Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 22, 2005

Frankfort, KS
If you have ever wondered where all the corn in the world comes from, I can now answer that for you. It all comes from Kansas. Today we rode from Topeka, KA to Frankfort, KA. It was a 78-mile ride through cornfields and beautiful pastures. Aside from the blasting heat and humidity, it was really an enjoyable ride. For the first time ever on this trip, we had tail wind! The wind was actually pushing us in the direction that we wanted to go in…and it felt wonderful. The roads were in great condition, too. It made for very smooth conversation between my fellow riders and I. And, I think my entire riding group (Jennie, Amir and myself) can honestly say we all know possibly too much about each other after the ride today.
I should probably start from the beginning. We started off the day with an amazing breakfast in Topeka. We had eggs, pancakes, and biscuits. We all left Topeka this morning extremely full.
The first 40 miles of todays ride were completely flat. As we approached the lunch stop around mile 40, I remember yelling back to the rest of my group, “ Wow! I don’t know what everyone is talking about. There are no rolling hills here…Kansas is flat!” I should not have said that. As soon as we left lunch, the rolling hills began. They were not terrible, but when you’re going uphill you don’t have the wind of your movement to cool you down. Going uphill, it’s just plain HOT. I drank so much water today that I ran out between lunch and the second water break. My group didn’t think it was smart to keep biking to the water stop without any water in nearly 100-degree weather, so we stopped at a random house on the side of the road to ask for water. There was no home, but we were desperate. We walked around the house and found one of those faucets that you can hook a hose up to and filled our waterbottles there. So, I guess we technically stole water today…but it was for a good cause, right? Oh yeah, and it turns out the water break was about a mile down the road. Woops.
We got to bike along the Oregon Trail today, too. That was really cool. There was a little information park along the road as we were following the trail. Of course there was actually a little written information there about the Oregon Trail there, but more importantly there was a display of a wagon and oxen! We climbed all over it and took lots of pictures. It was definitely a great break,
Another great highlight from today was when my group was chugging our way up a hill…and suddenly a deer popped out and started running along the road right next to us. It doesn’t sound very exciting now, but it really was at the time.
So 78 miles after we began, we ended up in Frankfort, KA. We were welcomed into the town by a cute store that sold 80-cent ice cream. We also got to go to the community pool, which was soooo refreshing after the long, hot day. Then our hosts at the church we stayed at made us a great dinner…hamburgers. They were straight off the grill and delicious. We even played mafia with our hosts before bed. All-in-all, it was a great day with lots of great memories to hold onto.

-Rebecca