day 38

today we got back on the road after a couple of wonderful rest days. once we were all packed up we started biking out of town to hopefully get some breakfast, which we stopped off at a perkins (a hackett/sander favorite in montana). it was a good hearty breakfast to fuel us on a long day to kit carson about 113 miles. we followed the highway for a bit until it turned into a 2 lane road that seemed a bit up and down hilly until we started getting into more farm land. it was warm out and we were just getting introduced to what was to come through kansas. on the way my back tire seemed to have deflated so i did some roadside maintenance in patching my tube. since we rode from co springs to kit carson we were going off our route since our route has us to go from pueblo to eads so this route was what we figured out. there was a long hot stretch where evan and i were spread apart a good amount and i ran out of water but figured there would be a town with a gas station or something just down the road but there was nothing. after 2 hrs of biking and my lips were sticking together and i could hardly swallow because i was so thirsty i was in desperation mode looking for any bottle with liquid in it on the side of the road. after some failed attempts of checking bottles and almost drinking one full of what was probably urine; i saw that there was a small town up ahead and i went and knocked on a trailer and had my water bottles filled up by an guardian angel (she even put ice in it). i wish i could remember her name and took a picture of her but my state of mind was not there due to the heat. i downed one of the bottles and kept riding since we were only about 10 miles outside of kit carson. evan rolled into town before me and as i pass the city limit sign i see a cop flip a u-turn and switch on his lights and flag me down. i was so confused; i think i was going like 9mph and i had my helmet on and it wasn't dark so i didn't need my lights. he asked me for my license and then went back to his car to run it. when he returned he told us that there was only one restaurant open at the time and then gave me his card. met up with evan and he got pulled over and ran too; guess they had an incident with bikers riding into town and stealing things. kind of ridiculous since it was literally 50+ miles out of town one way and another 20 miles the other way until you'd reach the nearest town so i guess the bikers out pedaled the cops in their cars. o-well, we took a load off at the restaurant where we gorged ourselves with chicken fried steak (me) and evan had a super good burger. we then set off in search of someplace to camp. we biked to the outskirts of town and its all fields where we were so trying to hide a tent is a hard thing to do; there was a church that had a field in the back with a handful of trees so we scoped it out and walked back to get our gear when another cop pulled up with his lights on. this cop was more friendly and told us about the city park where they allow bikers to camp for free and there is water and bathrooms there. super thankful he met up with us; we hit the park up and we even charged up our ipods too. we got situated and evan started running the baselines of the baseball fields then climbed to the top of one of the light poles; not sure where he got all that energy but i was spent. we then crammed into our tent that was situated behind a group of trees to block the sun, so we were set for a good night sleep. then the wind picked up; it was super windy and we had some moments where we thought the tent was going to get picked up with us in it! the wind did help keep us cooler since it was super warm out and with our sleeping bags. we eventually got some sleep but the wind was pretty constant.