Update from Newton, KS

Think I'll end up taking the entire day off riding today, but for now I'm going to proceed as if I'm leaving and try to ge a quick blog update done now :)

So, made it into Newton yesterday afternoon around 4:30 and managed to quickly find Liz, who I had heard about from way back in Virginia. Liz and Heidi rode coast to coast last year and are very generous in offering housing and a local contact for transam riders, I ended up hanging out with them all evening and staying at their house last night. Very nice ladies, fun comparing notes on the route and hanging out! Will likely end up staying again tonight to give me a day to rest, take care of town chores, and do a lot of stuff on the internet, like type this up!

Tuesday started out at a state park on Torono Lake, KS. Got a bit of a late start, but fortunately had a light tailwind all day. It was about a hundred mile ride to get to Newton, but with the tailwind, I was riding between 20 and 25+ when I was on the bike without pushing hard, and managed to arrive fairly early in the evening. Nice riding with some minor hills, and generally good road surfaces except for the last 15 or so miles into Newton. Weather started out kindof iffy, but by the end of the day was hot and sunny.

Monday, after writing that last update, I discovered that I had a flat tire on the bike. Turned out to be a little bit of glass that had worked its way through the 'tread' and kevlar to put a little hole in the innertube. The tire is getting noticably worn down, I figure it's got a fair bit of milage left on it, but I'm thinking I might go ahead and swap it out with the new tire that Continental is sending me to replace the defective one when I pop into Boulder in a week and a half or so. Patched the hole with one of the little no-glue patches I've been carrying. Unsurprisingly, it didn't hold up too well, so a few hours later, I had to swap the badly patched tube out with my last spare tube. Unfortunately, it'll be a while until I get to a bike shop, so I'm hoping to find a store somewhere that happens to sell bike innertubes before then. Should be able to get things patched up and keep going if that plan fails, or worst case I can go off route a bit to get to a bike shop. While fixing the flat, noticed that one of my spokes had wiggled loose, so tightened that back up and continued on west!

Arrived at Toronto Lake and met Tzuo, an eastbound biker who's trying to travel all the way around the world. Had some neat conversation over dinner, then as it got dark a really intense thunderstorm started up a few miles west of us. Fortunately, the rest of the sky was clear, so I ended up sitting out late watching the lightening. Nice night!

At this point, I'm hoping to get to Breckenridge, CO sometime around the Friday after next. From Breck, I'll likely get a ride into Boulder for a day or two off the bike and to take care of random things before next semester gets rolling. I'm really looking forward to getting to the rockies, especially into Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho where I have never been before. Will likely keep up a pace of around 60 miles per day (just slighly less than my overall average so far,) from Breck up until Idaho, where I may end up taking several days off for a little rafting trip. At any rate, I'm still on track to get to the Pacific a little before the middle of August - right in time to get back to school work...