you pass on the road, you don't see the many communities nestling up in the hills, so you don't acutally realise how many people live up there. After a shower and pizza, it was interesting to talk to him. Guffey is in a strongly Republican county but he, as a Democrat, was persuaded to stand for treasurer in the local elections. Having a business background, in the pre-election meetings, he outlined his priorities for the county for the first year. The Republican standing against him was a waitress with no finance or business experience. Her priorities for the first year was to find out what the job was about but she beat him resoundingly. Politics work the same one a local and national level, it seems, maybe benefiting the parties but not the people. We know about that in Britain, I suppose, looking at our current cabinet.
The only problem was that he couldn't get his head around Ueli, so it was Scotty. I am using that now when people look puzzled at Ueli.
Did I mention that Half Moon, due to an accident in 1973, was in a wheelchair and a partial quadriplegic? Anyway, this doesn't seem to stop him from being interested and providing practical support to hikers and bikers like myself on a daily basis. He is also a recumbent cyclists.
Sunday, 5 of us went out for Pizza. There were 3 hikers, a caretaker / sky instructor. Katie, a hiker, had gotten altitude sickness at 12,000 ft. She was on her own at the time, but luckily when she started to feel unwell, had the cop-on (altitude sickness can quickly lead to confusion), to contact her sister via satellite messaging. Her sister's advice was: GET DOWN. At the hospital, she was given an oxygen machine which she was carting with her around town. She would have to see about her plans, depending on how she managed to adjust to the height. I had been worrying about this myself but having stayed at 6,000 ft for the last couple of weeks, I hope it will be OK. There was Sage, just 20, who, a year ago, had moved just after highschool from Minnesota to Breckenridge to work as a ski instructor, and to earn her keep, does housekeeping in the Fireside Inn. She had been one a volunteer project in the area, fell in love with it, and knew this is what she needed to do. No logical reasons, just a gut feeling, and she went for it. I like that kind of decision making.
We had very lively conversations but later on, when I looked into the mirror, I realised that I must have looked out of place amongst the 20 and 30 year olds, being 2 or 3 times older. However, it didn't feel that way. Each of us was on an adventure, with possibly uncertain outcomes.
The Fireside Inn is well setup for hikers and bikers. It even has a shelf of spare shorts and t-shirts you can borrow, so you can bring every stitch you own to the laundromat, which I did. That's customer service!
The room I am staying in is named Mountain Bothie. I asked the guys if they knew what a mountain bothie was, and where the name came from. Nobody had any idea but the explanation, it turned out, was that the previous owners were English (British?). Another mystery solved.
