Chasing Down Charlie
On Sunday morning it was still raining in Newton as I left the bike shop at 7:30. Charlie, who had started his trip from his home in Sacramento, was joining me for the day and we decided to head to the town of Eureka, 76 miles away.
We stopped at a truck stop on the edge of town for breakfast, where the waitress called people “hon” quite often. “You still workin’ on that, hon?” Here I contacted a woman named Robyn in Eureka. She lets cyclists stay in one of her rental homes and said it was fine to do that today and to just contact her when I was close to town.
The ride was a bit cold with a crosswind, now from the north, but we were making good time. Charlie is 64, has an excellent sense of humor and reminds me of Gene Wilder. At the 40 mile mark we arrived at the town of Cassoday, the “Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.”
Charlie and I had taken turns in the lead for the day and in leaving Cassoday we were supposed to head south for 17 miles, which would give us a tailwind. I had told him that I wasn’t a fast rider but I took the lead on the way out of town and quickly got ahead of him.
About 10 miles later I decided to look at the map and realized that I had missed a turn earlier. That was a problem because if the road I was on didn’t connect with highway 54 later on (the road to Eureka) then I’d have to backtrack 10 miles, into the wind. My map didn’t show this, but thankfully I had phone service and verified on google maps that I could continue. However, it was going to add another 8 miles to the day.
I looked behind me for Charlie but there was no sign of him. He must have taken the correct route. Now with me having to do an extra eight miles I decided to make a game of it. It was now a mission to do all I could to catch him so I increased my speed, stayed on the bike and just kept riding for hours straight. But I still didn’t see him ahead and was thinking “Oh c’mon…this is ridiculous…why am I not catching up?”
In the meantime, about seven miles outside of Eureka, a car pulled off the road and a woman got out, waved me down and asked if I was Dan. It was Robyn. In our conversation she said she had a pot roast in the oven and asked if I wanted baked or mashed potatoes. I certainly wasn’t expecting dinner. She also asked where Charlie was and I told her about my wrong turn and that I’d been trying to catch up with him for hours. She said she hadn’t seen him in town.
Robyn had given me directions to her house and when I arrived in Eureka I decided to wait a few minutes in the center of town to see if there was any sign of Charlie. He pulled up not long after saying “Man, what a ride.” “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I took a wrong turn and was trying to catch up with you the rest of the day.” “Wrong turn?” he asked, very surprised.
As it turned out, he missed the turn as well and was always behind me. Far behind me, but behind me and at one point desperately trying to catch up. He saw me zipping along an overpass across a highway as if in a race and said he was thinking “What is it with this guy?! He says he doesn’t ride fast but is flying along, doesn’t ever stop or even give me a chance to catch up.” So the whole time I was chasing Charlie for hours, I was already ahead of him with him chasing after me.
By the time we got to Robyn’s house we had ended up doing 85 miles. It’s amazing to walk into a home after a long ride on a cool day and into a warm kitchen that smells like dinner. Some people along this route love to do things for cyclists passing through and it gives them an opportunity to talk to people from around the country and around the world. It was a funny night with some interesting stories, along with great pot roast and endless root beer floats.
–Eureka had a tornado that had come through in July. Robyn told us true Kansas Wizard of Oz type stories such as how one very unlucky cow was plucked off the ground and spotted within the twister. (Coincidentally, Greg and Mara, father/daughter cyclists who I had met way back in Idaho on day 11 were staying at Robyn’s house that night.)
Two more days of riding in Kansas.
Great post Dan!
Thanks Pat!