Departed 8:10 am, an hour later than usual due to the shorter distance. Hey, it may have been shorter ride than usual but at mile 22 we made a left turn onto Rt. 15 N and the wind blew directly into our faces. Next 40 miles crawled along over rolling terrain at 10 miles an hour gaining 1100 ft. of elevation. Hard work. I hate the wind when it is in my face. Would much rather do hills. It was hard for everyone and when I arrived at Holiday Express Inn in Abilene I felt beat up. Knees a tad sore and butt a tad sore and general whooped. Fortunately, a Dairy Queen was right next to the hotel and a group of us made a bee-line for it. A giant coke (Classic [ie not Diet]) a giant burger and an ice cream sundae help me recover!!!
Today our riders headed from McPherson to Abilene, KS - a 62 mile ride. As you may have read above, they got some extra sleep since it was a "short" ride. But everyone agreed that today was "not the easy day it was billed to be." It makes everybody a bit weary of their next ride - after their rest day tomorrow (yay!) they have a 105 mile ride to Topeka. They're all hoping that they won't be up against the wind again for that ride, since with that distance it would make for a really hard day. They'll turn due-east to get to Topeka, so apparently "the chances of the wind coming and blowing to the west will be pretty small." They may have some crosswinds out of the north or south, but chances are actually pretty good that they'll get lucky with a tailwind.The first 20ish miles today were quick and easy going, then they turned into the wind. Their average speed for the last 40 miles was 10 mph - some periods were as slow as 7 mph. The hills today were odd for him - he would ride uphill and naturally expect to see a view at the top, but there would just be a very small downhill stretch and then they'd be going uphill again. No view. It was disconcerting.
At this point in the ride (in terms of conditioning and geography?), they've ranked the factors that make a day's ride a breeze or very difficult in order of importance (from the most important to the least):
1. wind direction (tailwind, crosswind, or headwind)
2. the road surface
3. how much climbing
4. the day's mileage
Everybody is in agreement that this is the order of importance in terms of how difficult each day will be.
Dad's still enjoying himself immensely - "some days are good, some days are tough." But a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. (Unless one has the time and money and desire for pain to get sucked into doing a variety of cross-country routes...) They'll reach the official halfway point on their next ride (day after tomorrow) - 1,702 miles! (Damn.) He thinks there will be an line on the road, and they will have a sign for it which he'll hopefully pose with. And we're now done with the first half of days to be blogged! You're halfway there too! (Isn't it nice that we could all participate in this while sitting down?) Still really liking Kansas - "pretty scenery and really nice people." (That's Dad in a wheat field today.)He says that Abilene looks like it's a pretty neat town. Looking forward to seeing a bit of it tomorrow and RESTING. He's also going to mail the gun home tomorrow! Woohoo. We'll now own two (I think) guns, both old or weird enough to not require registration.
The Pile Drivers have split up a little in terms of riding as a group. One of their members had to leave the tour to await surgery. (His back and neck issues were apparently pre-existing, not due to the tour, and he knew it was a gamble to try the tour before having surgery. But like Dad was before his back surgery, he was concerned about his ability to do the tour afterwards in terms of recovery speed and conditioning.) A real shame he had to go - a hard decision, but you can't really go wrong when you try to avoid doing permanent damage to your body. The remaining members have kind of naturally had to split apart some as they've adapted and gotten stronger; their riding speeds now vary more than they did early on. Dad's still riding with Tony fairly regularly (the gentleman with a mustache in a variety of pictures here), and everyone on the tour still sees everyone else regularly in terms of SAG stops, dinner outings, Road RAP, and their infrequent leisure time.There's a "santa-red" van parked outside their motel - it has lots of antennae and the words "STORM CHASER" painted on the back. They're wondering if the storm chasers know something that they don't about Abilene today. He'll try to get a picture in the morning if it's still there. (Hey, they have a day off; maybe some riders can tag along with storm chasers after all!)
Gil's obviously still missed at home - especially tonight when we (I, but with support!) had to give the kitty a sub-cutaneous fluid drip. Fun was had by all. One day down, nine to go! (If anyone's interested, his bladder control is much better (ie problem free!) when I spread his narcotic and muscle relaxer out a bit more.) But it would have been nice to pass the job involving the 2" needle off to Dad tonight!
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