Girl Scouts Rock!

Sophie and I are sitting in the Amend Girl Scouts Center in Emporia, Kansas, relieving our tired limbs by...well, by doing heavy lifting for the Emporia Area Habitat for Humanity chapter. If you were to walk around this town of 25,000 right now, you'd see Habitat bikers clipping flowers to beautify downtown Emporia or hauling heavy desks out of offices through impossibly small doorways or showing the local youth how to change a flat tire. We hope, at least, that our work will bring something concrete and useful to this community, but I think the reward is mutual, as we get to meet people who are active with Habitat here in central Kansas.

Iola, as Jess suggested, was AWESOME. Unfortunately the wind didn't hold out and we didn't go powerparachuting, but the rock concert was a blast. The band, Leave Thursday, was finishing off its tour of Kansas and Missouri and we were the last stop for them. We enjoyed headbanging and moshing and Sophie even got some crowdsurfing in; the band later told us that that was the only crowdsurfing that had happened on their tour. The next day, 90% of our riders had the catchy tune "You Are My Only Hope (Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi)" stuck in their heads on their bikes. You'll have to hear it for yourself; check them out at http://leavethursday.com/index.cfm. I bought the T-shirt.

We found out something very profound about biking through Kansas these last few days: there is no such thing as a "flat, easy ride." True, we are no longer facing 10% inclines on Laurel Mountain in Pennsylvania; instead, however, we're facing straight into the Jet Stream and other crosscurrents that somehow always seem to be pointing in the exact wrong direction. Yesterday, riding 80 miles from Iola to Emporia, we were crisscrossing north-west-north-west with a 15 mph wind out of the north. We had a delightful choice between a) biking straight into the wind or b) biking with it swiping us from the side. So even if you think you've beaten the hills, the Great Plains are still there to keep HBC a "challenge"!

Not all the ride, however, was pure grinding. Sophie, Dalton and Garrett had a moment in the middle of the Kansas flatland, with short grass and shrub trees all around, when Circle of Life from the Lion King came on Dalton's iPod and a bird flew out in front - just as if we were in Africa. We also made up a bike dance routine to Spice Up Your Life which we hope to impress the rest of the group with later. Before lunch was even more of an adventure at Luther's Jerky house in Leroy, KS, where we bought delicious buffalo jerky and took rides on the owner's Segway. This is the real thing: if you ever want any really good beef jerky, check these guys out at jerkyusa.com. They ship everywhere! Hint hint: mail drop...

So we've got the rest of the day here pretty much off...I'm going to go see about a pizza at Wheat Pizza in downtown. To finish off, I'll conclude with some haikus composed by Matt Kotler, Dave Madden, and me yesterday:

Kansas is wheat land.
This breadbasket feeds us all,
Says Iola boy.

"Car back," says Eric.
We always ride with autos,
So get over it.

-Eric