Kansas Finale

Continuing our trek through Kansas, we briefly paused at the post office in Alexander to pick up a care package. Lori and Gary (our Wisconsin Family) had sent us some fantastic goodies. Among the bounty was some delicious mushroom soup, homemade banana bread, hot packs (these came in handy later), and most importantly, beer! Er…I mean soda - you can’t ship beer mwahah. We excitedly tucked our goodies away for later consumption after sampling a healthy amount of the banana bread (we had to make sure it wasn’t stale, duh). It wasn’t long before we ran into one of the more interesting human powered machines all tour. This fellow was headed to Boston with his solar car/bicycle contraption with the help of a support vehicle. The entire roof was a solar panel and the large box you see on the bottom of the rig is a battery that helps him get up and over the hills with this near 200-pound beast. Looks like work to me!

As we rolled through the small town of Dighton we heard some hoots and hollers coming from the opposite side of the road. At first we thought the locals were just razzing us but one of the gang was yelling: “Come have a beer for the road!” He had our attention. We introduced ourselves and found their hospitality and Keystone Light quite delightful. We talked about Halloween Plans (today was the 31^st, yikes!) and nearby things to check out. One of the fellows had a Ripstick, half skateboard-half rollerblade doohickey that we all tried to ride. Ripstick skill seemed to be positively correlated with alcohol consumption. Can’t blame us for trying! Before we departed the gentleman operating the barbeque on the porch asked, “You guys ever had an armadillo egg?” No sir, never have - I was under the impression that they didn’t lay eggs. Turns out he was referring to a jalapeno popper (mmm cream cheese) wrapped in bacon. It was the perfect parting gift. That night we had a low key Halloween in a nearby hostel of sorts. Nothing seemed to be going on in town. We couldn’t help but sigh and think of last year’s awesome Eugene Halloween. At least the sunsets in Kansas are beautiful.

Something funny happened the next day as we entered Tribune, Kansas. As you can tell from the picture, Main street was completely torn up. Not too odd I suppose. Not a single person was out on “the strip.” Again, not super creepy in itself. What was disturbing: music was blasting from every lamp post mounted speaker (see pic). Not just any music - Britney Spear’s “Hit me Baby One More Time.” As we rolled past all the motionless buildings with our three loaded down bicycles we couldn’t help but wonder if we were on some kind of reality TV show. Ok Ashton, we‘ve been Punked, now come out from behind one of the buildings! He never showed. The shot you see here is us waking up the next morning - I wish the white dusting was another prank, one done with confectioner’s sugar. Instead it was very real, very cold frost, which explains why Clancy and I remain in larva form (thanks to Joe for the chilly photo credit ;).