Bicycling across Kansas

This week the bicycle ride across Kansas it taking place. In June of 2005 I did this bike tour and love and hated it. It was the most grueling long distance bike ride I had ever done.
The last four days of it was all hills and bad weather. I wasn't used to riding up and down steephills one after another and rains and wind was horrible along with lighting, hailstorms and whatever you can imagine..

In spite of the exhaustion that I experience particularly on the last day I still want to do this bike tour again. In spite of my leg handicapped I believe I could do it if I train for it. For now I will have to be contend to read about the good times everyone is experiencing this year.

Kansas is mostly flat in the west part of the state but the easter half is nothing but long steep hills. It is thrill going down them sometimes reachingf 55 miles but uphill I sometimes was as slow as 5 miles hour, just barely fast enough to keep my bike upright. although I have done a lot of bicycle tours in about 15 states this one is probably my most memorable one as is tested me to the limits of my abilites. It ain't easy for this old man in his sixties to ride 600 miles in little over a week not counting 200 or so miles I rode the previous week.

I sure like to do some more tours and plan on trying some once I sale my home in Charleston and my wife joins me living in Lancaster full time again.

The pictures make it look like the weather was always good. Goes to show you pictures can be deceiving. Well we did have good weather for the first few days but after that it was terrible. Temperatures was as low as 50 degrees to a high of 105 degrees.