Tuesday, Sept. 18th

As I (Amy) sit here typing, we are in the middle of a massive storm in Maryville, Kansas. It started out as a sprinkle so Kevin thought he could make it. But no sooner than he took off did the torrential downpours begin. I think Kevin finally decided he couldn’t go any further when a lightning bolt struck close enough to scare him a little. I guess we should be happy it wasn’t a tornado since we are in Kansas, but the storm definitely wasn’t going to let up enough for us to get back on the road that night. So Larry, Alec, Kevin, Randy and myself pulled into a Super 8 to let the rain and lightning pass by.

Prior to that, we started out day 9 in Oberlin, KS. Richard, Vander, and Mike took the first shift of biking while the rest of us found an RV hookup. We pulled down a lonely lane and found a sweet couple named Phyllis and Charlie Godwin. They run the mobile home / RV park and we were fortunate to have met them. We got fresh water, took showers and did some laundry. They even had their local newspaper come out and interview us. Thank you so much Phyllis and Charlie. It was a pleasure to have met you in the middle of our journey.

When I say middle, I mean it. We were pretty much right in the center of the U.S. when we hit Maryville and were stopped for the night. The rest of the guys made it to Horton, KS, where we were asked by the “City of Horton” to stay the night and sleep in an RV park there. It’s pretty cool when you’re asked by the whole town to stay with them.

While Alec was biking, Randy, Kevin, Larry and myself stopped at the Kaffe Haus in Scandia, KS. This town consists of about 300 people who all run the three cattle farms in the town. So you can imagine it smelled fabulous as we biked through. The Kaffe Haus smelled great though and the food was fantastic. Not one thing on the menu was over four dollars. We all had spaghetti and a malt shake and then went on our way to catch up to Alec.

It’s the next morning now and we are biking back towards the rest of the guys where we are supposed to have some sort of town meeting before we head on our way to Kansas City. Tomorrow morning reporters will meet us at Fire Station 6 in Olathe, KS, which is just north of K.C. The firefighters are going to escort us to the Sprint headquarters where all of their employees are going to take some time out of their day to cheer us on. Hopefully, after that we are going to get to visit some kids at Children’s Mercy South Hospital.

We are half way home and still going strong to make it the rest of the way. By the way, Kansas is not as flat as we all thought it was. Lots of hills and wind in our face, which really intensified the aroma of cow manure.

Love you all, see you soon.