Day 16: Larned, KS

So woke up this morning to find out the Rockies have taken over the top spot in the NL wild card race! Didn't expect that this year, and it's happening in the week I will actually be in Colorado - but their last home game for the week is next Sunday morning, which I may possibly be able to catch if I don't hit any snags along the way in the next few days.

Anyway, started on the late side today, since there were supposed to be chances of T-storms up till 9 a.m., and it felt like I was moving pretty slow to start off with the wind blowing in from the North as I traveled West. I've been lucky not to have any strong headwinds I've had to battle off yet, but the side ones are still painfully annoying. Got cruising eventually though and made it to Nickerson (about 40 miles away) a little after noon. Grabbed some lunch at a cafe there - and ran across another Eastbound biker, female computer science professor from Florida, before I headed out. There is a 58 miles stretch from Nickerson to Larned with absolutely nothing in the way of conviences, and I was assuming it would take 5 hours or so to do the stretch. Ended up lucking out that nothing bad went wrong - no flat tires or storms - more wind, but nothing unbearable. The road was generally deserted which was nice and along the way I passed by about a 10 mile stretch of wildlife refuge which was kinda cool to see. Funny though that I saw signs along the route for cars saying things like "Scenic Byway: Play audio section number 7"...and of course saw absolutely no cars along the way -- gotta love that booming eco-tourism business in Kansas.

Anyway, it was quite a long haul to get here to Larned - and I went through my whole Camelback and 2 water bottles, a 1 lb. box of raisins, 1/2 lb. of peanuts, 2 candy bars, a banana, and an orange in the process, depleting my food reserves, but I'll stock up here before moving on. By lunch tomorrow I should be completing map 3 of 4 for the trip, taking me roughly 3 1/2 days to do the 332 mile map - I'm afraid biking in Kansas has spoiled me and I'll be huffing and puffing soon enough when I reach Colorado.