Day 21

Liberal, KS to Dodge City, KS -- 83 miles We're in Kansas now and it's very dry and VERY windy. The southwest part where we are is pretty boring really. All we've seen for miles and miles are wide open fields with a long, straight highway. It's been tough riding because the wind is directly in our face coming out of the north/northeast -- the direction we're going, of course! My average speed was 11-12 mph and that makes for a really slow day when you're faced with riding 83 miles. More people have been coming down with the mystery illness which we're pretty sure now is a virus and not food-poisoning. That's a little bit of a relief since we have no control over where we eat breakfast or dinner every day. Over the past couple of days, fourteen of us (excluding me) have been to the emergency room due severe vomiting and diarrhea. We're all getting pretty weary from the daily grind of having to ride long miles every day in the wind, so the illness going through the group is only adding to the stress we're already feeling. I only suffered chills and fever on the first day the symptoms started appearing (Tucumcari to Dalhart) so I feel pretty lucky to have escaped the worst of it. Today was a tough day, as I said, but we saw some pretty neat things along the way today. In the town of Meade, KS we toured the Dalton Gang Hideout - a secret tunnel between the barn and the house where the famous train and bank robbers hid out in the late 1890's. The town of Dodge City is kind of interesting, too, with the Boot Hill Museum. It's a two-block replica in the center of town that recreates the feel of Dodge City during it's famous years as the most dangerous, rowdy outlaw town in the West. I toured it briefly before going to the Dodge City Airport to fly home for the weekend. Circumstances beyond my control made it necessary for me to take a few days off from the tour to go home to North Little Rock for the weekend. We listed our house for sale in November and wouldn't you know, we got an offer we couldn't refuse last Tuesday and the buyers want to close on June 27th -- two days before I finish the tour in Boston. My husband wanted me to come home and help him get started on the packing process since he will have to handle the entire move by himself. I also knew that if I ever wanted to be in our house again it had to be now since it would no longer belong to us after the tour was over. As it turned out, the break did me a lot of good. When I left I never stopped to think I'd need to leave during the middle of the tour, but things happen and several people have had to leave for various reasons. I'm going back tomorrow to rejoin the group in Abilene and spend the rest day there with the group on Tuesday. We'll resume the ride on Wednesday when we ride 105 miles from Abilene to Topeka -- the half-way point of the tour!