Kansas, finally

Sept. 19, Franklin-Stockton, 74 miles, SW breeze, 85/65—Even though a recent study showed Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake (read here and here), it started off like a rollercoaster. After crossing the border (trip miles: 1064) I soon reached the Home on the Range cabin, where Dr. Brewster Higley wrote a poem called "My Western Home." It eventually became a famous western song, Franklin Roosevelt's supposed favorite. (It's the one beginning, "Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play.")

Amazingly, I'd seen a mule deer a couple of miles before reaching the gravel road to the cabin (the antelope were back in South Dakota). The scene on the range was so beautiful I decided to sit down in the grass and fix a flat tire. After three rear-tire flats in 10 days, I was annoyed with my Kevlar tire, a victim of sandburs and gravel, and switched it with my spare. By the end of the day, I'd hummed and sung Home on the Range enough to make me wish I knew more than one verse.

Since this was mainly a riding day, I plowed ahead to Stockton through a breezy, sunny afternoon and reached the city park with light enough for the end of a pee wee football game. Rooks County produces so much crude oil that some Stockton homeowners pump oil out of their yards.