I’ve been pondering a bike ride to Mount Sunflower (the highest point in Kansas), for quite awhile but the conditions have not been right or I lacked ambition, until a couple days ago. I was down at the local pub on Friday night having dinner and a few beers with Vickie. A younger friend of ours made some comment about how nice it must be to be retired and how he was looking forward to it. Somewhere during the conversation I pipe up with; “Well, I’m riding my bicycle to Mount Sunflower in the morning”. His eyebrows raise and he says, “that’s a long ways”. “Sixty-six miles and it’s all gravel” I say, sort of proudly, realizing now that I’ve said it, I really have to do it. I figured the eyebrow raise was in wonderment of an old guy riding 66 miles of gravel on a bicycle – in retrospect, he was probably thinking – how crazy is this old fart?
When we got home I checked the wind forecast and printed a map with the planned route. The wind was supposed to be out of the north in the morning at about 13 MPH, moving around to the N.E. and picking up speed as the day progressed and no thunderstorms in the forecast. Not terrible, I thought, could be worse, at least I will have a tailwind for the ride back. I went to bed early in anticipation. I hit the road at 8:00 AM the next morning and headed east towards Kansas. It was still pretty cool with the breeze and I had the windbreaker on. Main Street to the edge of town, down the hill and onto the gravel. About 3 miles in, I turned north for the first time and the wind was pretty strong, ugh, but it was only a mile and I turned east again into the rising sun, the wind rushing around my head, the only sound except for the occasional meadowlark. The first ten miles were pleasant with good solid roads and gently rolling hills, the winter wheat, knee high, green and lush, seed heads waving in the breeze, then the roads started deteriorating, becoming rougher, littered with fist sized rocks and wash outs from all the recent rain. I changed my route plan and started working north earlier, getting off the bad road but heading straight into the stiffening headwind, ugh.
At around mile 20, just short of the Kansas state line, I feel the front tire going soft, damn. I pull over and get the patch kit and pump out of the handlebar bag and flip the bike upside down to remove the tire. I find a giant twin-pronged goat head stuck to the tire about half way around from the valve stem, pull it out, noting the location and flip it into the ditch. I patch the hole in the tube, put it back in and start pumping it up. Over the wind I hear the sound of escaping air, damn, a second hole. I pull the tube back out, patch the second hole but decided to use my backup tube instead, hoping this will be the only flat of the ride. I head east into Kansas, turn north on road 3 and into the head wind. I look down at the map and see that it is 10 miles to Mount Sunflower, with 5 drainages to cross, it was about to get serious.
Two miles up the road, I go over a rise and stare down into the Smoky Hill river bottom, limestone bluffs, green prairie and yucca plants putting up their spring shoots. It is beautiful but steep and the road is covered in deep sand, so I couldn’t rip off down the hill at 30 MPH. I rode the brakes down, the bike fishtailing in the sand. As I started up the hill on the other side, I shifted down into granny gear, the rear tire spun out and the bike stalled. I tried to clip out of the pedals but in the panic I couldn’t disconnect and fell over, at least the sand was sort of soft and no one was watching. I lay there in the road in the sand like a beached whale, still clipped to the bike between my legs. Slowly I disconnect from the bike, get back upright, brush the dust off and check for any blood. I wasn’t bleeding and all the body parts seemed to be working, so I picked up the bike and started pushing it up the hill, the little pebbles that had collected in my shoes causing some discomfort, damn.
The sand began to dissipate and the road started to firm up about 3/4 of the way up the hill, so I remounted my trusty steed and pedaled on, in granny gear into the headwind. As I crested the hill I could see a lone buck pronghorn standing on the hill in the distance. He had long, wide set black horns and his tan coat gleamed in the sun. His white rump patch flared in warning and he pranced, stiff legged towards me with a challenging attitude. As I got closer, his harem came into view, about 30 does. I’m not sure if the big pronghorn felt challenged by my presence or felt that an old fart on a bicycle wasn’t worth his time and energy but he rounded up the girls and headed them off over the ridge to the west towards Colorado. They were beautiful, floating off across the prairie, my spirit was rejuvenated and I pedaled on, dropping off the hilltop for a long mellow descent into Willow creek that made the headwind bearable. There was a beautiful ranch set in the bottom surrounded by huge green cottonwood trees and a small fruit orchard. As I rode past the drive, two youngsters were riding their bicycles towards the county road, they waved and yelled a greeting and I waved back, four miles to go. Two cars came past in that interval, other Mount Sunflower pilgrims I suspected, as I came up out of the drainage, I could see Mount Sunflower in the distance and pedaled on with renewed vigor towards my destination.
As I pulled off the county road onto the rutted field road to the top of the Mount, one of the cars was already headed back out, I guess they had gotten their picture and were on to the next roadside attraction. The other pilgrim was sitting in his car playing with his phone, (imagine that). So I went over and introduced myself and asked him if he would mind taking a picture for me. We traded phones, taking pictures of each other in front of the monument, mutual respect for the pilgrimages we had both made. Mount Sunflower is a long ways from anywhere, you have to be a pretty serious pilgrim to end up here. There was a nice shelter off to the side of the monument with a big picnic table and a fence, to keep the cows out. I took my shoes off and sat down at the table for lunch. The other pilgrim left as I was finishing the first course, an orange and I had the place to myself.
The solitude of the High Plains seeped back in as I finished my lunch and cleaned the rocks out of the shoes, then wandered around the top of the Mount and took a few pictures. The highest point in Kansas was still 261 feet lower than where I lived in Colorado and the northern route I had planned for the return leg had several more creek crossings, so the elevation gain was much greater. I packed up and headed off, about an hour and a half behind the planned schedule due to the flat tire and crappy road conditions. The sun was high in the sky, it was hot and I had a long way to go, damn. I backtracked down the road about 3 miles to just shy of the ranch at Willow creek and turned west towards Colorado. The wind had shifted and was coming out of the east, so I had the cherished tailwind and I needed it, the creek crossings were brutal, I spent most of the time on the small chainwheel struggling with my tired old fart legs, climbing the steep hills. At about 15 miles I had made it through most of the drainages, the road flattened out, it was in good shape and I still had the tailwind, only 18 miles to go.
At 12 miles I could see my destination on the horizon, the grain elevators marking the Emerald City. I turned the corner at 10 miles to go and headed right into a quartering 20 MPH headwind, that was supposed to be a tailwind. The wind sort of came out of my sails and to top it off the road had just been freshly graded, no hard pack to ride on, just loose rock, that looked like boulders from my perspective. I let out and anguished scream to the heavens and tried to find a good line, to no avail. I looked down at the little medal that Vickie had given me some months back, on top of the map in handlebar bag – “you are stronger than you think”. I laughed, repeated the message to my thighs and pedaled on. “Old And In The Way” came into my head and I sang along with Jerry G and David the Dawg; “Gold will turn to grey, and youth will fade away”, as I continued to push the pedals around in circles, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYETHsxAv8c). At six miles to go, I cross the Smoky Hill River, again and the road conditions improved significantly, the wind not so much.
15 minutes later I turned the corner and headed west, the wind was behind me and only two miles to the cottage, whew yeah. It felt good to be home, I greeted Vickie and the dogs, grabbed a Voodoo Ranger out of the fridge and sat down in the Adirondack chair. It took two IPA’s to wash the grit out of my mouth and two more to deaden the pain. By the fifth one I was planning the next pilgrimage – Sand Creek Massacre site, I think, 75 miles of gravel, perhaps the wind will be in my favor. Stay tuned.
