Day 27: centurions! (+🐢)

Saturday, July 01, 2023
Springfield, MO → Pittsburg, KS
161.62 km && +1127 m elevation [100.42 mi && +3698 ft elevation]

🇧🇷 Song for today: Vá morar com o diabo — Cássia Eller 🇧🇷

First imperial century ride

Today we completed our first 100-mile ride going into Kansas, the newest state on our list!

The route today was a combination of the TransAm (or biking route 76, which goes cross-country from Virginia to Oregon), parts of the historic/old route 66, and loads of country/farm roads. It was relatively empty and peaceful; cars were about as frequent as hitting bugs while biking (the real reason why biking glasses exist).

Winds are often pretty strong in these flatlands. We went up against 21 km/h (~13 mph) headwinds the whole time as we biked down roads cutting through wind farms. We really should've gone west to east.

An old-school rest stop

As we biked down the old route 66, we ran across Spencer, a tiny roadside community known for its 1930s complex of a general store, a barbershop, and a gas station. As we stopped to take a photo, the owner came out and greeted us, offering us water bottles and a quick tour of the site. They're currently in the middle of restoration work to bring it back to its 1930s/40s glory, so keep an eye out for it if you're ever in southwestern Missouri!

Lunch break (aka rain dodging)

To avoid some rain in the early afternoon, we stopped at the Hangar Kafe, a cute little diner next to a skydiving center in Ozark county. Their menu and decoration was all plane-themed, which made for a cool experience!

Turtle-saving efforts: three and counting

Partly to try to compensate for some of our team members' unintentional killings of animals via car or bike (down two baby turtles and a squirrel so far 🫠), I've been rescuing turtles from the road so they don't also become roadkill.

Baby turtles make for nice rescuees. They just hide into their shells and wait for you to move them.

Larger turtles are not as nice. This one tried to scratch me and then tried to pee to get me to let it go 🥲. Poor dude was scared. Not squished though!