I was promised tailwinds

When we first started planning a cross-country bicycle trip we were faced with the decision of which way to go. Do we start at home in the east? Start out west? Everything we read encouraged us to start out west and head east. More likely to have a tailwind, they said.

WELL I am now roughly halfway across the country and can confidently say that advice is a LIE. I can think of just ONE day with a noticeable tailwind, and that was only half a day that also included a half day of a noticeable headwind.

Today was very windy. As soon as we left the hotel this morning, I said “oh no.” I could see right away that we would be facing a very strong headwind.

Now, the wind is an interesting thing. It affected us in unexpected ways. Obviously a headwind made it more difficult to pedal, but there were two other aspects that surprised me:

• Trucks passing in the opposite direction: When a truck would pass us going in the opposite direction, we would be hit by a wall of wind. It was often so strong, I felt like I would be knocked off my bike. During a snack break, Mike and I had our bikes balanced leaning against each other. A truck passed and the wall of wind knocked our 70-90lbs bikes over (we caught them).
• Trucks passing in the same direction: when a truck would pass is going in the same direction as us, it would create a sort of vortex that pulled as along. Most of the time, that was pretty neat. Got a nice little boost in the direction I was struggling to go. HOWEVER. If the truck was particularly long and the driver didn’t give me any clearance, the vortex would start to pull me in before the truck was past me. I would have to fight against my bike just so I didn’t smash into the side of the truck. It was very unsettling.

tl;dr Much wind. Sad cyclists.

We eventually made it to Ness City. We are staying at the only place in town. A motel under new ownership and under renovation. It seems that we are the only guests. I feel like the place has a lot of potential. The new owners seem great. I think it will be a nice place to stay at some point, but for now I don’t want my bare feet on the carpet.

Highlights

• Mike looked up the liquor laws in Kansas last night. Apparently Kansas is a dry state by default, and counties need to apply to be able to sell alcohol (which almost all of them have done). My guess is that the county we were in last night allowed you to drink beer but didn’t allow you to enjoy it. The county we are in tonight obviously has a different approach. Our motel is just a couple doors down from a liquor store with (inexplicably) a drive-through window. We were able to get red wine to go with the chilly day.

Lowlights

• Yesterday and today we passed two places that identified themselves as “feeders”. Fields of dirt with thousands of cows crammed in. It was just heartbreaking to see the conditions these cows were living in.
• Wind. Did I mention it was windy?
• It was a struggle to find food I could eat at the grocery store in town. Plant-based frozen meal? Get out of here. It was hard to find frozen vegetables without cheese on them. Almost everything had cheese or lard or milk powder. I wonder if you can get vegan cheese anywhere in Kansas. It was interesting to see how different the food options were to what we’re used to (apart from the use of animal products). We needed to buy a loaf of bread and some nut butter. The only breads they had were basically dessert, just laced with sugar. And the only nut butters they had were from peanuts and were Jif or Skippy. The last time we shopped for a nut butter in northern Virginia we laughed about how boujee the selection was. There were dozens of options, from all kinds of nuts, including non-nut options like flavored tahini. I don’t need dozens of nut butter options, but I’d have a hard time living somewhere if I couldn’t get vegetables without cheese on them.

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: breakfast burrito, potatoes, coffee
• First Snack: Clif bar
• Lunch: almond butter sandwich
• Second Snack: Clif bar
• Dinner: blueberries, chips and guac, beans and rice, veggies

Stats

• Total distance: 56.58 miles
• Elevation gain: 162 feet
• Weather: windy, overcast, high of 54 degrees Fahrenheit