Day 14 Dodge City to Great Bend (85 miles)

Well we got run out of Dodge at about 7:20 this morning. Didn't see the sheriff, guess he was organising a posse, rounding up some varmin, or maybe just in the donut shop.

Today was a much easier day, winds were in our faces again, but were only 5-10 miles an hour, so instead of struggling to do 12 miles an hour, we were struggling to do 18 miles an hour, which actually feels like you're travelling instead of cycling through treacle. Five of us had a well organised paceline doing a mile each, so it was a little over 3 minutes into the wind on the front and then about 15 minutes rest behind.

The higher speeds meant we had a bit of time for sightseeing. Stopped at Midpoint USA which you can see from the sign is equi-distance between New York and San Francisco. That's me in my rather fetching tights being very cold and eating a fig roll, which is the second most important food after bananas. It's fig rolls, bananas and gatoraid all the time.

We're not quite halfway through our trip yet, but we're getting there, we'll be mid-point in distance the day after tomorrow I think and then mid point in time the day after that. Had a look around the Sod House museum, it's a house made out of, well, sod. I guess we'd call it peat. The museum had other curios and knick knacks that people had donated including a bike from about 1900 which some fool rode from New York. Who'd want to do that?

It was freezing today, I was wearing all the stuff I wore during the winter training. I've only got one set of this stuff so there's a lot of hand washing each evening. Bring back the sun, I won't complain until it reaches 104 again.

Kansas is very very flat and very very dull, a lot like Norfolk, all big open fields. In the afternoon stopped at Pawnee Rock. This used to look a lot like a Dartmoor Tor until they removed all the rock for building. Now it's just a low hill, about 200 feet high, which makes it 200 feet higher than anything else, so you can see for miles in all directions. It was an important stopping off point for settlers moving west along the Santa Fe trail.

Got in about 2pm, about 2 minutes before it started to rain, so a bit of time for resting before a very big day tomorrow, 129 miles and we're into the wind again.