Thursday, July 15 - Day 32 - 72 Miles - 2371 Total Miles

My wonderful wife, Kimberly saved the day today (twice). Only a few miles into the day, we were riding down a road as I see our van coming toward us in the opposite direction. Kim is screaming out the window at us that we are going the wrong way. Sure enough, I had misread the map....that little map error could have cost us about 20 miles. Thanks to Kim, it only cost us about 1 mile. That would have put a real damper on the day. Save number 2 was when we came upon construction that had our road closed. The only roads that we could see around it were gravel or highly traveled.....but, Kim, using her newfound map reading/gps skills, quickly coordinated a safe and non-gravel detour. She rocks. It seems like only yesterday, I would ask her how far something was on a map and she would hold her thumb and index finger an inch apart and say "about this far". Oh, how she has grown.

Today the terrain was a lot like the terrain we ride in Ohio. Trees have come back to the landscape, their are little rolling hills, and the humidity was high. Luckily, we had overcast skies the entire time we rode, so it was a much needed break from the heat. Mix that in with the fact that we only went 72 miles and we feel like we had a day off. If it wasn't for the slight headwind that we had...it would have been a very easy day.

We are staying in a hotel tonight in Newton, Kansas. Yeah, there have been some Newton jokes...hey, I am from Covington....I can't resist. We pick up our new tent tomorrow (hopefully), so we should be back to tenting tomorrow night. Speaking of which....I think there was some confusion about the tent purchase. We did not lose any of our tents. We just needed one more tent, so that Kim and Anna could get out of the hot van and get into a tent. We did not bring a tent for them, so they were stuck in the van. Is that better?

Alex rode with us again today. He hung in there for almost the entire ride. He stopped only a couple of miles short of today's finish, simply because he did not realize that we were only going 72 miles. In his defense, we did crank it up a little the last 8 or so miles and he just ran out of gas. Another good day for him on the bike.

We had a visit today from my nephew, Andy and his wife, Alysson. It was really great to see them. They are just ending a 2 week trip through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado,......We are so glad that they made their way toward our route on their way to Kansas City. We got to visit with them for a couple of hours and see pictures of their route that we did not get to see out here. True to form, after they left, Kim and I realized that we forgot to get a picture of them for this site, so we ripped one off of their blog. We have only taken pictures of about 20% of the cool people we have met. We get so wrapped up in conversation with people, that taking their picture slips our mind.

Kim's mom and dad are now currently on their way toward us. Everyone (yes, me too) is really looking forward to seeing them. The kids have been talking about Missouri and their Nan and Papa for a couple of weeks. Coordinating schedules is tough, but hopefully everything works out for some good visiting time.

We are getting closer to the Eastern Time Zone.......

Andy and Alysson....Andy is the Bald One