August 2nd & 3rd, 2008
Chelsea and I got up earlier than usual to get a good head start on the day, after how gruesome it was yesterday, with the heat and the wind and the trucks. We made it to Toronto itself, a good hilly 8 miles, and we stopped to take pictures, preparing to head out onto busy Hwy 54. Chelsea took a few pictures, and then we started off, but when I stopped quickly to point out another building I wanted to her to get, she crashed right into me, hard. We both went down, and I got the worst of the deal, which really wasn’t too bad – just a sore backside and a very sore knee. The knee swelled up immediately – it looked like I had a grapefruit under the skin (!) – so she ran and got ice for me from a nearby café (the ONLY thing in town that was open!).
The harder part was that that my rear tire and tube both blew out completely and my shifter and brake levers were completely skewed. It was clear I wouldn’t be going anywhere until they were fixed. We texted Alex and called him several times, but he was out of signal area, and was operating on his usual schedule. It was nearly 3 hours before he came cruising through town.
Meanwhile, a local character came wandering over and regaled us with stories about the history of the town, and with his own viewpoint on things. It was very interesting for the first hour, but by the time the second hour rolled around, it was starting to get pretty old. Then another character came by and regaled us with his version of things… The town is a very small town, and is really poor and rundown – apparently it has been dying for a number of years. It would never make the list of anyone’s hotspots. As a result, anyone like us coming through is a cause for great interest and speculation. Every car that went by often went by twice just to check us out.
Alex finally came rolling through, and we got the tire fixed pretty quickly (yes, we were organized enough to have brought spare tubes and two spares tires) and Alex straightened out the brake and shifter levers as best he could. By that time it was nearly noon, and the heat was up to well over 100 degrees, so we knew we couldn’t ride any more for the day, never mind my knee still being swollen. We had Alex bring us to Newton, as a huge storm was brewing, and we needed to make camp somewhere that we could ride out of easily.
We really enjoyed Newton, and we enjoyed seeing Cassoday, on the way. We thought seriously about staying in Cassoday, in the City Park, but we checked out the restrooms, and decided to pass. Neither restroom had been used in a while, so leaves and weeds had blown in and piled up in the corners. Both sides had several huge wasp nests, active, and the women’s restroom had a bird’s nest built on the top of the door (which clearly hadn’t been closed in a while). The final straw was the toilets themselves, which were pit toilets, and which had huge and multiple spider webs over the seats and down in the toilets themselves. I have gotten pretty thick skinned, all things considered, but considering that we would be staying only in the tent (there was nothing in the town to go to – no stores, nothing) in probably 111 degree heat for a number of hours, dealing with those restrooms, and having to ride on out on about 2 miles of graveled road, we decided to pass.
Newton was pretty sophisticated for the kinds of towns we have been seeing. There were several choices of restaurants, a health foods store, a bakery, a number of yoga and meditation-type places, and a coffee house. The pool was large and beautiful, and the park was peaceful and shady. We checked it out, then decided to go to Wal-Mart to get some supplies and to get s swim suit for Chelsea – hers has been on a serious decline for a while now. We had success there (long live Wal-Mart) and then wandered a little further down the road for an outlet mall. This part of Newton did not appear to be thriving – only half the stores had tenants, and there was absolutely no traffic. One major bookstore was closing any day, and we found out that the movie theater was closing the next day. We can’t figure this out yet – but we have seen it consistently in Kansas so far – there will be areas that appear to be doing fine, but right down the road are areas that are in serious decline. The back roads and highways are the same – prosperous houses and farms are right next to a number of abandoned and dilapidated buildings.
After finishing our errands we went back into town for a really great Chinese buffet – again, we love the prices – it was only $7 apiece for the dinner buffet, and sodas with unlimited refills were only $.80. And the food was great! Just as were headed into the restaurant, the heavens opened up with the rainstorm that had been threatening for several hours. We didn’t have the tent set up yet, so we were pretty uncertain about what to do. We decided to let events take care of themselves.
We thoroughly enjoyed dinner and took our time eating it. On our way out, in came two other cyclists that we had passed earlier in the day. We stopped and spoke for a few minutes, but they were famished and we needed to deal with our tent. They told us that they had already heard about us, and told us about several others that they had met. It’s pretty funny – it’s a small world out here of us cross-country cyclists!
We did manage to set up the tent in between rain bursts, and crawled in. It was actually very soothing going to sleep listening to the rain on the tent. Suddenly however, at 10 minutes to 3 in the morning – we were all awakened with a loud sharp crack – it appeared that something had hit the tent, folding in the tent, and causing the rain to pour in on Alex! We also discovered that the tent was leaking all around the edges and our cycling clothes were soaked, along with my book. After some exploration, we discovered that the rain flap hadn’t been tightened enough, which caused the water to pool up, and the weight of the water caused one of the tent poles to crack inwards. Alex reached up and popped it out, we got towels from the car to mop up the water around the sides, and we hoped we were good to go for the night. It was so awful it was funny! There we were wandering off to the bathrooms at 3 a.m. under umbrellas with our tent soaked and with us very wide-awake. It took us at least an hour to go back to sleep, and Chelsea and I meanwhile got a rather serious case of the giggles.