Today is July 4th! The plan for the day was to wake up super early, leave the motel by 6:30 so we can try to arrive in Newton before 4 PM. Since my family is around, we'd then drive to Wichita, have dinner and my family friend's restaurant, and go to their in-law's fourth of July party with some driveway fireworks! After all this, we'd go back to Newton and get some sleep before a long 90 mile day.
Unfortunately, only about half of this really happened.
We did all manage to wake up early, but as soon as we got up, we could tell it was pouring outside. There was lightning nearly every minute and the rain was coming down hard. Either way, we got prepared in hopes that the storm would die down. We went to breakfast, where we met this dog that really enjoyed Devin's belly rubs.
Despite all this, though, it was still raining hard as ever. So, we had no other choice but to wait it out. A few people stayed outside to watch the storm and read, while some of us went back to sleep.
Still, nearly 4 hours later, the storm still hadn't let up. By this point, some quick maths showed us that Newton is an hour drive away, and we have 3 spots on our bike rack (maybe we'd be able to cram one or two in the car, but it'd be really uncomfortable), so we'd have to drive at most 5 hours to get everyone to Newton safely, putting our arrival time around 4 PM with no biking for the day. With some creativity we came up with the following plan:
- Bill, Caralyn, Edgardo, Erin and I would start biking
- Devin would drive Leah and Maile about halfway with their bikes and drop them off to start biking.
- Devin would then drive to the host's house in Newton and take almost everything out of the car.
- Devin would return to pick up Bill, Caralyn, Edgardo, Erin and me, hope that our 5 bikes would somehow fit in the car, and take us all to Newton.
- Finally, if Leah and Maile still hadn't made it to the house, Devin would drive out to pick them up as well.
Unfortunately, this also did not go as planned. 10 miles after the first five of us started biking, something funny happened to Bill's back wheel, so we all came to a stop at the intersection of HIghway 50 and Z Rd.
At this point, we had a few options:
- Bill could try to continue and probably destroy his bike.
- some of us could leave Bill and continue biking while the others waited for Devin with Bill.
- we could walk to the nearest town
- we could jump on the trains that kept passing on a nearby railroad
- we could hitchhike
- we could all wait with Bill for Devin
We ended up going with the last option, but Devin was probably two and half hours away (when we stopped he was probably still on his way to Newton). So, we started our slow descent into madness on the side of this highway. For the next two and a half hours we:
- played ninja
- stood in a circle and slapped each other
- threw small rocks into small holes (honestly we did this probably for one and a half hours)
- taught each other slapping games
- slapped each other some more
- gave each other piggy back rides
- learned how to koala
- invented a religion
By the time Devin arrived, we had switched bike jerseys and were babbling nonsense.
Somehow, we did manage to fit everything in the car and we made it to Newton around 4 PM. Leah and Maile had both arrived, and my parents made it up to Newton as well with 2 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts! We all took showers, met our hosts, and got ready to leave for Wichita. Once everyone had settled down a bit and gotten more sane, we started to head off. After a bit more planning confusion, we ended up going to Texas Roadhouse for dinner (which most of the people on the team hadn't heard of before). It was a really great meal and I know my parents loved meeting everybody.
After this, Bill and Erin went with my parents to buy fireworks while the rest of us drove over to my parent's friend's in-law's party. Though there were tons of mosquitoes, we got to eat a bit more food and set off lots of fireworks!
I think around 9:30 or so, we were all really tired, so we decided to head back and get some sleep. Today was quite the long exercise in planning and adjusting our plans.