After not getting much accomplished yesterday, I wanted to make some good progress today. Since I was going to be in Garden City in 2 days, the more miles I did today, the less I have to do tomorrow. I got out around 8 in the morning and it was fairly cool so I did 26 miles in one straight shot without having to stop to fill up water. It’s weird how patterns start to emerge, it seems like I always do 26 miles as my warm up. No matter where I start out, when I get to 26 miles, there’s a town and I have to stop to take a break. Anyways, there was no wind so far and I knew I would make it pretty far. Normally I stop in small towns and go to a café or restaurant and get food and it’s a good way to waste time and get some air conditioning. However, in Kansas there is nothing. The only stops I was able to make were at gas stations and places like that. I did find a restaurant but I got there 5 minutes to close and rushed my way through my meal. Since I left so early and wasn’t able to waste time, I ended up doing more miles than I had planned on. I ended the day in Wright, just outside of Dodge City after doing 87 miles. This town, like many on highway 50 around this area, was just a giant grain bin with a few houses around. I asked around town and everyone directed me to a small park by a church to camp out in. I felt weird just camping in a park in the open so I went around to houses asking if they thought anyone would mind.
I felt very paranoid for some reason, I had no reason to be. There was a middle aged man that I thought was spying on me because he was just awkwardly going back in forth in this parking lot. I went to talk to him and it ended up he was just playing around with some weird scooter thing. We talked a little bit and he said if I wrote a book to tell people that there are in fact good people out there. I thought about that for a while, it’s true that there are good people out there. I think a lot of people don’t know this, including me. Even in these small towns where everyone is really nice, people still seem afraid. Even when they own a giant house filled with guns and people all around them, they get scared by a guy on a bicycle approaching them and asking to put a tent down for the night. The people who aren’t scared seem to be the people who have traveled the world and experienced a lot of things. I want to be someone like that, I don’t want to be someone who lives in a small town and is afraid for no reason. I am rambling a little, but that is what I was like and is why I wanted to do this trip, to experience the world. Someone who I stayed with a few days ago had traveled all over the world as part of his job and on many vacations. He said no matter where you go, everyone is the same, everyone just wants to have a good time. I thought that was a pretty cool way of looking at the world.
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